Study Determines This Is the Most Relaxing Song Ever

 

Looking for something to help you relax before bed that doesn't involve popping a pill? You might want to load up your iPod with a song by Manchester band, Marconi Union. Sound therapists were able to rate ten of the most relaxing songs, with Marconi Union's 8 minute trance-inducing tune, "Weightless", coming out on top thanks to its continuous rhythm of 60 BPM, an ideal tempo for synchronization with the heart and brainwaves, making it an ideal audio accompaniment for a good night's rest. → How To: Dress Your Windows for Better Sleep Lyz Cooper, founder of the British Academy of Sound Therapy notes: "While listening, your heart rate gradually comes to match that beat. It is important that the song is eight minutes long because it takes about five minutes for this process, known as entrainment, to occur. The fall in heart rate also leads to a fall in blood pressure. The harmonic intervals - or gaps between notes - have been chosen to create a feeling of euphoria and comfort. And there is no repeating melody, which allows your brain to completely switch off because you are no longer trying to predict what is coming next. Instead, there are random chimes, which helps to induce a deeper sense of relaxation. The final element is the low, whooshing sounds and hums that are like buddhist chants. High tones stimulate but these low tones put you in a trance-like state." → Can't Sleep? 5 Ways Your Bedroom is Keeping You Awake • 10 Simple Things to Make You Happier at Home • Your Weekly Retreat: How To Relax & Eliminate Stress at Home • 4 Goals to Boost Happiness at Home • Simple Ways to Relax and Enjoy Hosting

Sprayable Sleep looks to spray away insomnia

 

Just a couple of sprays before bed allows the melatonin formula to soak into the skin Image Gallery (4 images) A little more than a year ago, Gizmag featured an Indiegogo campaign that was marketing Sprayable Energy, which delivered a caffeine hit through the skin. Now the same company, Sprayable, has launched another campaign for a spray claimed to do the opposite – it puts you to sleep. Gizmag got a sample of Sprayable Sleep to put these claims to the test. Sprayable Sleep utilizes melatonin, which is a chemical that humans produce naturally to control our night-day cycle. According to the company, current oral melatonin pills, which are a common administration for aiding sleep, often contain 10 to 100 times more of the chemical than is necessary. Sprayable uses a fraction of the sleep-inducing juice, which the company claims will enter the body "gently and smoothly" over time as it gradually permeates the skin. While overdosing on melatonin is incredibly unlikely, even in oral use, the company still has a disclaimer saying, "do not exceed 8 sprays in 24 hours." "It definitely does run the risk of being a little too effective for some people," says Ben Yu, one of the co-founders of Sprayable. "Since it absorbs steadily through the skin, some people have reported that despite sleeping really well, they end up needing more sleep than they planned for, and consequently when they force themselves awake before their bodies are ready to wake up with an alarm clock, they do still feel a little groggy.” The difference, as the company sees it, is that Sprayable Sleep emulates the body’s natural melatonin production, bypassing the digestive system and making the application more natural than taking the chemical in pill form. The initial application was a bit off-putting for me, as I'm not generally accustomed to sprays or colognes, but after the initial wince of uncertainty, the application process was smooth. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no stickiness to the formula, and the company claims it is odorless as well. While this was mostly true, there was a light, new-car-esque smell, though this may have been from manufacturing rather than the formula itself. Application is recommended either on each side of the neck or each wrist an hour before bed. While this writer only experienced mildly-heavy eyes after administration, my wife was out within twenty minutes. There was little odor and the mist was easy to apply. This method of application certainly feels more natural than pills, but as can be expected, results will vary. One bottle costs US$15, and contains enough of the insomnia killer to last one month. Sprayable Sleep already has over US$125,000 raised on the Indiegogo campaign, with 31 days still to go. If it keeps this pace, Sprayable Sleep will leave its predecessor in its wake.   Source: Sprayable

Light-emitting e-readers before bedtime can adversely impact sleep

Use of a light-emitting electronic device (LE-eBook) in the hours before bedtime can adversely impact overall health, alertness, and the circadian clock which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep to external environmental time cues. Use of a light-emitting electronic device (LE-eBook) in the hours before bedtime can adversely impact overall health, alertness, and the circadian clock which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep to external environmental time cues, according to researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) who compared the biological effects of reading an LE-eBook compared to a printed book. These findings of the study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on December 22, 2014. "We found the body's natural circadian rhythms were interrupted by the short-wavelength enriched light, otherwise known as blue light, from these electronic devices," said Anne-Marie Chang, PhD, corresponding author, and associate neuroscientist in BWH's Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. "Participants reading an LE-eBook took longer to fall asleep and had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book." Previous research has shown that blue light suppresses melatonin, impacts the circadian clock and increase alertness, but little was known about the effects of this popular technology on sleep. The use of light emitting devices immediately before bedtime is a concern because of the extremely powerful effect that light has on the body's natural sleep/wake pattern, and may thereby play a role in perpetuating sleep deficiency. During the two-week inpatient study, twelve participants read LE-e-Books on an iPad for four hours before bedtime each night for five consecutive nights. This was repeated with printed books. The order was randomized with some reading the iPad first and others reading the printed book first. Participants reading on the iPad took longer to fall asleep, were less sleepy in the evening, and spent less time in REM sleep. The iPad readers had reduced secretion of melatonin, a hormone which normally rises in the evening and plays a role in inducing sleepiness. Additionally, iPad readers had a delayed circadian rhythm, indicated by melatonin levels, of more than an hour. Participants who read from the iPad were less sleepy before bedtime, but sleepier and less alert the following morning after eight hours of sleep. Although iPads were used in this study, BWH researchers also measured other eReaders, laptops, cell phones, LED monitors, and other electronic devices, all emitting blue light. "In the past 50 years, there has been a decline in average sleep duration and quality," stated Charles Czeisler, PhD, MD, FRCP, chief, BWH Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. "Since more people are choosing electronic devices for reading, communication and entertainment, particularly children and adolescents who already experience significant sleep loss, epidemiological research evaluating the long-term consequences of these devices on health and safety is urgently needed." Researchers emphasize the importance of these findings, given recent evidence linking chronic suppression of melatonin secretion by nocturnal light exposure with the increased risk of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and prostate cancer. Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Brigham and Women's Hospital. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: Anne-Marie Chang, Daniel Aeschbach, Jeanne F. Duffy, and Charles A. Czeisler. Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. PNAS, December 22, 2014 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1418490112

7 Sleep Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making and How to Fix Them

 

A shocking number of us have trouble sleeping on a regular basis, but there are some very simple reasons why that might be. This infographic from The Sleep Matters Club highlights some common sleep mistakes that many of us make and explains how we can fix them.   Filed in: Lifestyle Infographics About the Author (Author Profile) David Wallace is a search & social media marketer who lives in Anthem Arizona with his lovely wife. Interests & hobbies include all things Disney, roller coasters, musicianship and Christianity. Follow +David Wallace on Google + as well as Twitter.

How Is Your Sleep Health? - republishing -

 

Just because you don’t have insomnia doesn’t mean sleep's doing its job for you. When you come across yet another magazine piece about sleep disorders, you pass it by. You know lots of people who have sleep problems—but as far as you’re concerned, you don’t. You don’t lie awake for hours hoping for some shut-eye, or wake up in the middle of the night, or find it really hard to sleep on a schedule that works with the rest of your life. Great! Congratulations! But… Not having a particular problem is not at all the same thing as being healthy. We know that when it comes to our general health, just because you're not in bad shape physically doesn’t mean you're in good shape. Good is at least one or two steps beyond so-so or okay. That’s true for health, it’s true for diet, it’s true for energy level and mood. And it’s definitely true for sleep. This point is brought home in a recent issue of the scientific journal Sleep. The author is Daniel Buysse, MD, a top authority in the field of sleep medicine. He raises the point that sleep medicine—a field that goes back at least 30 years—has focused on disorders, diseases, and their treatment. Of course this effort has been momentous, as anyone who has tried to deal with a sleep problem will gratefully agree. But what is needed in addition is a positive frame of reference that gives us a way to know how well we are doing. KEYS TO HEALTHY SLEEP What makes for a healthy sleep pattern, one that reinforces good general health? Dr. Buysse suggests that five simple questions can give you a sense of where you stand: Do you fall asleep easily and get back to sleep easily if something wakes you during the night? Do you sleep between six and eight hours a night? Do you stay awake and alert during your waking day, without dozing? Is your sleep schedule appropriate to your lifestyle (for most of us, this means sleeping during the nighttime)? Do you feel you typically get a “good night’s sleep”? Researchers can get objective answers to most of these questions by observing someone in a sleep lab. But as a rule, that isn’t really necessary. Practically all of us are able to say whether our personal answer to each question is Rarely/Never, Sometimes, or Usually/Always. And that is enough to give us a general idea of our current state of sleep health, but most importantly, a target to aim for—being able to say Usually to every question. If you fall short of that, like so many of us, what can you do about it? To answer that question, we need to understand something of the basics of sleep itself. MECHANISMS OF ACTION The most widely accepted physiological understanding of sleep involves the joint action of two independent brain processes. We want them both to be in sync. The first is sleep pressure. From the moment we wake up, our bodies start building up a need to sleep again. Once we do go to sleep, this need starts to recede. The second process is the circadian cycle, which rises and falls across the twenty-four hour day, under the control of the inner clock. When these two reinforce each other, the result is healthy sleep. But the more they come into conflict, the more our sleep health declines. The good news is that both sleep pressure and the circadian cycle can be brought under our control. Getting on a regular sleep/wake schedule helps ensure that sleep pressure builds to its high point at bedtime. We detail the ways to adjust the circadian cycle in our paperback guide, Reset Your Inner Clock. For example, if you expose yourself to bright light during the hours shortly before bedtime, it can overwhelm the clock’s sleep signal and make it harder to fall asleep. But if you cut down on light exposure—and especially light in the blue-ish part of the spectrum—you can avoid this interference. Holding back on television and computer use during the evening hours is one simple but effective step toward sleep health. How you arrange your nighttime and morning environment is just as important. Put together the ingredients, and you can rate yourself Usually—or even Always—on the positive side of the sleep equation. Michael and Ian are co-authors of the 2013 Penguin paperback, Reset Your Inner Clock. They invite you to follow them on Twitter for news updates, opinions, and challenging Q-and-A’s. If you want to stay on top of body-clock matters, light therapy, and more — and take advantage of confidential, online self-assessments of inner clock time, depression, and seasonality — you should become part of the nonprofit Center for Environmental Therapeutics community. Email PTuser@cet.org so we can stay in contact.

6 Ways Your Bedroom May Be Sabotaging Your Sleep - republishing -

 

How to make your bedroom more conducive to sleep Let’s face it: we all know that sometimes, getting ourselves (or our kids) into bed is only half the struggle when it comes to falling asleep. Lying there, or tossing and turning as the minutes turn into hours while sleep continues to eludes us can be really frustrating, and no help when the alarm goes off the next morning and we can barely get going. There can be lots of reasons why people have difficulty falling or staying asleep, and I’ve addressed many of them in previous posts as well as in my book One of them, often overlooked, is the quality of the sleep environment itself. Namely: how conducive your bedroom is to falling asleep. Here are a number of things to look for in your, or your child’s bedroom, which may be interfering with your ability to fall asleep at night: Too much light. Bright light, especially in the evening, has a very powerful awakening effect on the brain. Make sure the bedroom lights are dim, or better yet turned off completely. If you read before going to bed, use a low-wattage lamp. If a night light is needed, use the lowest wattage you can find (no more than 7 watts) and make sure that the light it casts does not shine directly on the bed. In the summer months, when trying to go to sleep (or to put younger kids to bed) before the sun has set, consider using light-blocking shades or curtains. Too many distractions. Televisions , computers, iPads, video games are problematic not only because of the light they case, but because of their content, which can rile up the brain just as you’re trying to calm it down.  And while falling asleep to soothing music can be very helpful to some, not all music is soothing. I’ve met teens with difficulty initiating sleep who never made the connection between the heavy metal they listened to in bed at night and why it was taking them so long to fall asleep. Pets. Whether it’s a dog who snuggles up and leaves you little room to stretch out, or a cat that’s constantly moving about, your pet may be causing more of your sleep problems than you realize. If you’re not convinced, consider videotaping the bed one night and watching what happened over the course of the night. Too much stress. Taking computers, homework, or work into bed is an especially big no-no, because it can generate stress that lingers even after the task is complete, and the computer turned off and the notebooks put away. It’s important to keep the bed for sleep (and sex, when appropriate), and not to allow negative associations to develop between the bed and unpleasant or stress-generating tasks which can then interfere with sleep. Clocks. Even though the stress they produce is a direct continuation of point #4, they bear special mention. Nothing is more anxiety-producing than watching the minutes tick by as you lie in bed and can’t fall asleep. “Oh no, it’s been half an hour, and I’m still awake… Now it’s been thirty-five minutes and I still haven’t fallen asleep.” Most of us need an alarm to wake up in the morning, but that doesn’t mean that the clock has to face the bed. Move it out of arms-reach and out of sight. For example: put the clock on a dresser across the room and facing the wall. That will make it much less tempting to look at. Noise.  Thin walls, snoring bed partners, or family members watching TV in the den can all make it harder to fall asleep. Sometimes this is easy to fix, but not always. If that’s the case, consider foam earplugs, or a fan or white noise machine to mask the sound Good luck, and good night! Dennis Rosen, M.D. Help your child get a great night's sleep with the new book: Successful Sleep Strategies for Kids (a Harvard Medical School Guide)

10 Foods That Help You Sleep Better

 

When too many nights spent tossing and turning cause you to dread your bedroom, instead of looking forward to slipping between the sheets, there’s no need to automatically reach for a sleeping pill. Instead, change your bedtime snack to a food known for its sleep-enhancing properties, and you’ll soon be visiting the land of Nod. Steven Errico/Photographer's Choice RF/Getty Images 1. Milk A glass of warm milk has always been a bedtime staple, and for good reason. It’s loaded with calcium, which not only helps your muscles relax; it also regulates your body’s production of melatonin. Plus, milk contains the amino acid tryptophan, which is the precursor to serotonin, a hormone that promotes relaxation and a feeling of calm.  Enjoy a glass of milk – it’s extra soothing when it’s warm – before bedtime, or drink a glass if you wake up during the night.  RS Photography/Getty Images 2. Cherries Cherries, especially the tart cherries used for baking pies, contain melatonin, the hormone that helps you sleep soundly. To reap the benefits, eat a helping of cherries an hour or two before bedtime, or drink a cup of tart cherry juice twice daily.  Susie McCaffrey/Getty Images 3. Walnuts These tasty tree nuts contain melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate your sleep cycle. In addition, they provide a helping of tryptophan, which converts to melatonin in your body. Enjoy a handful of walnuts an hour or so before bedtime, and enjoy a restful night. Daniel Grill/Getty Images 4. Almonds Almonds are an excellent source of magnesium, which helps you relax, and protein, which keeps blood sugar levels even throughout the night. Additionally, a daily handful of almonds lowers bad cholesterol levels, boosts brain activity and strengthens your bones.   Richard Clark/Getty Images 5. Lettuce While salad may not be a traditional bedtime snack, it’s a surprisingly effective one. That’s because lettuce, especially romaine lettuce, contains a phytonutrient called lactucarium, which is said to induce sleep, relieve pain and promote relaxation. If munching on a salad before bedtime isn’t appealing, you can brew lettuce tea by pouring very hot water over romaine leaves, then letting them steep for ten minutes before adding a touch of honey for sweet flavor. Davies and Starr/Getty Images 6. Cheese Like all dairy products, cheese contains calcium, which helps relieve stress and relax muscles, along with regulating your body’s production of melatonin. With so many cheeses to choose from, you can enjoy a different variety each night. Limit yourself to a few small cubes, or two or three slices of cheese on whole-wheat crackers.  A.J.J. Estudi/Getty Images 7. Hummus This Mediterranean chickpea staple is not only delicious; it’s also a good source of tryptophan. Enjoy a few teaspoons of hummus on whole-wheat crackers a few hours before bedtime, and you’ll reap the benefits of steady blood sugar levels, sleep-inducing hormones and protein to soothe any acid reflux – a common cause of insomnia.  Dave Higginson/Getty Images 8. Bananas Sweet, portable, inexpensive and loved by just about everyone – what’s not to like about bananas? Even better, they pack a hefty punch of magnesium and potassium; two minerals that help relax muscles and promote sleep. Plus, bananas are a good source of tryptophan. Enjoy a small banana an hour or two before bedtime. Foodcollection/Getty Images 9. Jasmine Rice Rice might not be your first thought when considering a bedtime snack, but jasmine rice is actually a good way to promote shuteye. It’s a high-glycemic food, meaning it releases glucose into your bloodstream at a slow, steady pace, rather than raising your sugar levels high and letting them crash back down. This keeps your brain fueled for the night. Jasmine rice also boosts levels of tryptophan and serotonin, both important for restful sleep. If a bowl of plain rice doesn’t appeal to you, mix in a bit of milk and honey. Lew Robinson/Getty Images 10. Honey This sweet stuff is the bee’s knees when it comes to helping you get to sleep. Honey’s sugar raises insulin slightly, allowing tryptophan to more easily enter the brain where it works its magic in helping induce restful sleep. Simply eat a tablespoon of raw honey before bedtime, preferably on an otherwise empty stomach. If that’s too much sweetness to tolerate, stir the honey into a cup of chamomile tea.

Three Tips for Better Sleep: Overcome your Insomnia

 

Published on October 15, 2013 by Jonathan Fader, Ph.D. in The New You

“When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, “Did you sleep good? I said “No, I made a few mistakes.” - Steven Wright

First, you are not alone. A shocking 50-70 million Americans have sleep difficulties of some kind. But not to worry, there are some very practical strategies that you can use if you would like to try change your behaviors to improve your sleep. As Steven Wright joked, we all make mistakes in our sleep related behaviors. This post will review some of the tools used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) to get started towards a more restful night tonight!

1. Retrain your mind and body for sleep.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. - Dale Carnegie

When we lie sleeplessly in bed our brain begins to associate bed with sleeplessness. Stimulus control therapy works to retrain your brain how to sleep. There are some guidelines you can follow on your own that can really help in this area. First, avoid using your bed for anything (ok almost anything!) except sleep. Secondly, if you are in bed awake for more than 20 minutes, get up and sit in a chair outside of the sleeping area and participate in a non-activating activity in low light. For example reading, crafting, or implementing a relaxation exercises. Try not to use anything with a screen.

Sleep Hygiene can also contribute to training your body to sleep. One healthy step towards this is to develop a nighttime ritual. Having a cup of tea (decaffeinated), taking a warm shower, stretching, changing into specific pajamas before bed can all help send messages to your brain that it is time to go to sleep.

2. Manage your stress and worry.

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. - Mahatma Gandhi

Stress and anxiety can create substantial barriers to sleep. Some tools that you can use during your day and near bedtime to reduce worry and stress are breathing exercises and muscle relaxation exercises. Both of these tools can help to reduce stress and induce relaxation which will help you prepare your body and mind to rest.

Worry time: Pick a scheduled time to worry and write your worries down. If you think of something during the rest of the day, tell yourself you will worry about that during your “worry time.” If you must, take a minute to write down your worry at that time.

Lastly, don’t look at the clock while sleeping! This can lead to increased pressure and worry about sleeping. I have had clients that go so far as to put the clock in another part of the room or put tape over the screen to avoid temptation.

3. Daily Activities and next steps

A well spent day brings happy sleep - Leonardo da Vinci

What you do during the day does affect the quality of your sleep. There is plenty of evidence that supports the fact that exercising during the day can help you sleep better. Also, napping during the day can negatively affect your nighttime sleep.

One of the main ideas of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia is the idea of “sleep efficiency” which basically means the proportion of time that you are actually asleep while in bed. In CBT-I you work with a therapist to help you create a “sleep debt” (a need to fall asleep) by allowing yourself less time (opportunity) to be in bed. This results in being tired while in bed and thus, eventually sleeping more.

Hopefully some of these tips will be helpful for you. Certainly a consultation with a clinician who has expertise in CBT-I can help you guide yourself to a night of restful sleep.

Sweet Dreams!

6 Ways Your Bedroom May Be Sabotaging Your Sleep

 

How to make your bedroom more conducive to sleep

Let’s face it: we all know that sometimes, getting ourselves (or our kids) into bed is only half the struggle when it comes to falling asleep. Lying there, or tossing and turning as the minutes turn into hours while sleep continues to eludes us can be really frustrating, and no help when the alarm goes off the next morning and we can barely get going.

There can be lots of reasons why people have difficulty falling or staying asleep, and I’ve addressed many of them in previous posts as well as in my book

One of them, often overlooked, is the quality of the sleep environment itself. Namely: how conducive your bedroom is to falling asleep.

Here are a number of things to look for in your, or your child’s bedroom, which may be interfering with your ability to fall asleep at night:

1. Too much light. Bright light, especially in the evening, has a very powerful awakening effect on the brain.

2. Make sure the bedroom lights are dim, or better yet turned off completely. If you read before going to bed, use a low-wattage lamp. If a night light is needed, use the lowest wattage you can find (no more than 7 watts) and make sure that the light it casts does not shine directly on the bed. In the summer months, when trying to go to sleep (or to put younger kids to bed) before the sun has set, consider using light-blocking shades or curtains.

3. Too many distractions. Televisions , computers, iPads, video games are problematic not only because of the light they case, but because of their content, which can rile up the brain just as you’re trying to calm it down.  And while falling asleep to soothing music can be very helpful to some, not all music is soothing. I’ve met teens with difficulty initiating sleep who never made the connection between the heavy metal they listened to in bed at night and why it was taking them so long to fall asleep.

4. Pets. Whether it’s a dog who snuggles up and leaves you little room to stretch out, or a cat that’s constantly moving about, your pet may be causing more of your sleep problems than you realize. If you’re not convinced, consider videotaping the bed one night and watching what happened over the course of the night.

5. Too much stress. Taking computers, homework, or work into bed is an especially big no-no, because it can generate stress that lingers even after the task is complete, and the computer turned off and the notebooks put away. It’s important to keep the bed for sleep (and sex, when appropriate), and not to allow negative associations to develop between the bed and unpleasant or stress-generating tasks which can then interfere with sleep.

6. Clocks. Even though the stress they produce is a direct continuation of point #4, they bear special mention. Nothing is more anxiety-producing than watching the minutes tick by as you lie in bed and can’t fall asleep. “Oh no, it’s been half an hour, and I’m still awake… Now it’s been thirty-five minutes and I still haven’t fallen asleep.” Most of us need an alarm to wake up in the morning, but that doesn’t mean that the clock has to face the bed. Move it out of arms-reach and out of sight. For example: put the clock on a dresser across the room and facing the wall. That will make it much less tempting to look at.

7. Noise.  Thin walls, snoring bed partners, or family members watching TV in the den can all make it harder to fall asleep. Sometimes this is easy to fix, but not always. If that’s the case, consider foam earplugs, or a fan or white noise machine to mask the sound

Good luck, and good night!

6 Ways Your Bedroom May Be Sabotaging Your Sleep

 

How to make your bedroom more conducive to sleep

Let’s face it: we all know that sometimes, getting ourselves (or our kids) into bed is only half the struggle when it comes to falling asleep. Lying there, or tossing and turning as the minutes turn into hours while sleep continues to eludes us can be really frustrating, and no help when the alarm goes off the next morning and we can barely get going.

There can be lots of reasons why people have difficulty falling or staying asleep, and I’ve addressed many of them in previous posts as well as in my book

One of them, often overlooked, is the quality of the sleep environment itself. Namely: how conducive your bedroom is to falling asleep.

Here are a number of things to look for in your, or your child’s bedroom, which may be interfering with your ability to fall asleep at night:

1. Too much light. Bright light, especially in the evening, has a very powerful awakening effect on the brain.
2. Make sure the bedroom lights are dim, or better yet turned off completely. If you read before going to bed, use a low-wattage lamp. If a night light is needed, use the lowest wattage you can find (no more than 7 watts) and make sure that the light it casts does not shine directly on the bed. In the summer months, when trying to go to sleep (or to put younger kids to bed) before the sun has set, consider using light-blocking shades or curtains.
3. Too many distractions. Televisions , computers, iPads, video games are problematic not only because of the light they case, but because of their content, which can rile up the brain just as you’re trying to calm it down.  And while falling asleep to soothing music can be very helpful to some, not all music is soothing. I’ve met teens with difficulty initiating sleep who never made the connection between the heavy metal they listened to in bed at night and why it was taking them so long to fall asleep.
4. Pets. Whether it’s a dog who snuggles up and leaves you little room to stretch out, or a cat that’s constantly moving about, your pet may be causing more of your sleep problems than you realize. If you’re not convinced, consider videotaping the bed one night and watching what happened over the course of the night.
5. Too much stress. Taking computers, homework, or work into bed is an especially big no-no, because it can generate stress that lingers even after the task is complete, and the computer turned off and the notebooks put away. It’s important to keep the bed for sleep (and sex, when appropriate), and not to allow negative associations to develop between the bed and unpleasant or stress-generating tasks which can then interfere with sleep.
6. Clocks. Even though the stress they produce is a direct continuation of point #4, they bear special mention. Nothing is more anxiety-producing than watching the minutes tick by as you lie in bed and can’t fall asleep. “Oh no, it’s been half an hour, and I’m still awake… Now it’s been thirty-five minutes and I still haven’t fallen asleep.” Most of us need an alarm to wake up in the morning, but that doesn’t mean that the clock has to face the bed. Move it out of arms-reach and out of sight. For example: put the clock on a dresser across the room and facing the wall. That will make it much less tempting to look at.
7. Noise.  Thin walls, snoring bed partners, or family members watching TV in the den can all make it harder to fall asleep. Sometimes this is easy to fix, but not always. If that’s the case, consider foam earplugs, or a fan or white noise machine to mask the sound

Good luck, and good night!

Dennis Rosen, M.D.

Help your child get a great night's sleep with the new book:

Successful Sleep Strategies for Kids (a Harvard Medical School Guide)

 

Three Tips for Better Sleep: Overcome your Insomnia

 

Published on October 15, 2013 by Jonathan Fader, Ph.D. in The New You

“When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, “Did you sleep good? I said “No, I made a few mistakes.” - Steven Wright

First, you are not alone. A shocking 50-70 million Americans have sleep difficulties of some kind. But not to worry, there are some very practical strategies that you can use if you would like to try change your behaviors to improve your sleep. As Steven Wright joked, we all make mistakes in our sleep related behaviors. This post will review some of the tools used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) to get started towards a more restful night tonight!

1. Retrain your mind and body for sleep.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. - Dale Carnegie

When we lie sleeplessly in bed our brain begins to associate bed with sleeplessness. Stimulus control therapy works to retrain your brain how to sleep. There are some guidelines you can follow on your own that can really help in this area. First, avoid using your bed for anything (ok almost anything!) except sleep. Secondly, if you are in bed awake for more than 20 minutes, get up and sit in a chair outside of the sleeping area and participate in a non-activating activity in low light. For example reading, crafting, or implementing a relaxation exercises. Try not to use anything with a screen.

Sleep Hygiene can also contribute to training your body to sleep. One healthy step towards this is to develop a nighttime ritual. Having a cup of tea (decaffeinated), taking a warm shower, stretching, changing into specific pajamas before bed can all help send messages to your brain that it is time to go to sleep.

2. Manage your stress and worry.

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. - Mahatma Gandhi

Stress and anxiety can create substantial barriers to sleep. Some tools that you can use during your day and near bedtime to reduce worry and stress are breathing exercises and muscle relaxation exercises. Both of these tools can help to reduce stress and induce relaxation which will help you prepare your body and mind to rest.

Worry time: Pick a scheduled time to worry and write your worries down. If you think of something during the rest of the day, tell yourself you will worry about that during your “worry time.” If you must, take a minute to write down your worry at that time.

Lastly, don’t look at the clock while sleeping! This can lead to increased pressure and worry about sleeping. I have had clients that go so far as to put the clock in another part of the room or put tape over the screen to avoid temptation.

3. Daily Activities and next steps

A well spent day brings happy sleep - Leonardo da Vinci

What you do during the day does affect the quality of your sleep. There is plenty of evidence that supports the fact that exercising during the day can help you sleep better. Also, napping during the day can negatively affect your nighttime sleep.

One of the main ideas of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia is the idea of “sleep efficiency” which basically means the proportion of time that you are actually asleep while in bed. In CBT-I you work with a therapist to help you create a “sleep debt” (a need to fall asleep) by allowing yourself less time (opportunity) to be in bed. This results in being tired while in bed and thus, eventually sleeping more.

Hopefully some of these tips will be helpful for you. Certainly a consultation with a clinician who has expertise in CBT-I can help you guide yourself to a night of restful sleep.

Sweet Dreams!

Follow Dr. Fader on Twitter @drfader

 

How Is Your Sleep Health?

 

Just because you don’t have insomnia doesn’t mean sleep's doing its job for you.

When you come across yet another magazine piece about sleep disorders, you pass it by. You know lots of people who have sleep problems—but as far as you’re concerned, you don’t. You don’t lie awake for hours hoping for some shut-eye, or wake up in the middle of the night, or find it really hard to sleep on a schedule that works with the rest of your life.

Great! Congratulations! But…

Not having a particular problem is not at all the same thing as being healthy. We know that when it comes to our general health, just because you're not in bad shape physically doesn’t mean you're in good shape. Good is at least one or two steps beyond so-so or okay. That’s true for health, it’s true for diet, it’s true for energy level and mood. And it’s definitely true for sleep.

This point is brought home in a recent issue of the scientific journal Sleep. The author is Daniel Buysse, MD, a top authority in the field of sleep medicine. He raises the point that sleep medicine—a field that goes back at least 30 years—has focused on disorders, diseases, and their treatment. Of course this effort has been momentous, as anyone who has tried to deal with a sleep problem will gratefully agree. But what is needed in addition is a positive frame of reference that gives us a way to know how well we are doing.

KEYS TO HEALTHY SLEEP

What makes for a healthy sleep pattern, one that reinforces good general health? Dr. Buysse suggests that five simple questions can give you a sense of where you stand:

• Do you fall asleep easily and get back to sleep easily if something wakes you during the night?
• Do you sleep between six and eight hours a night?
• Do you stay awake and alert during your waking day, without dozing?
• Is your sleep schedule appropriate to your lifestyle (for most of us, this means sleeping during the nighttime)?
• Do you feel you typically get a “good night’s sleep”?

Researchers can get objective answers to most of these questions by observing someone in a sleep lab. But as a rule, that isn’t really necessary. Practically all of us are able to say whether our personal answer to each question is Rarely/Never, Sometimes, or Usually/Always. And that is enough to give us a general idea of our current state of sleep health, but most importantly, a target to aim for—being able to say Usually to every question.

If you fall short of that, like so many of us, what can you do about it? To answer that question, we need to understand something of the basics of sleep itself.

MECHANISMS OF ACTION

The most widely accepted physiological understanding of sleep involves the joint action of two independent brain processes. We want them both to be in sync. The first is sleep pressure. From the moment we wake up, our bodies start building up a need to sleep again. Once we do go to sleep, this need starts to recede. The second process is the circadian cycle, which rises and falls across the twenty-four hour day, under the control of the inner clock. When these two reinforce each other, the result is healthy sleep. But the more they come into conflict, the more our sleep health declines.

The good news is that both sleep pressure and the circadian cycle can be brought under our control. Getting on a regular sleep/wake schedule helps ensure that sleep pressure builds to its high point at bedtime. We detail the ways to adjust the circadian cycle in our paperback guide, Reset Your Inner Clock. For example, if you expose yourself to bright light during the hours shortly before bedtime, it can overwhelm the clock’s sleep signal and make it harder to fall asleep. But if you cut down on light exposure—and especially light in the blue-ish part of the spectrum—you can avoid this interference. Holding back on television and computer use during the evening hours is one simple but effective step toward sleep health. How you arrange your nighttime and morning environment is just as important. Put together the ingredients, and you can rate yourself Usually—or even Always—on the positive side of the sleep equation.

Michael and Ian are co-authors of the 2013 Penguin paperback, Reset Your Inner Clock. They invite you to follow them on Twitter for news updates, opinions, and challenging Q-and-A’s. If you want to stay on top of body-clock matters, light therapy, and more — and take advantage of confidential, online self-assessments of inner clock time, depression, and seasonality — you should become part of the nonprofit Center for Environmental Therapeutics community. Email PTuser@cet.org so we can stay in contact.