How to Restart a Sleep Cycle

Posted on October 14, 2020 by resourcefulman

Nothing replaces a good night’s sleep, so instead of discussing how we can get by with less sleep, we’re going to help you reset your sleep habits so you get the sleep you need (and deserve).

Who wouldn’t want to sleep more? We live in a 24/7 world where our work can continue after dark and begin before sunrise. Even when we’re done with work, there is a million and one needs and one distraction that keeps us awake in the wee hours of the night and prevents us from getting a good night’s sleep. This guide aims to help you get your sleep cycle back in order and start getting the rest you need. It’s long, so here’s a quick outline if you want to jump straight to any section:

Before we continue, a few words must be said. First, sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor. It’s a very American / Protestant work attitude – thinking that being so busy and stretched out that you have to stay awake is something to be proud of. If you insist that body abuse and sleep deprivation is a virtue and a necessary part of a working adult, then you are not in the mood to take this advice personally. Lack of sleep is sometimes an annoying necessity, but it shouldn’t be taken as a lifestyle or a source of pride. (You certainly wouldn’t brag to your friends about how well you are malnourishing yourself.)

Second, if you’ve read this guide, listened to the advice, and still haven’t noticed any positive changes in your sleep patterns, you may well need to see your doctor. There are many medical reasons why you may not sleep well, including things like sleep apnea . Conditions that prevent you from sleeping slowly shorten your life by years and reduce the quality of life of those who stay with you. If you suspect you have a sleep disorder, talk to your doctor and see a sleep specialist.

Finally, there is no clue in this guide that I have not personally used. I was a student, parent, educator, writer, and for one terrible year did all this in addition to 12 hour graveyard shifts. have not experienced. Sleep deprivation is cruel, and I hope that whether you put off an hour of sleep a day or eight of them, you will take away a few things from this guide that will help get things back to normal.

The consequences of lack of sleep

An important part of regaining sleep control is understanding the negative consequences of not getting enough sleep. Your body is a complex machine that has evolved over millions of years to its present state. Our modern culture of coffee-swallowing, working-forward-forwarding, working until dawn and collapse has existed for only a tiny fraction of human history. We haven’t adapted to less sleep, and we probably aren’t going to adapt anytime soon. Today you need to sleep as much as your greatest great-grandfather needs in 2010 BC.

What happens if you don’t get enough sleep? Everyone knows the common side effects such as fatigue the next day, muscle aches and general irritability. Not getting enough sleep also has many side effects that may not be as easy to spot as yawning or arrogance. Lack of sleep increases the risk of heart disease, impairs memory retention, increases the risk of diabetes and obesity (adequate sleep is required for proper glucose handling and insulin regulation), increases the risk of depression and other mental illness, and the list goes on. Lack of sleep can have the same consequences as being completely drunk . Most people disapprove of someone who comes to work every day drunk, but we often act like sleep deprivation is just what it should be.

Sleep is an important part of your day-to-day body care, and depriving yourself of it is like starting your car without downtime for preventive maintenance and repair. It is possible, but over time something breaks down, and sometimes catastrophically.

Short Term Recovery: Returning the ship to a course before it crashed.

Let’s get rid of the big misconception: you don’t have a sleep bank. If you’ve been chronically sleep deprived in the past year, you can’t fill up some sleep reservoir in your belly to start feeling normal again. You can start doing things today to help you sleep better and start feeling better right away. To heal the effects of sleep deprivation, it takes weeks of constant and restful sleep. But don’t despair, you don’t need to “sleep” all 1498 hours of sleep that you have reduced over the past year.

Another misconception is the amount of sleep people need. In fact, the best person who can estimate the amount of sleep you need to be happy and alert is you. Year after year, studies appear that say that a certain number of hours is better: eight hours to feel as refreshed as possible, seven hours to live long, six hours and you will die young, but sometimes the best specialist is how you feel. Let’s get back to the topic of how much sleep you need and how to measure it in a moment; right now, let’s focus on what you can do tonight.

Practice good sleep hygiene

Sleep hygiene is similar to personal hygiene at the end of the day. Just like washing your face and brushing your teeth before bed, sleep hygiene is a general term that encompasses all the activities you do before bed that help or interfere with restful sleep.

Good sleep hygiene involves preparing your body for a good night’s sleep, rather than overstimulating it just before bed. How to maintain proper sleep hygiene? Start by changing your perspective on what bedtime and sleep are. Sleep time is not just a moment when you faint from hard work and stay up late; Sleep time is the beginning of a period of time that is very important for your body. You need good sleep and you need to treat sleep with due respect.

Don’t drink anything with caffeine after lunch.

Depending on age, gender, and other physiological factors, the half-life of caffeine in the body is approximately five to 10 hours. In other words, the cup of coffee you drank at 7:00 pm stayed with you at midnight. Nicotine is another common stimulant; you should quit smoking or smoke your last cigarette the day before bed.

Don’t drink alcohol before bed.

Alcohol is a depressant and will help you fall asleep, the problem is that it depresses everything in your system, including your metabolism. Alcoholics report dreaming because alcohol disrupts REM sleep, a critical phase of sleep for both brain and body health.

Step away from the screens

If the screen lights up before going to bed, you will not be able to fall asleep . Your body is programmed to wake up in bright light and fall asleep when dark. If you shine a bright light on your face before bed, you are telling your body to cheer up and stay alert. If you absolutely need to use a computer or mobile device during the day, at least turn down the screen brightness to compensate for some of the light effect.

Change your body temperature

When you fall asleep, your body temperature drops. You can trick your body into simulating this temperature shift. During colder months, take a hot shower or bath at the end of the day, as your body temperature will rise and then drop again as you cool off after a shower, which helps you sleep. This is more difficult in warm weather, but you can replace the hot shower with a cold one. While a cold shower is terribly unpleasant – and trust me, it’s not nearly as fun as a hot bath on a winter night – it also induces temperature fluctuations that can cause drowsiness.

Minimize external distractions

As you gradually transition to a new sleep pattern, it is especially important to minimize external distractions. Do you have a cat that jumps on the bed at 3 am? Throw them out of the bedroom before bed. Does a neighbor start his diesel truck at 4 in the morning for work? Wear ear plugs. Does your spouse stand in front of you and turn on the light to get dressed? Sleep with a sleep mask – it’s incredibly comfortable .

Avoid Dozing While Dumping

Later, when you sort out the details of your sleep cycle, you may find that light naps early in the day are great for you. However, right now we are focused on rebooting your sleep cycle, which means limiting daytime sleep. You need to go to bed at the end of the day when you are tired, not later because you took too long naps.

Clean up your bedroom

No computers, TV, balancing a checkbook in bed, reading those damn TPS reports … make sleep a priority. If you have a TV in your bedroom that you rarely turn on, don’t break your back by dragging it into the basement, but if you’re a chronic fan of bedroom channels, consider removing it from the room. Your bedroom should be the place your body associates with sleep.

Do not torture yourself

You didn’t drink coffee, turned off your computer at 7:00 pm, dragged the TV into the basement, put in earplugs and closed the curtains, but it’s 11:00 pm and you’re still tossing and turning. Don’t torture yourself disappointed in bed. Get out of bed and do something to relax you. Don’t watch TV, play video games, or anything else that makes your brain think it’s time to wake up. Sit in a comfortable chair and read a book for a while. Sort the magazines that are going to be thrown into the trash can. Do something calm and relatively boring for 20-30 minutes and then lie down again. You shouldn’t get used to thinking that bedtime is unpleasant and stressful.

Your initial energy should be focused on getting to bed pleasantly, getting ready for bed well before this hour, and limiting stimulatory activities (exercise, drinking coffee, watching action movies) earlier in the day. You need to start doing this now. Reading this at 5:00 pm after returning from work? Put on a cup of coffee now. Stop telling yourself that you are going to finally get a good night’s sleep and start it.

Long-term recovery: charting the right course

A good dream is not accidental. This may seem counterintuitive as sleep seems to be the most passive sport, but preparation is key. Once you’ve started with the basics outlined above, it’s time to take a serious look at the big picture of your sleep needs and assess how effective these strategies are in ensuring you get enough sleep.

Analyze your need for sleep

Do you know how much sleep you really need? Could you tell someone with confidence that you are happiest after seven hours of sleep? Do you wake up when the alarm goes off, or do you wake up earlier and turn it off when you get out of bed? There is only one good way to know how much sleep you need is to go to bed earlier than you think you need to. Increase your bedtime by 15 minutes every few days until you wake up on your own in the morning. When you start waking up consistently before your alarm – at least one week, including weekends – you’ve found the optimal sleep window.

Waking up shouldn’t be an unpleasant experience when you poke your finger at the alarm clock and growl. I wake up before my alarm clock and let me tell you how great it is to wake up on your own and not to the sound of a buzzer. To “beat” the alarm clock every day is like a small victory right out of bed.

Follow a daily routine

I cannot tell you what your ideal daily routine is. Maybe you forbid coffee after 3:00 pm, dim the lights around your apartment at 7:00 pm, and read in bed for 20 minutes at 9:00 pm before the lights go out – or maybe that’s something else entirely. The important thing is that you find a routine that suits your schedule and stick to it. You may not be seven years old, but your adult body values routine sleep as much as it did as a child. Whichever routine you choose, stick with it long enough to see if it works, and carefully tweak it one at a time if it doesn’t.

Anticipate lack of sleep

Sometimes sleep deprivation is inevitable one hundred percent – someone in your family gets into an accident and you stay awake all night in the hospital, or you get caught in the snow at the airport and you just can’t sleep well on a plastic bench – but most of the time we we see the approach of an event that will interrupt our sleep cycle. If you know you are going to get up late, take an afternoon nap. If you end up drinking late at night, be sure to adjust your bedtime the next day so you can go to bed earlier. Short-term sleep deprivation can be quickly corrected with adequate rest. Don’t let a wild weekend disrupt your sleep schedule until the end of the month before you recalibrate it.

You don’t have to tell me how difficult it is to get your sleep schedule back on track. After the third shift, I wondered if I would ever stop feeling like a zombie and start feeling like a normal person again. It’s hard to do and easy to screw up. Take the advice above to heart, however, and you’ll sleep soundly, wake up refreshed, and wonder how you’ve gotten away with just caffeine and sand.

This post was originally published in 2010 and was updated on October 14, 2020 in line with Lifehacker’s style guidelines.

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