Sleep Hygiene Top Tips

The Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/ provides outstanding psychological resources both for clinicians and those looking to help themselves or others. I would highly recommend having a look through their website and bookmarking for future reference as their information is not only very complete, but refreshingly concise!

Their fact sheet on Sleep Hygiene is outstanding. Please see the following link to read the full article.

https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/cci/mental%20health%20professionals/sleep/sleep%20-%20information%20sheets/sleep%20information%20sheet%20-%2004%20-%20sleep%20hygiene.pdf

To summarise, the article is a guide to 'Sleep Hygiene' that is, the things you can do to provide yourself with the best possible chance of a good nights rest and lists 15 top tips. 

1. Keep to regular waking and sleeping times.
2. Only try to sleep when you feel tired to avoid frustrated time 'trying to sleep'. *Contradiction with point 1 noted... see point 3)
3.  If you can't get to sleep for 20 mins get up and do something relaxing/boring then go back to bed to try again, then repeat if necessary.
4. Avoid all stimulants such as caffeine for 4-6 hours before going to sleep.
5. Avoid alcohol 4-6 hours before bed the same reason.
6. Train your body to use your bed only for sleeping by using the bed only when you want to rest (not watching tv, working etc)
7. Avoid taking naps in the day. If you do need a nap make it before 3pm and less than one hour.
8. Make a 'sleep ritual' to prepare your mind/body for sleep. This could be stretching/breathing or anything that is calming in the time period before wishing to sleep.
9. Having a hot bath 1-2 hours before bed. Research shows that sleeplessness can be caused by a low body temperature, thus by raising the body temperature in a bath is can make you drowsy and more able to sleep.
10. Don't clock watch. Constantly checking the time can reinforce anxious feelings and make it harder to sleep.
11. Using a sleep diary can be helpful to track progress (though do it without checking the time constantly!)
12. Regular exercise can assist with good sleep, though strenuous activity in the 4 hours before bed is not recommended.
13. Balanced diet. Sleeping on an empty stomach can be distracting, as can sleeping on a full stomach. A light snack can work well, as can warm milk that is a natural sleep enhancer.
14. Ensure your environment is right. A good temperature, quiet, dark and with adequate, comfortable space.
15. If you have a bad night sleep do not alter daily activities as this can promote insomnia. 

*I wonder if these tips will work on my 5 year old daughter??

The Effect Of An Extra Hour's Night Sleep

The average Briton gets six-and-a-half hours' sleep a night, according to the Sleep Council. Michael Mosley took part in an unusual experiment to see if this is enough.

It has been known for some time that the amount of sleep people get has, on average, declined over the years.

This has happened for a whole range of reasons, not least because we live in a culture where people are encouraged to think of sleep as a luxury - something you can easily cut back on. After all, that's what caffeine is for - to jolt you back into life. But while the average amount of sleep we are getting has fallen, rates of obesity and diabetes have soared. Could the two be connected?

We wanted to see what the effect would be of increasing average sleep by just one hour. So we asked seven volunteers, who normally sleep anywhere between six and nine hours, to be studied at the University of Surrey's Sleep Research Centre.

The volunteers were randomly allocated to two groups. One group was asked to sleep for six-and-a-half hours a night, the other got seven-and-a-half hours. After a week the researchers took blood tests and the volunteers were asked to switch sleep patterns. The group that had been sleeping six-and-a-half hours got an extra hour, the other group slept an hour less.

While we were waiting to see what effect this would have, I went to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford to learn more about what actually happens when we sleep.

In the Sleep Centre, they fitted me up with a portable electro-encephalograph, a device that measures brain wave activity. Then, feeling slightly ridiculous, I went home and had my seven-and-a-half hours of sleep.

The following day I went to discuss what had happened inside my head during the night with Dr Katharina Wulff.

The first thing she pointed out was that I had very rapidly fallen into a state of deep sleep. Deep sleep sounds restful, but during it our brains are actually working hard. One of the main things the brain is doing is moving memories from short-term storage into long-term storage, allowing us more short-term memory space for the next day. If you don't get adequate deep sleep then these memories will be lost.

You might think: "I'll cut back during the week and then make up for it at the weekend." Unfortunately it doesn't work like that, because memories need to be consolidated within 24 hours of being formed.

Since deep sleep is so important for consolidating memories it is a good idea if you are revising or perhaps taking an exam to make sure that you're getting a reasonable night's sleep. In one study, people who failed to do so did 40% worse than their contemporaries.

Deep sleep only lasts for a few hours. My electrode results showed that during the night my brain went through multiple phases of another kind of activity, called REM sleep.

"This is the phase when you are usually paralysed - so you can't move," Wulff explained. But the eye muscles are not paralysed, and that's why it's called rapid eye movement sleep."

During REM sleep an extraordinary thing happens. One of the stress-related chemicals in the brain, noradrenalin, is switched off. It's the only time, day or night, this happens. It allows us to remain calm while our brains reprocess all the experiences of the day, helping us come to terms with particularly emotional events.

We get more REM sleep in the last half of the night. Which means that if you are woken unexpectedly, your brain may not have dealt with all your emotions - which could leave you stressed and anxious. Drinking alcohol late at night is not a good idea as it reduces your REM sleep while it's being processed in your body.

Back at the University of Surrey our sleep volunteers had finished their second week of the experiment. What we wanted to see was the effect switching from six-and-a-half hours to seven-and-a-half hours, or vice versa, would have on our volunteers.

Computer tests revealed that most of them struggled with mental agility tasks when they had less sleep, but the most interesting results came from the blood tests that were run.

Dr Simon Archer and his team at Surrey University were particularly interested in looking at the genes that were switched on or off in our volunteers by changes in the amount that we had made them sleep.

"We found that overall there were around 500 genes that were affected," Archer explained. "Some which were going up, and some which were going down."

What they discovered is that when the volunteers cut back from seven-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours' sleep a night, genes that are associated with processes like inflammation, immune response and response to stress became more active. The team also saw increases in the activity of genes associated with diabetes and risk of cancer. The reverse happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep.

So the clear message from this experiment was that if you are getting less than seven hours' sleep a night and can alter your sleep habits, even just a little bit, it could make you healthier. "Have a lie-in, it will do you good" - that's the kind of health message that doesn't come along very often.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24444634

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

Good Nights Sleep Linked To Happiness

Want a good night’s sleep? Be positive – consistently. Although happiness is generally good for sleeping, when a person’s happiness varies a lot in reaction to daily ups and downs, sleep suffers, reports a Cornell study published online in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

The researchers analyzed data from 100 middle-aged participants in a longitudinal study of midlife in the United States that included telephone interviews about participants’ daily experience as well as subjective and objective measures of sleeping habits. The study looked at the overall levels of positive emotion that the participants experienced in their lives – those associated with more stable personality traits, as well as daily fluctuations in positive emotions in reaction to daily events.

The team found that, as expected, having a more positive general outlook on life was associated with improved sleep quality. However, they found that the more reactive or fragile a participant’s positive emotions were in relation to external events, the more their sleep was impaired, especially for individuals high in positivity to begin with.

“Previous research suggests that the experience of joy and happiness may slow down the effects of aging by fortifying health-enhancing behaviors such as restorative sleep,” said first author Anthony Ong, associate professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology. “Our study extends this research by showing that whereas possessing relatively stable high levels of positive emotion may be conducive to improved sleep, unstable highly positive feelings may be associated with poor sleep because such emotions are subject to the vicissitudes of daily influences.” Ong added, “These findings are novel because they point to the complex dynamics associated with fragile happiness and sleep that until now have been largely attributed to unhappy people.”

By Karene Booker

Ong co-authored the study, “Linking stable and dynamic features of positive affect to sleep,” with Deinera Exner-Cortens and Catherine Riffin, Cornell graduate students; Andrew Steptoe, University of London; Alex Zautra, Arizona State University; and David Almeida, Penn State University.

The research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/04/good-nights-sleep-linked-happiness/

http://www.news.cornell.edu/