Category: Sleep

Follow these simple tips from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Having a regular sleep schedule, bedtime routine and prioritising sleep, all help people sleep better, scientists have found.

The advice is based on recommendations by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

1. Regular sleep schedule

Go to bed at night and rise in the morning at roughly the same times.

Keep this routine though the weekend — don’t be tempted to sleep in to ‘catch up’.

Dr Paruthi, an expert on treating sleep problems, explained:

“People who sleep in on a Sunday morning may not be sleepy by their usual bedtime on Sunday evening, which can make waking up on Monday difficult.

This can throw off the week’s schedule.

When possible, it is best to try to get to bed and get up at same time (at least within an hour) seven days a week.”

2. Bedtime routine

The body and brain need time to wind down before bed.

Going through the same procedure in the run-up to lights-out will help you sleep better.

Dr Paruthi said:

“Even a 10-minute routine where you do the same things each night to prepare yourself for going to bed is a good idea.

Our brains need a wind-down period to go from ‘on’ to ‘sleep time.”

3. Prioritise sleep

Try setting your alarm clock for 30 minutes before bedtime, not just when you get up in the morning.

Dr Paruthi said:

“If you know you have to get up at 6 a.m. the next day, set your alarm clock in the evening for 9:30 p.m.

That alerts you that you have a half hour before you need to go to bed and you can begin to wind down.”

Screen-free zone

Finally, turn the bedroom into a screen-free zone, Dr Paruthi said:

 “We are so ‘go, go, go’ that people are on all the time now.

There have been studies showing that the light emitted from electronic devices decreases the release of melatonin, a hormone that helps us feel sleepy.”

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The tips are based on recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

People feeling this emotion awakened more in the night.

Feeling lonely is linked to worse sleep, although people do not realise it.

People who feel lonely tend to wake more in the night, leading to less refreshing sleep.

To sleep well, people need to feel secure in their social environment.

Loneliness, unfortunately, makes people feel less safe, as we are a social species who rely on each other.

Dr  Lianne Kurina, the study’s first author, said:

“It’s not just a product of very lonely individuals having poor sleep.

The relationship between loneliness and restless sleep appears to operate across the range of perceived connectedness.”

The study included 95 people living in a small community in South Dakota.

None of the people in the study were socially isolated, although they felt differing levels of loneliness.

The results showed that people who were more lonely slept the same length of time, but had more fragmented sleep.

However, people did not realise they were sleeping worse themselves.

Objective measures of their movements during the night, though, revealed that people who felt more lonely were more restless.

Dr Kurina said:

“Loneliness has been associated with adverse effects on health.

We wanted to explore one potential pathway for this, the theory that sleep — a key behavior to staying healthy — could be compromised by feelings of loneliness.

What we found was that loneliness does not appear to change the total amount of sleep in individuals, but awakens them more times during the night.”

A previous study on college student found the same link between loneliness and worse sleep.

Dr Kurina said:

“Whether you’re a young student at a major university or an older adult living in a rural community, we may all be dependent on feeling secure in our social environment in order to sleep soundly.

The results from these studies could further our understanding of how social and psychological factors ‘get under the skin’ and affect health.”

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The study was published in the journal Sleep (Kurina et al., 2011).