Sleep Hygiene

A good night’s sleep and a healthy sleep pattern depend on many circumstances. Some factors are external: like our bed or a certain social pattern we follow. Some are inside our body, like emotions, circadian rhythm or activity level. Another large factor concerning getting a good night's sleep can be medications.

Would you like to improve the quality of your sleep? Follow these reliable tips. In this section you will find a list of the most well known and applied "tricks" with an explanation. Please note that while some tips might be effective for one person, it might have near to no effect on another. Generally this is advice which have helped many people and which can be scientifically explained.

• Listen to your body clock, not your alarm clock. We all need certain hours of rest; some need people need more, some less. The fact that on weekdays many of us are woken up by an alarm clock means that we are interrupting our bodies efforts to get the amount of rest needed. Although it is quite impossible to change the time we need to get up in the morning, we can try to go to bed early enough so that we can get up in the morning without the help of an alarm clock.
• Use your bed only to sleep. The bed has become our society's second couch! We sleep, read, listen to music, watch TV, cry, daydream, rest and sometimes even eat in it. By doing so, we make our mind forget what a bed is actually for. If we get in the habit to use the bed exclusively for sleep, our mind will automatically say, "Hey, it's time to sleep" the moment we lay ourselves to bed.
• Get up and go to bed at the same time. To make your body get used to a certain rhythm, you should condition it by going to bed and getting up at the same time every day (also on weekends). Once your body has adapted to the rhythm, you will get tired at the same time every day and get up automatically every morning. Chances that you will have problems sleeping will be reduced.
• Exercise in the morning and in the early afternoon- Apart from contributing to our health, exercise during daytime also improves the quality and quantity of our stage-4 sleep. A greater amount of stage-4 makes us feel fresh and relaxed the next morning. So get your sport shoes, because you now have another reason to exercise!
• Don’t exercise in the evening- Although exercise is good for your health, it is not advisable to do strenuous physical efforts near bedtime. It would be as though your metabolism were still in fourth gear and programmed to "daytime activity", while you would want to be in a "Parking" gear.
• Stop looking at that clock! Stop looking at that clock! It is a well known and bad habit: for some reason you have problems falling asleep and instead of doing something good, you do the worst thing possible: you look at the clock on your bedside table -just to realize that another 30 minutes have passed! The worries created by knowing what time it is will just contribute to your sleeplessness. So next time when the clock is stealing your sleep, simply turn it around so that you cannot see the time.
• No alcohol prior to bedtime. Alcohol is known as a calming drug and many people use it as a sleep promoter. In fact, many English physicians used to prescribe older patients with sleep problems some alcohol. (3) It may help you fall asleep more easily, but more than just about one gram of alcohol per kilogram of body weight, will negatively interfere with your sleep rhythm: Important Stage-4 sleep is decreased. The REM-Phases become shorter; our sleep seems more unstable and superficial. (4) Getting up the next day is usually accompanied by the feeling of not having rested enough, better known as a "hangover".
• No caffeine after early afternoon.
• Naps- When tiredness sets in between noon and 4 p.m. , an occasional nap may be the right quick fix solution. Please note that a nap does not substitute a good night's sleep and therefore should not become a habit or be longer than an hour to avoid slipping into a REM sleep. However, instead of beating your tiredness by napping, try to find out if anything is interfering with the quality of your night sleep or if you lack quantity. Experts generally advice to avoid naps when possible but, if necessary, to do a 30-40 minute, so-called, "power nap." (1)
• Avoid Nicotine.
• Keep the bedroom dark, quiet, and cool. As the only way for our body to adapt to the ambient temperature while we enter deeper sleep stages is to perspire or activate our metabolism, we should be sure that our room is neither too warm nor too cold when we go to bed. Not doing so might strain our body, instead of giving it a possibility to rest. Although our hearing senses are less sensitive during deep sleep phases, noise could disturb our sleep while we are trying to fall asleep or even might interrupt it during one of the few Stage-1-REM Phases we have every night, in which our senses are more sensitive to external stimuli.
• Eat a light snack - not too much. Food with tryptophan, an amino acid, is thought to produce sleepiness. Some foods with tryptophan include milk, bananas, fish, and turkey. (2)
• Don’t worry too much. If you can't fall asleep for quite a while, don't let it eat itself into your mind. Instead, stop trying and do some simple activity, like reading (but nothing too emotional or stimulating!) or listening to the radio.
• Wake up at the end of a cycle. Each night we go through four stages of sleep which cycle about five times. Each cycle takes about 1-1.5 hours (varies from person to person) with its last stage being nearest to the state of being awake: the REM stage. Getting up during the REM stage is easier than getting up when in stage 2 (or even stage 3 or 4!). Although it needs some testing to determine the end of your last cycles and it definitely does not alter the amount of sleep you need, it might help you get up without moaning. (1)

The sleep hygiene tips listed above are all based on alteration of external parameters. Try to rid yourself of any habits that may be keeping you awake as a start to improving your sleep quality as well. Nevertheless, sleep problems are not always necessarily linked to external factors, but are sometimes symptoms of deeper underlying problems which can only be resolved with professional assistance. To learn about more specific sleep disorders or insomnia, see sleep difficulties.

(1) Naitoh, P; CE Englund, & D Ryman, "Restorative Power of Naps in Designing Continuous Work Schedule". Journal of Human Ergology, 11(Suppl), 259-278.

(2) Ancoli-Israel, Sonia. All I Want is a Good Night's Sleep. St. Louis, Mosby, 1996. (p.21)

(3) Bruno, Frank J.. [Get a Good Night's Sleep] "Gut Schlafen". Aus dem Amerikanischen von Inge Holm. [Translated by Inge Holm]. Knaurs Kleiner Lebensratgeber. München, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt, 1998, pp.32-33

(4) Dr. Manzel, Peter-Paul. "Gesunder Schlaf". Ed. Ratgeber Gesundheit. München, Mosaik Verlag, 1998, pp.16-19.