reasons and how to deal with it

You fall asleep while watching Netflix, so you rush to bed to take advantage of the sleepiness. Suddenly you wake up: your head is full of worries and plans. You feel disappointed: after all, you were sleepy just a minute ago! If this sounds familiar, you might be one of the 30% or so. adults suffering from insomnia.

Causes of insomnia

The causes of insomnia can be multiple and are often linked to psychological, physical or lifestyle factors. One of the most common reasons is stress and anxiety: daily problems, work worries or personal experiences can cause difficulty falling asleep. Other causes include poor sleep hygiene, such as eating late, consuming too much caffeine or alcohol.

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Insomnia can also be caused by health problems such as pain, breathing problems, hormonal imbalances or chronic diseases such as sleep apnea or depression. Additionally, poor sleep habits and irregular daily rhythms can further reduce sleep quality and lead to long-term sleep problems.

To sleep better at night, some resort to desperate measures: cocktails of drugs, refusal to sleep in the same bed, hypnosis, herbal teas for sleep. However, these measures are ineffective and may even make the problem worse. That’s why we asked Dr. Angela Lachovska to provide us with a healthy solution so you can enjoy bedtime again.

For insomniacs, there is a rational, biological, evidence-based approach that works well and will work forever if people continue to use it: cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I. CBT-I uses both behavioral and cognitive strategies to treat insomnia symptoms. The program usually begins with two weeks of sleep logging to address your specific difficulties. Your therapist can then help you identify problematic behaviors or thoughts and make recommendations for changing them. Here are some basic methods:

Recognize that your sleep needs are unique

It is a common misconception that adults need 8 hours of sleep to function optimally. While this may be true for some people, it is not at all true for most people. Our specific sleep needs vary in both duration (how many hours of sleep your body produces) and timing (when your body clock dictates sleep and wakefulness during a 24-hour day—this is called a circadian rhythm). If your body clock has detected that you are sleeping six hours (a perfectly adequate total sleep time) and you try to sleep more than eight hours, the consequences will be long waking hours and poorer overall sleep quality – that’s a recipe for insomnia!

Use a sleep diary to mathematically determine how much sleep your body needs and the timing of your natural circadian rhythm (what time your body starts producing signals for sleep and wakefulness). Plan your time in bed to be no more than half an hour. Our sleep system, like the heart or lungs, is designed to support a healthy body.

Use the bed only for sleeping

Remember learning about Pavlov’s dogs in psychology class? Humans are not that different from dogs: we can also be conditioned to repeated stimuli. Imagine lying in bed night after night playing on your phone, being distracted, or planning and worrying about the day ahead. The bed and bedroom environment will unconsciously become the place where you engage in this waking activity. Solution: As soon as you find yourself waking up in bed or feeling depressed, get up, move to another room (or place in the room), and do something pleasant (but avoid the computer and blue-light devices). You can’t fall asleep anyway, so why force it? Consider this vigilance as an investment in the quality of your sleep the next night. Tomorrow, your sleep will have an additional incentive for quality sleep.

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Keep your worries away from bed

Our minds are designed to think, but we are often distracted by our daily worries. Then, after you lie down in bed and remove all other distractions, these thoughts start to escape. Fortunately, the solution is simple, if unpleasant at first. Get out of bed and do something relaxing until you feel sleepy again. You can read, write, stretch, listen to soothing music, draw or color, do a puzzle, or even watch TV (but don’t use your laptop or tablet to watch your favorite show). Then go back to bed. During the first night, this process of getting up, when your mind becomes active in bed, can occur several times: this is not a bad thing, as it increases your desire to sleep for the next night. Eventually, your desire to sleep will overcome your anxiety and make it easier for your body to fall asleep when you want it to.

Wake up at the same time every day

If you’ve ever suffered from jet lag, you know the symptoms: tiredness, irritability, feeling hungry at odd hours, mental confusion. It’s not the plane ride that causes jet lag, but the difference between your body’s clock and the one on the wall. So if you wake up at different times during the week, you can fly across the country without leaving home. The more regularly you wake up, the more regular your natural circadian rhythm will be – unfortunately your body doesn’t know the difference between a weekday and a weekend. If you happen to sleep poorly at night, consider this loss of sleep as an investment in the next night’s sleep: your body will compensate and take care of itself. It’s a wonderful system if you let it work as it should.

Check your sleep expectations

There are many misconceptions that push us to strive for «perfect» sleep. Most of them are clearly wrong and actually make our sleep worse. Did you know that we wake up on average 12 times an hour? So remembering some brief awakenings during the night is completely normal.

Another misconception: Many people think that REM (rapid eye movement sleep) is the most restorative sleep phase for us. But in reality it is slow wave sleep (abundant only in the first half of the night) that performs the most restorative function of sleep. Napping actually creates excess REM sleep, which makes us feel more tired and even depressed. These are just two examples: Researching «normal» sleep (from a reliable source) will help you set reasonable expectations about what constitutes good sleep.

Refrain from taking a nap

Naps can be very tasty – who doesn’t love a Sunday afternoon nap? Unfortunately, if you’re severely sleep-deprived (like new moms) or worried about your safety (you have to drive and feel very sleepy), napping has several counterpurposes. First, after you take a nap, your desire to sleep that night probably won’t be strong enough for you to get as much sleep as you want. Additionally, napping disrupts the body’s natural circadian rhythm. Remember that it is completely normal to feel more tired in the afternoon, when your body temperature drops a little. Overcome this tiredness by taking a walk, getting some light and breathing fresh air – you will feel much better than giving up and taking a nap.

Sleep hygiene: it is necessary, but not sufficient

These usually include suggestions for limiting caffeine and alcohol consumption, exercising, and having a quiet, dark, comfortable, and cool bedroom environment. These practices are not enough to resolve insomnia, but stopping them (such as drinking too much alcohol before bed) will interfere with the quality of your sleep.

The most important thing to recognize is that no one’s sleep is perfect – even sleep therapists suffer from insomnia some nights! But follow these simple strategies, and in the long run, you’ll be on your way to quality sleep.