Category: Sleep

Insomnia glasses research finds that 90% of Americans use light-emitting devices like smartphones and laptops before going to bed.

Wearing amber-tinted insomnia glasses for two hours before bedtime improves sleep, research finds.

The reason is that they block out blue light.

Too much blue light before bedtime — like that produced by smartphones — suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin and increases alertness.

Dr Ari Shechter, who led the study, said:

“Now more than ever we are exposing ourselves to high amounts of blue light before bedtime, which may contribute to or exacerbate sleep problems.

Amber lenses are affordable and they can easily be combined with other established cognitive and behavioral techniques for insomnia management.”

Insomnia glasses research

For the study, 14 people with insomnia wore either wrap-around amber-tinted glasses for two hours before bedtime or glasses with clear plastic.

A month later they swapped over, so that everyone had tried both pairs of glasses for a week.

Dr Shechter said:

“The glasses approach allows us to filter out blue-wavelength light from all these sources, which might be particularly useful for individuals with sleep difficulties.”

The results showed that when wearing the insomnia glasses people had, on average, 30 minutes more sleep than when wearing the clear plastic glasses.

Better sleep quality and a reduction in insomnia severity were also reported when wearing the insomnia glasses.

Some smartphones can be adjusted to emit amber, instead of blue light, Dr Shechter said:

 “I do recommend using the amber setting on smartphones at night, in addition to manually reducing the brightness levels.

But blue light does not only come from our phones.

It is emitted from televisions, computers, and importantly, from many light bulbs and other LED light sources that are increasingly used in our homes because they are energy-efficient and cost-effective.”

The amber insomnia glasses also reduced people’s blood pressure.

Dr Shechter said:

“Insomnia is often characterized by physiologic hyperarousal, which may account for the relationship between poor sleep and cardiovascular risk.

Going forward, it will be interesting to examine whether this blue-light blocking approach can be useful for improving cardiovascular outcomes like hypertension in individuals with poor sleep.”

The study was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research (Shechter et al., 2017).

Why we feel zoned out or spaced out when tired — it’s because of sleep deprivation’s effect on neurons.

The reason we feel zoned out or spaced out when tired is that sleep deprivation disrupts communication between brain cells, research finds.

These disruptions can lead to temporary lapses in memory and even hallucinations.

This helps to explain why sleep deprivation leaves people feeling so spaced out.

Professor Itzhak Fried, who led the study, said:

“We discovered that starving the body of sleep also robs neurons of the ability to function properly.

This paves the way for cognitive lapses in how we perceive and react to the world around us.”

Research on being zoned out

The study was carried out on patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains prior to surgery for epilepsy.

The results showed that as they became more sleepy — zoned out or spaced out — the communication between their brain cells slowed down.

This caused a decrease in their reactions to cognitive tests.

Dr. Yuval Nir, the study’s first author, said:

“We were fascinated to observe how sleep deprivation dampened brain cell activity.

Unlike the usual rapid reaction, the neurons responded slowly, fired more weakly and their transmissions dragged on longer than usual.”

Not only did cellular communication slow down, so did overall brain wave activity.

Professor Fried said:

“Slow sleep-like waves disrupted the patients’ brain activity and performance of tasks.

This phenomenon suggests that select regions of the patients’ brains were dozing, causing mental lapses, while the rest of the brain was awake and running as usual.”

Sleep deprivation has been linked to depression, obesity, heart attacks strokes and diabetes.

Professor Fried said:

“Inadequate sleep exerts a similar influence on our brain as drinking too much.

Yet no legal or medical standards exist for identifying over-tired drivers on the road the same way we target drunk drivers.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine (Nir et al., 2017).

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.”

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

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Currently, the best supported physiological reason for yawning is that it helps cool the brain down.

Although many people think that yawning results from boredom or tiredness, yawing has long remained a mystery to scientists.

It is certainly true that people do yawn more at bedtime or after they’ve woken up and they do yawn when they’re bored (people even yawn in their sleep).

However, yawning isn’t that simple.

If it was, how could you explain that some paratroopers yawn before their first jump, as do some violinists before they go on stage and Olympic athletes before their event (Provine, 2005)?

These are hardly situations in which people are likely to be bored.

Many people believe that yawning gets more oxygen into the body or expels more carbon dioxide.

But that is also not true.

The theory is now thought to be seriously flawed, if not plain wrong.

The truth is no one really knows the real root cause of a yawn.

Some good guesses have been made, though, and it’s likely that some combination of them is true.

First let’s look at the physiological, before we get onto the psychological.

Yawning cools the brain

Currently, the best supported physiological reason for yawning is that it might help cool the brain down (Gallup & Gallup, 2007).

Our brains work best within a narrow temperature range and yawning increases blood flow to the brain which acts like a radiator to move heat away from it.

The evidence comes from a study by American researchers along with colleagues from the University of Vienna (Massen et al., 2014).

To try and solve the mystery, they began observing people’s spontaneous yawns in both hot and cold climates.

They decided on Vienna in Austria and Tucson, Arizona in the US.

Using these two cities means you can see when people yawn in a wide range of temperatures, from around the freezing point in the winter in Vienna, up to 37°C (98°F) in Tucson in the summer.

The theory goes that people should yawn more when the ambient temperature is around 20°C (68°F).

This is because when it’s cold, we don’t need to cool our brains down.

When it’s very hot, yawning is likely to be ineffective in cooling our brains because it’s so hot outside.

And, sure enough, that’s what they observed:

• People yawned more when the temperature was around 20°C (68°F) — this included contagious yawning, where one person sets off other people’s yawns.
• People yawned less when the temperature dropped towards freezing and less when it soared up to 37°C (98°F) in the Arizona summer.

This pattern could also be seen across the seasons in the two cities:

• People in Tucson yawned more in the winter than the summer (because winters there are closer to 20°C (68°F)).
• People in Vienna yawned more in the summer than the winter (because summers there are closer to 20°C (68°F)).

Yawning, then, is highly beneficial in that it can help bring the brain back into the correct temperature range.

When the brain is at the right temperature, it operates more efficiently, helping us to think faster.

This may also help explain why yawning is contagious: way back in our evolutionary history, a more alert group would have been better able to think its way out of dangerous situations.

Oddly, this may help explain the paratroopers jumping out of a plane.

When you’re about to do something stressful you need your wits about you so yawning may help put your brain into tip-top working order.

Yawning may also partly be about stretching muscles since yawning sets off the urge to stretch.

After stretching we’re ready to act, say by running away from a predator.

Yawning is contagious

It’s well-known that yawns are contagious.

Just by reading about them here, you’re more likely to start yawning.

In fact, I can feel a yawn coming on now.

Yawns are most contagious between members of the same family, followed by friends, acquaintances and lastly strangers (Norsica et al., 2011).

But not everyone is susceptible to the yawning contagion.

People who are particular empathic seem sensitive to other people yawning.

So, test a friend’s empathic ability by yawning to see if they follow suit (Platek et al., 2003).

At the other end of the spectrum, people with psychopathic tendencies are less prone to ‘contagious yawning’ (Rundle et al., 2015).

Psychopaths are selfish, manipulative, fearless, domineering and, critically, lack empathy.

The contagious yawning test, though, is far from a fool proof test of psychopathic tendencies, explains Dr Brian Rundle, the study’s first author:

“The take-home lesson is not that if you yawn and someone else doesn’t, the other person is a psychopath.

A lot of people didn’t yawn, and we know that we’re not very likely to yawn in response to a stranger we don’t have empathetic connections with.

But what we found tells us there is a neurological connection — some overlap — between psychopathy and contagious yawning.”

Why yawning is contagious

But why is yawning contagious in the first place?

It could just be that we copy each other’s yawning for the same reason we copy other aspects of their body language: to fit in and be liked (see: the Chameleon Effect).

But it could also be that the yawn is a social signal to stay alert even though things are boring at the moment.

The yawn might help to increase alertness and so keep our hunter-gatherer forebears alive for a little longer.

Or finally it could just be a way of signalling to others that we’re relaxed in stressful situations.

Despite being about to jump out of an aeroplane at 5,000 feet, give a virtuoso performance to a packed concert hall or win Olympic gold, frankly we’re just not that bothered.

How to stop yawning

Finally, how might you combat a monster attack of the yawns?

A couple of clues come from a case study of two patients suffering from chronic attacks of yawning (Gallup & Gallup, 2010).

Neither patients were regularly tired or were having problems with their sleep.

They both found that applying a cold cloth to their foreheads or nasal breathing stopped their symptoms.

They both had problems regulating their body temperature so the hot brain theory of yawning might have something to it.

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Research on how to fall asleep fast reveals the power of Stimulus Control Therapy and 11 other methods for getting to sleep fast.

How to fall asleep fast is a common problem.

With 30 percent of adults reporting short-term sleep issues, you’re not alone.

In surveys of what would improve people’s lives, how to fall asleep fast comes near the top of the list.

Poor sleep results in worse cognitive performance, including degraded memory, attention, performance and alertness.

Naturally, many people want to know how to go to sleep fast.

And in the long term insomnia is also associated with anxiety and depression.

And people’s sleep gets worse as they get older.

After 65 years old, between 12% and 40% of people have insomnia which makes it more important to know how to fall asleep fast.

All sorts of methods have been tried for how to fall asleep fast, from drugs through psychological remedies to more outlandish treatments.

The problem with drugs is that they have side-effects and are often addictive.

The problem with the more outlandish treatments is that although they tend not to have side-effects, we don’t know if they have any effect at all.

Psychological remedies, though, combine the best of both worlds: studies show they work without side-effects.

How to fall asleep fast

Professor Richard R. Bootzin has been researching how to fall asleep fast and sleep disorders for many years at the University of Arizona Sleep Research Lab.

Writing in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, he describes the different psychological approaches that have been used to treat insomnia and learn how to fall asleep fast (Bootzin & Epstein, 2011).

Of these the most successful single intervention is called Stimulus Control Therapy (Morin et al., 2006).

You’ll be happy to hear it consists of six very straightforward steps.

If you follow these steps for how to fall asleep fast it should improve your sleep.

After the list I’ll explain the thinking behind them.

First, here are their six steps:

1. Lie down to go to sleep only when you are sleepy.
2. Do not use your bed for anything except sleep; that is, do not read, watch television, eat, or worry in bed. Sexual activity is the only exception to this rule. On such occasions, the instructions are to be followed afterwards, when you intend to go to sleep.
3. If you find yourself unable to fall asleep, get up and go into another room. Stay up as long as you wish and then return to the bedroom to sleep. Although we do not want you to watch the clock, we want you to get out of bed if you do not fall asleep immediately. Remember the goal is to associate your bed with falling asleep quickly! If you are in bed more than about 10 minutes without falling asleep and have not gotten up, you are not following this instruction.
4. If you still cannot fall asleep, repeat step 3. Do this as often as is necessary throughout the night.
5. Set your alarm and get up at the same time every morning irrespective of how much sleep you got during the night. This will help your body acquire a consistent sleep rhythm.
6. Do not nap during the day.

Why it helps you go to sleep fast

This method is based on the idea that we are like Pavlov’s drooling dog.

We attach certain stimuli in the environment to certain thoughts and behaviours.

Famously Pavlov’s dogs would start drooling when a bell rang, because they associated hearing the bell with getting food.

Eventually the dogs would drool at the sound of the bell even when they didn’t get any food.

Replace the bell with a bed and food with sleep and conceptually you’re there.

If we learn to do all kinds of things in bed that aren’t sleep, then when we do want to use it for sleep, it’s harder because of those other associations.

This is just as true of thoughts as it is of actions.

It’s important to avoid watching TV in bed, but it’s also important to avoid lying in bed worrying about not being able to get to sleep.

Because then you learn to associate bed with worry.

Worse, you suffer anticipatory anxiety: anxiety about the anxiety you’ll feel when you are trying to get to sleep.

So, this therapy for how to fall asleep fast works by strengthening the association between bed and sleep and weakening the association between bed and everything else (apart from sex!).

Other ways to fall asleep fast

Stimulus control therapy is not the only way to fall asleep fast, although it is one of the best.

Here are 11 further ways to help you get to sleep fast.

1. Cognitive-behavioural therapy for sleep

Cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia is the best treatment for people suffering from chronic insomnia, advises the American College of Physicians (ACP).

Chronic insomnia is usually defined as having disturbed sleep on at least three nights per week over three months.

In one study, three-quarters of patients with acute insomnia were cured by a 60-minute cognitive-behavioural therapy session.

2. How to fall asleep fast: medication

Many people take medication in order to help them fall asleep faster.

Common drugs used to try and improve sleep include the so-called Z-drugs, such as zolpidem, zaleplon and eszopiclone.

Clinical trials do indeed suggest that many of the drugs work in the short-term: over a period of less than six months.

However, taking sleep medication in the long-term fails to improve sleep, one study has found.

It is better to find a long-term solution to insomnia rather than taking drugs.

3. Fall asleep faster after a bath

Having a bath or shower around 90 minutes before bedtime leads to the best sleep, research finds.

Bathing before bedtime is linked to falling asleep faster, sleeping for longer and sleeping more efficiently, studies show.

The best temperature for the bath or shower is between 104 and 109 degrees Fahrenheit (40-43 degrees celsius).

4. Digital detox

Digital devices have become the scourge of sleep and a huge barrier to how to fall asleep fast.

Follow some simple digital detox rules to improve your sleep:

• Avoid screens before bedtime: Do not use any screens in the 90 minutes before bed.
• Reduce exposure to blue light in the evening. Blue light is bad for sleep.
• Set the phone to “airplane mode”.
• Phone out of easy reach.
• Curb usage in general.
• Reward yourself for following these digital detox rules.

5. How to fall asleep fast: write a to-do list

Writing a to-do list for the next day before bedtime helps people fall asleep faster, new research finds.

The more specific the list, the faster people fall asleep.

It may be because writing down worries helps to offload them from memory and leave the mind more relaxed for sleep

6. Progressive muscle relaxation

Progressive muscle relaxation involves mentally going around the muscle groups in your body, first tensing then relaxing each one.

It’s as simple as that.

And with practice it becomes easier to spot when you are becoming anxious and muscles are becoming tense as, oddly, people often don’t notice the first physical signs of anxiety.

This is based on the idea that the mind follows body.

When you relax your body, the mind also clears.

7. How to fall asleep fast: paradoxical intention

Paradoxical intention is the idea that giving up on trying so hard to get to sleep actually helps people sleep.

The paradox being that when people stop trying so hard, they find it easier to fall asleep.

While the research is mixed, it may be beneficial and worth trying.

8. Spend less time in bed

Spending less time in bed helps fight insomnia.

Researchers followed people’s sleeping habits over a year to see how short-term sleeping problems either resolved themselves or became chronic.

They concluded that 70 to 80 per cent of short-term insomnia could be nipped in the bud by spending less time in bed.

9. How to fall asleep fast: change diet

Eating more fibre along with less sugar and less saturated fat has been linked to better sleep.

The more fibre people in the study ate, the longer they spent in the most restorative phase of sleep, called ‘slow wave’ or deep sleep that night.

Lower sugar intake was linked to fewer arousals from sleep during the night.

High-protein diets have also been linked to better sleep as have prebiotics and certain vitamin deficiencies.

In contrast, people who eat a lot of refined carbs — in particular added sugar —  are more likely to experience insomnia.

10. Nature

Many people sleep better when they have access to nature.

It could be an ocean view, a green space nearby or any natural surroundings.

People over-65 and men of all ages slept better when they had access to nature, the research found.

11. How to fall asleep fast: exercise

Activities like aerobics, biking, gardening, golfing, running, weight-lifting, and yoga or Pilates are associated with better sleep habits, research finds.

Even people who just walk have healthier sleep habits than those that do not.

It is better for sleep habits, though, to add a slightly more vigorous activity than just walking.

It might not feel like exercise is helping, but research suggests this is a perfectly normal reaction.

In fact exercise helps people fall asleep quicker and enjoy deeper sleep.

Final word on how to fall asleep fast

All this assumes you don’t live next door to a late night drummer and you’re not downing a double espresso before hitting the sack, but those sorts of things are pretty obvious.

Everything else being equal, though, Stimulus Control Therapy seems the easiest for most people to implement.

→ Related: Discover the best science-backed relaxation techniques.

Sleep deprivation symptoms at the extreme can include paranoia, hallucinations, moodiness and a whole host of psychological problems.

Sleep deprivation symptoms include poor memory, reduced attention span, lack of energy and slowed thinking.

On top of that, a lack of sleep feels horrible.

But that didn’t stop American Randy Gardner testing the limits of sleep deprivation in December 1963/January 1964.

Gardner holds the record for the longest ever scientifically documented intentional period of sleep deprivation.

Without the aid of stimulants, he managed to stay awake for 264.4 hours, or 11 days and 24 minutes.

Part of his motivation was to show that sleep deprivation symptoms are not that bad.

He was wrong: sleep deprivation symptoms are awful.

In fact he suffered paranoia, hallucinations, moodiness and a whole host of psychological problems, many described below.

It’s just he did not notice many of the problems: that’s how sleep deprivation symptoms from lack of sleep get you.

Here are 10 of the most profound sleep deprivation symptoms, on top of the fact that lack of sleep feels horrible.

1. Brains lacking sleep work harder

Since brains that are sleep deprived aren’t as efficient, they have to work harder.

This has been demonstrated in brain imaging studies which show the brains of the sleep deprived desperately pumping energy into the prefrontal cortex, trying to overcome the sleep deprivation symptoms.

2. Sleep deprivation ruins short-term memory

A poor memory is a common sign of sleep deprivation.

Lack of sleep causes sharp decrements in working memory.

Without short-term memory a person can’t even hold a few digits of a telephone number in their mind, let alone perform any complex tasks.

That’s why, when you’re sleep deprived, you keep going around in circles.

On day 11 of his sleep record, Randy Gardner was asked to repeatedly subtract 7 from 100. He stopped at 65 saying he had no idea what he was doing.

That is how badly sleep deprivation symptoms get you.

3. Lack of sleep impairs long-term memory

Poor long-term memory is another sleep deprivation symptoms because sleep plays an important role in consolidating memories.

While we sleep, our brain orders, integrates and makes sense of things that have happened to us.

Not only that, but we seem to consolidate our learning while we sleep.

Lack of sleep badly disrupts this process, meaning it’s difficult to lay down long-term memories and it’s harder to learn new skills.

4. Sleep deprivation breaks attention

At our best, humans have incredible powers of attention: we can distinguish one voice from many, track small, moving objects in a sea of visually distracting information and more.

Sleep deprivation, though, causes many of these precise powers to go downhill.

Without enough sleep, we can’t pay attention to our senses as well as we would like.

This partly results in those weird sleep deprivation symptoms of feeling distracted and disconnected.

5. Lack of sleep undermines planning

After 36 hours without sleep, your ability to plan and coordinate your actions starts to go wrong.

Tests of sleep deprivation symptoms show that this vital ability to decide when and how to start or stop tasks quickly goes awry with lack of sleep.

People experiencing sleep deprivation symptoms easily get stuck in loops of activity or fogs of indecision.

Either way, it’s bad news.

6. Habits take over

Since the sleep deprived find it difficult to make plans or control how they start or stop actions, they have to fall back on the brain’s automated systems.

By which I mean: habits.

When experiencing sleep deprivation symptoms, people rely more on repeating the same actions in the same situations.

Good news when it comes to our good habits, but bad news when it comes to the bad habits.

Hence, the sleep deprived eat more junk food.

7. Sleep deprivation symptoms: taking risks

Anyone who has every played a late-night poker session will know the weird effects on your sense of risk.

Studies of sleep deprivation symptoms using card games have found that with lack of sleep, players get stuck in a strategic rut.

They seem incapable of changing their game plan on the basis of experience.

Those experiencing sleep deprivation symptoms keep taking risks, even though it’s obviously not working for them.

8. Lack of sleep kills brain cells

All sorts of different studies are pointing to how lack of sleep damages brain cells.

One recent study of sleep deprivation symptoms found that in mice 25 percent of certain brain cells died as a result of a prolonged lack of sleep.

Other studies have found lower integrity white matter in the brain, possibly as a result of lack of sleep.

Just as lack of sleep is no good psychologically, it’s also no good physiologically.

9. Sleep deprivation symptoms: mania

If a person suffers from lack of sleep on a regular basis, they may start to experience mania.

Sleep deprivation symptoms include psychosis, paranoia, extremely high energy levels, hallucinations, aggression and more.

Links have been found between insomnia and mental illness.

Unfortunately mental illness can also cause poor sleep.

If a person continues to find it difficult to sleep, it can become a vicious circle.

10. Car crash

One of the scary things about lack of sleep is that it can build up over time and then creep up on you.

You miss an hour or two’s sleep each night, but don’t notice that it’s having a detrimental effect.

Studies find that people who are driving with a lack of sleep don’t realise how acute the problems of sleep deprivation are.

Driving while sleep deprived can actually be worse than driving drunk — it has many of the same effects, but is way less obvious to the driver.

Lack of sleep

The good news is that the cure for most of these deficits is simple: just one good night’s sleep will often do the trick.

After staying awake for 11 days, Randy Gardner reportedly slept for over 14 hours the first night, then 10 hours the next night, thereafter he was fully recovered.

Those must have been some sweet dreams!

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Almost 4 percent of people report frequent nightmares, with 45 percent getting occasional nightmares.

A negative attitude towards the self, insomnia and exhaustion are the three biggest risk factors for frequent nightmares, a study finds.

The research found that 3.9 percent of people suffered frequent nightmares.

Dr Nils Sandman of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Turku in Finland, the study’s first author, said:

“Our study shows a clear connection between well-being and nightmares.

This is most evident in the connection between nightmares and depression, but also apparent in many other analyses involving nightmares and questions measuring life satisfaction and health.”

Frequent nightmares study

The conclusions are from 13,922 adults in Finland who were surveyed in 2007 and 2012 (Sandman et al., 2015).

They completed a health questionnaire and were asked about any nightmares they’d had in the previous 30 days.

Occasional nightmares were reported by over 45 percent of people, while just over half reported not having had a nightmare in the last 30 days.

Nightmares were more common amongst women (4.8 percent) than men (2.9 percent).

Amongst people with severe depression, though, 28.4 percent had frequent nightmares.

The depressive symptom most closely linked to frequent nightmares was “negative attitudes towards the self”.

For insomniacs, 17.1 percent experienced frequent nightmares.

Surveys of this nature cannot tell us whether, for example, depression causes nightmares, but the findings are intriguing.

Dr Sandman said:

“It might be possible that nightmares could function as early indicators of onset of depression and therefore have previously untapped diagnostic value.

Also, because nightmares, insomnia and depression often appear together, would it be possible to treat all of these problems with an intervention directed solely toward nightmares?”

Dr Sandman

I love it that the research was carried out by Dr Sandman.

The Sandman is a creature from European folklore who is supposed to sprinkle sand into people’s eyes as they sleep to give them good dreams.

I’m sure it’s an irony not lost on Dr Sandman himself.

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