Healthy Sleep Habits

Improving your sleep is one of the best things you can do for your well-being. Poor sleep has been associated with a weakening of the immune system, weight gain, an increased risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes, and possibly a greater risk of developing dementia. But aside from its physical benefits, regularly getting a good night’s sleep is associated with having more joy and ease in life, more compassion, more harmonious relationships, and greater effectiveness in whatever you do. 

Research shows that the most powerful means for improving sleep are psychological – particularly the methodology of CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia) which, according to the American College of Physicians is the most highly recommended treatment for insomnia. The effectiveness of CBT-I – especially when combined with the practice of mindfulness – has been rated above that of both medication and natural supplements for sleep. These psychological methods, including mindful CBT-I, are what we teach in our Wake Up to the Best Sleep Ever online course.

There are also a number of environmental factors you can change, and behaviors you can adopt, that will support the inner methods you learn in our course. By themselves, they tend not to be effective for people who have long-term sleep issues, but without them, the effectiveness of CBT-I and mindfulness can be limited by environmental influences or habits that are known to interfere with sleep.  

Below is a summary of environmental and behavioral factors that everyone agrees are helpful for getting a good night’s sleep.  If you’ve not yet tried them, you might want to see which ones seem do-able for you and give them a go. If you’ve already tried them but had trouble breaking your old habits, you can check out our effortless mindfulness course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life where you can learn how to weaken the neural pathways that maintain your old habits and create new pathways that are supportive of new, healthier habits.



Environmental Factors that Influence Sleep

A Comfortable Bed, Mattress, and Pillow

Before you go out and spend a lot of money on a new mattress or bed, you might try experimenting with different pillows and sleep positions. But if you’re so inclined, and can afford it, consider that:

        • It is generally recommended to change your mattress every 5 to 7 years.

        • In one study, just one month on a new mattress resulted in a 60% improvement in overall sleep quality, as well as a 57% decrease in back pain and stiffness, and a 60% decrease in shoulder pain. 

An Optimum Sleep Environment

It’s generally recommended to have your bedroom at approximately 70 degrees F. for sleep, and, if possible, to have a window open at least slightly for some fresh air.  But, ultimately, what works best for you is what’s most important.

Do what you can to minimize external noise, natural and artificial light. Some find that aids like ear plugs, eye masks, or “blackout” curtains can be very helpful.

Create an atmosphere in your bedroom that you find relaxing. That might mean less clutter, colors you find soothing, or objects that evoke happy, peaceful feelings.


Reduce Blue Light Exposure in the Evening

The blue light that emanates from many electronic devices makes your brain think that it’s still daytime and results in a reduced production of melatonin, a hormone that is helpful for sleep. It’s especially important to turn off your smartphone and other electronic devices for at least an hour before sleep. If possible, it is also recommended that you refrain from watching television for at least one hour – preferably two – before bedtime. 

Most computers and devices have nighttime settings that allow you to lower the amount of blue light. If your device doesn’t have that capability, there are apps such as “f.lux” that block blue light on smartphones, laptops, and computers. There are also glasses you can get which block blue light.

Getting Enough Sunlight, Especially in the Morning

Exposure to sunlight – even as little as 15 minutes a day – shuts down the production of melatonin, preparing the body energetically for an active day. If you can’t get natural sunlight, artificial “bright light” devices can be helpful. Research suggests that exposure to a bright light device may not only help you get to sleep, it may also improve the depth of sleep (known as "sleep efficiency"), which can have a positive impact on your health and overall sense of well-being.



Behavioral Factors that Influence Sleep:
What Not To Do

Don’t Eat Late in the Evening

Try to refrain from eating at least one hour – preferably two – before sleep. A full stomach can lower the production of melatonin. You can also experiment with what kind of foods work best for you to eat at night. Some people find a meal with more complex carbohydrates (whole grains or starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes, for example) helps them sleep. Others find that lower carbohydrate foods (meat, poultry, fish, nuts, non-starchy vegetables) are more helpful. 

Don’t Drink Liquids Before Bed

This one is pretty obvious – if you drink too much too close to bedtime, you’re likely to have to get up at least once a night (or more!) to pee.

Don’t Drink Coffee Within 5 Hours of Going to Sleep

Caffeine has a “half-life” of 6 to 8 hours, and a quarter-life of up to 12 hours. This means if you drink coffee at 5 PM, you’ll have a quarter of the caffeine affecting your brain at 5 AM. By drinking coffee earlier, your body will have the time it needs to metabolize and clear the caffeine from your system before you go to bed. Researchers generally believe that decaf coffee does not have the same negative effects. 

Be Smart About Daytime Naps

There is conflicting information about the value of naps. Generally speaking, naps are not recommended as a means of catching up on sleep. However, if you’ve learned how to relax, a brief nap of roughly 15 to 30 minutes can be very refreshing.

After you’ve learned the art of relaxing deeply for brief naps, you may find that a slightly longer nap can be even more deeply restorative.  We both find this slightly longer practice (about 35 minutes) - which includes several breathing exercises along with a “61 Points” concentration exercise - to be a powerful practice that is both refreshing and energizing. 

Sometimes your energy may be flagging because you’ve been sitting for hours without taking a break. If that’s the case, rather than a nap, you might try the “Pomodoro” technique for taking regular timed break during the days. They recommend taking a 5-minute break every 20-25 minutes, and after four such breaks (in other words, after about 2 hours) taking a longer 15-20 minute break. 

On our YouTube channel, we have a wide variety of brief videos that are ideal for making good use of these short breaks. They include guided breathing, mindfulness and relaxation exercises, aerobic and qigong practices, poetry and imagery – all of which are designed to help you shift from our usual beta-brain-wave “doing” state to a more relaxing alpha-brain-wave” being” state.

Since it’s hard to keep track of time while in the midst of working, we find it helpful to use some sort of timer to remind us to get up and take a break. 

Limit Your Alcohol Intake

Drinking alcoholic beverages can cause or increase symptoms of sleep apnea and interfere with the production of melatonin, both of which can adversely affect sleep.  Alcohol also may decrease production of HGH (human growth hormone) which is important for regulating the natural circadian rhythms of the body.

If you like to drink at night, limit yourself to 2 drinks and don’t drink within 3 hours of sleeping.  It’s true that alcohol is a sedative, so people may feel that drinking an alcoholic beverage is helpful for sleep, but it has the effect of suppressing REM or dream sleep which is needed for processing the experiences of the day, and will generally result in poorer quality sleep.

Don’t Spend A Lot of Time Watching Screens Right Before Sleep

Sometimes, if you feel you’ve “missed” checking social media or playing your favorite online games, you may feel inclined stay up late to catch up or have fun.  When you feel you just can’t resist using your devices near bedtime, some people suggest using them standing up.  If you try this, you may find yourself getting so sleepy within 10 minutes that you’ll be eager to turn out the lights and get to bed. One exception to no screens before bedtime would be using music or guided meditations (such as those on our YouTube channel)  to help you sleep. 





What To Do

Save Your Bed for Sleeping (and, well, love making too!)

Many of us are in the habit of using our bedrooms for multiple purposes like finishing up some work, watching TV late into the night, texting, emailing or other activities on our phones and tablets. 

Basically, the recommendation is quite simple – if you’re in bed and you’re not sleeping or making love, get out of bed. The idea is to create an association between being in bed and feeling sleepy. 

Create a Relaxing Bedtime Routine

You may be familiar with the benefits of a warm, relaxing bath or shower before sleep, perhaps lighting a candle, listening to music or guided meditations, or doing some gentle stretches. Having a regular relaxing routine before you go to bed is an enjoyable way to calm your nervous system and signal your brain that it’s time to sleep.

As we teach in our effortless sleep course, even when you feel you don’t have time for this, just one minute of deep breathing, relaxation or meditation can be an excellent start to building a highly effective wind-down period that makes it much easier to drift effortlessly into sleep. You can try out the Guided Breathing, Guided Relaxation and Guided Mindfulness playlists on our YouTube channel to get a feeling for how easy it can be to use these practices to help you sleep. 

Throw Away Your Worries

Taking time before sleep to reflect on and process your day can be a powerful way of clearing your mind before sleep. It eases the burden on your sleeping brain of having to process your day through dreams and paves the way for having more interesting and creative dreams.

If reflecting on your day when you’re tired and ready for sleep feels like too tall an order, some people find that something simple like writing a list of what’s bothering them on a blank piece of paper and then tearing it up and throwing it away is enough to calm their mind and heart and prepare them for sleep.

Follow the 25-Minute Rule

If 25 minutes have passed and you still haven’t fallen asleep, or if you wake up in the middle of the night and are unable to get back to sleep for more than 25 minutes, it is recommended that you get out of bed and calmly do some quiet activity until you start to feel drowsy. You could listen to one of our guided YouTube videos, and/or try some gentle stretching, slow deep breathing, drawing, listening to soothing music you enjoy, or engaging is some other calming activity. Then as soon as you start to feel drowsy, go back to bed. For many people, this can help to make your bed feel more like a welcome haven for sleep rather than being associated with a frustrating inability to sleep.

Important Note: Although sleep programs commonly recommend this, it’s also true that some find it more helpful to do deep relaxation, breathing, meditation etc. while still lying in bed. As with all guidelines, you’ll need to adapt this to your own needs.

Sleep and Wake at Consistent Times (and don’t change it on weekends)

Your body appreciates regular routines for getting to sleep and waking up. They’re very helpful for harmonizing your sleep routine with your body’s natural sleep/wake cycles. It’s recommended that you wake up at the same time everyday – even when you go to bed late. And since research shows that you can’t make up for lost sleep, it’s very helpful to get to bed at a regular time each night as well. 

Having said that, on days you’ve not gotten enough sleep, it can be helpful to take a short (less than 20-minute) nap. (See “Be Smart About Taking Naps” above for suggestions about effective napping.)  You may find that listening to one of the guided practices from our relaxation or mindfulness meditation playlists may help to make your nap more deeply relaxing and energizing.   

If you’ve already tried changing your sleep and waking times without success (either on your own or in another CBT-I program), please don’t be discouraged. In our effortless sleep course, we guide you through a very gradual process for adjusting your sleep/wake times over the course of several weeks.

If You Have Trouble Waking Up After Sleeping, Try the RISE UP Protocol

If you’re one of the many people who has trouble waking up in the morning, any of the RISE UP suggestions can be very helpful. See which one(s) appeal to you and try them out:

  • R efrain from staying in bed.  Get up as soon as you hear the alarm, and if you need to, keep your alarm far from your bed so you have to get up to turn it off.

  • I ncrease the amount of activity you engage in when you first wake up.  Go out for a walk, make some tea, do some household chores, or anything else that gets you moving.

  • S hower right after you get up, or at least wash your face and hands with cold or lukewarm water.

  • E xpose yourself to sunlight. Open the blinds, or turn on a lightbox or SAD lamp if it’s still dark outside.

  • U pbeat music can be a great way to shift from your sleepy state to a more energetic, wakeful state.  Create a playlist of music to listen to, or put on an exercise, yoga, or dance video and move with it.

  • P hone a friend or talk with someone you live with within the first hour of waking up.

Exercise Regularly — But Not Before Bed

Studies show that exercise not only improves your overall health, it improves your sleep quality as well. Regular exercise can reduce the time it takes to fall asleep by over half, reduce total night wakefulness by 30%, and reduce or eliminate many, if not most, symptoms of insomnia. 

It’s generally recommended to stop exercising at least 3 to 4 hours before going to sleep. Exercising too close to bedtime tends to raise your core body temperature which interferes with sleep by increasing your “alertness” hormones like adrenaline and epinephrine. However, the effect is different for different bodies.   If, for any reason, you’re not able to exercise at any other time, you might experiment to see what kinds of exercise you can do and how long you can exercise at night without interfering with sleep – or, that may actually help you sleep. 

If you think of yourself as someone who hates exercise, consider what it gives you in return. Walking for just 20 minutes three times a week can help you lose weight (from 20% to 30% of successful weight loss can be accounted for by exercise) and reduce the risk of getting dementia. Walking for 30 minutes, six times a week can, in addition, help lower your blood pressure, improve the condition of your heart, strengthen your immune system, reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, lower your blood sugar, lessen the likelihood of heart attack or stroke, strengthen your joints, muscles and bones, and just generally make you feel a whole lot better physically, mentally, and emotionally!

Eat Less Highly Processed Sugary Junk Food, More Vegetables, and Not Too Much

You may recognize this as a variation on food researcher and writer Michael Pollan’s recommendation to, “Eat real food, mostly plants, not too much.” We modified it a little because “real food” means different things to different people. But miraculously enough, given the high passions that tend to rage around what foods we should or should not eat, everyone seems able to agree that eating less highly processed sugary junk food is desirable.

Similarly, there are a lot of arguments these days about how much or how little plant food to eat. And while opinions vary about the value of starchy vs. non-starchy vegetables, generally speaking, everyone agrees that vegetables are good for you.

There’s a lot of research which shows that developing healthier habits with regard to food can improve sleep. Having said that, we’re aware of how difficult it is for many people to change their eating habits. As a bonus, in our sleep course, we include a mini course on using mindful cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to make changing habits a gentler and more enjoyable process. And once you’ve enrolled in the course, you can get support for your efforts in our online support community.

If you’re interested in a broader understanding of how your brain works with regard to the basic principles of habit change, we cover this in Weeks 10 and 11 of our effortless mindfulness course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life. 




When to Seek Help

If you’ve tried the above methods and/or have used psychological practices such as those in our effortless sleep course, and you’re still having difficulty sleeping, it may be that you need to see a sleep specialist to rule out any underlying conditions such as sleep apnea or restless legs syndrome that might requires medical treatment.

Here are two websites that can help you find a Behavioral Sleep Medicine specialist: 

American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s website, sleepeducation.org

National Sleep Foundation, at https://www.sleepfoundation.org