Sleep is the single most powerful performance-enhancing health-providing behaviour known to humankind, and it’s completely free. Photo / 123rf
Does anything reboot you quite like a good night’s sleep? It’s the health boost that should be most accessible – just lie down and go – yet every night, some 16 million UK adults lie awake, tossing and turning through the debilitating effects of insomnia.
Sleeplessness affects one in four of us, according to recent figures from Nuffield Health. Midlife changes, weight gain, hormone fluctuations and menopause all threaten to derail good rest.
Add the cost of living crisis and redundancy fears into the mix, says Dr Guy Meadows, founder of insomnia clinic and app the Sleep School, and it’s no wonder 10 per cent of adults get just two to four hours of sleep each night.
“Sleep is the single most powerful performance-enhancing health-providing behaviour known to humankind, and it’s completely free,” says Meadows.
We often sabotage ourselves with distractions from boxsets to doomscrolling on our phones. But with poor sleep linked to heart disease, diabetes, depression and a host of other conditions, resolving night-time wakefulness is non-negotiable, says Meadows.
Here, Meadows and other sleep experts reveal a 24-hour programme to reboot your sleep for a more restful 2023.
“From the moment that you wake up, you’re effectively winding down for sleep,” says Meadows. “Our sleep cycle is governed by our sense of light and dark, or circadian rhythm, so as soon as you wake up, you want to get lots of light into your eyes.”
Even if it comes via artificial light, or devices, this will immediately synchronise your body clock to the time zone that you’re in, says Meadows.
“The light tells the brain that the day has begun, it activates the CAR – the cortisol awakening response (the spike in cortisol present in most healthy adults in the hour after waking) – so it’s kickstarting the day.”
Aric Prather is director of the Behavioural Sleep Medicine Research Programme at the University of California at San Francisco and author of the Seven Day Sleep Prescription.
“Try to ensure your wake-up time is the same, seven days a week,” he says. “This helps set in motion what is known as your ‘sleep drive’. The more consistent that is, “the more predictable your system will be.”
It’s also helpful to turn on the lights, eat and shower at the same time to train the body to associate those actions with morning, says Meadows.
Studies show that exposure to natural light helps the body to produce vitamin D, foster healthy circadian rhythms and sharpen focus.
“If you want to maximise the benefit of the light, get outside in the morning,” says Meadows.
Your chronotype – the natural inclination that makes you a lark or night owl – may affect your morning motivation, but the earlier in the day you exercise, the more likely it is you’ll fall asleep at a reasonable hour. (Prather adds that no exercise should be undertaken at least three hours before bed, as the adrenaline may disrupt rest.)
“There’s a tendency that we might become a little bit more sedentary as we get older,” says Meadows. “Being active, getting a few extra steps – that’s going to help to increase that sleep drive, and help to increase the speed at which you fall asleep.”
Working from home?
Set clear boundaries about the place you will work, and the place you will rest, suggests Meadows. The kitchen table – and especially the bed – are off-limits.
“This could be just a small desk in the corner of a room somewhere you can throw a drape over, pull a curtain around, close the door, so that effectively creates that line in the sand.”
“Mid-morning, seek out 10 at 10 – that’s 10 minutes of natural light to puncture your day, especially in winter”, says Meadows. He points to research published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine which found that employees who sat closer to a window had better-quality sleep and better mood; if you can’t get outside, try a window instead.
If you find yourself reaching for a coffee during the 12pm slump, switch to herbal tea instead.
“Caffeine is “the antagonist to adenosine, the sleepy brain chemical we need to accrue as we go throughout the day,” explains Meadows. “With age, we become more sensitive to things like caffeine,” says ‘the Sleep Geek’, James Wilson. “Even if you could once handle espressos at all hours, part of this reset in midlife is actually accepting how you sleep now, and not basing expectations on who we were in our 20s.”
Prather has a rather more dramatic suggestion: putting your head briefly in the freezer, for a blast of cold air. “We know that cold exposure can absolutely increase alertness and amp up our nervous system,” he says. For a less extreme version, he suggests a brisk walk.
“Getting cold air in your face as the seasons age can also be effective. And there’s no freezing required, he says.” A five or 10-minute energy boost via reorganising a bookshelf or gardening can work, too.
Want to get rid of that wave of micro-panics that seem only to occur in the middle of the night? Try scheduling your worry instead, Prather suggests. “Being intentional about it can be really helpful for people,” he says. “Then, when in the middle of the night these worries do come up, you can say, well, I’ve already spent my scheduled time on this” – allowing the brain to drift back to sleep.
“Commuting – in spite of its downsides – is at least useful for marking the end of office hours,” says Meadows. If you’re working from home, try a “fake commute” instead – a five-minute walk outside the house, where you re-enter through your front door as if returning home from the office. It’s a “simple but effective way of creating that mental separation whereby you choose to finish the working day.”
“Our system works best when things are consistent,” says Prather. Keeping dinner times stable each night of the week will further entrench circadian patterns, putting the body on autopilot that sleep is soon to come. Prather suggests stopping eating at least three hours before bed, and avoiding spicy food, or anything that might cause indigestion or keep you awake.
“As we move into the midlife, we want to be looking after our sleep as much as possible. But actually, the opposite tends to happen,” says Meadows, explaining that dinner can often contribute to a poor night’s rest, as it is typically the least healthy meal of the day.
Alcohol consumption tends to be higher too. “Unfortunately, alcohol is just disastrous for sleep,” says Meadows, recommending at least two alcohol-free days each week.
Weight gain is a common byproduct of midlife, as decreasing muscle mass causes the body to burn fewer calories.
Meadows suggests making your evening meals “lighter and healthier”. The Mediterranean-style diet – plenty of olive oil, healthy fats like oily fish and nuts, and vegetables – “appears to provide the best sleep outcome,” according to a 2020 study from Columbia university in the US.
Reducing light use as the night draws in is important, Meadows says. While screens shouldn’t be used before bed for anything work-related, Wilson thinks they can offer a range of tools to help you nod off. “On your device, there are great things that can help: meditation apps, there’s breathing exercises, there are sleep playlists on Spotify, sleep stories on YouTube; there’s lots of good stuff on it,” he says. “So use your phone more mindfully.”
Whatever your bedtime may be, the golden rule is – you guessed it – to keep things consistent.
“Going to bed at different times each night may make you more prone to waking, and that can really fracture your relationship with your bed,” Prather says. “This creates conditioned arousal, which means that people who are anxious or worried will feel increasingly so at the idea of not being able to get back to sleep. That will only make “your body will get confused about what he’s supposed to be doing.”
If you’re up for more than 20 or 30 minutes, Prather suggests getting out of bed; doing something quiet like watching TV or meditating. “When you begin to feel sleepy again, try to get back in bed,” he says. “Over time, what that will do is it will make the bed a really strong trigger for sleep.”
Meadows advocates a school of CBT called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, where those who find themselves up at night are taught to accept the discomfort of a racing mind.
“The point is to actually be okay with being awake,” he says. “Because the more willing you are to be awake, the less obstacles there are in the way of sleep.”
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