Is your sleep not what it used to be? Does your mind race
when your head hits the pillow? Do you wake up at 4am and struggle to fall back
asleep? Are you feeling drowsy and sleep-deprived no matter how many hours you
spend in bed?
اضافة اعلان
For many people, sleeping poorly was the norm before the
pandemic. Then the stress, anxiety and disruptions made our nightly slumber worse,
giving rise to terms such as “coronasomnia” to describe the surge in sleep
disturbances last year. But recently, sleep experts noticed something that
astonished them: More than a year into the pandemic, our collective sleep only
continued to deteriorate.
In a survey of thousands of adults last summer, the American
Academy of Sleep Medicine found that 20 percent of Americans said they had
trouble sleeping because of the pandemic. But when the academy repeated its
survey 10 months later, in March, those numbers rose drastically. Roughly 60
percent of people said they struggled with pandemic-related insomnia, and
nearly half reported that the quality of their sleep had diminished — even
though infection rates have fallen and the country is opening back up.
“A lot of people thought that our sleep should be getting
better because we can see the light at the end of the tunnel — but it’s worse
now than it was last year,” said Dr. Fariha Abbasi-Feinberg, a sleep medicine
specialist and spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “People
are still really struggling.”
Chronically bad sleep is more than just a nuisance. It
weakens the immune system, reduces memory and attention span, and increases the
likelihood of chronic conditions such as depression, Type2 diabetes and heart
disease. The shorter your sleep, studies suggest, the shorter your life span.
And for people over 50, sleeping less than six hours a night may even heighten
the risk of dementia.
“Over the past year, we’ve had the perfect storm of every
possible bad thing that you can do for your sleep,” said Dr. Sabra Abbott, an
assistant professor of neurology in sleep medicine at Northwestern University
Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Not everyone, of course, is suffering from disrupted sleep.
A team of international researchers who studied 3 million people in New York,
London, Los Angeles, Seoul and Stockholm found that on average, people gained
an extra 25 minutes of sleep each night during the pandemic compared with a
year earlier. Those who benefited the most were people who naturally tend to go
to bed late but no longer had to set an early alarm to commute to work or get
their children ready for school, said Matthew Walker, a professor of
neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and
author of the bestselling book “
Why We Sleep.”
So what more can we do to get our disrupted sleep back on
track? Read on.
Follow the 25-minute rule
If you get into bed and can’t fall asleep after 25 minutes,
or you wake up at night and can’t get back to sleep after 25 minutes, then
don’t stay in bed. Get up and do a quiet activity that calms your mind and
makes you drowsy. “Just get up, don’t fret,” Walker said. “If you stay in bed
awake for long periods of time, your brain thinks, ‘Every time I get into bed,
this is the place where I should be awake.’ And you need to break that
association.”
Do any activity that relaxes you. Get up and stretch. Sit on
your couch and meditate or read a magazine. Read a book in dim light. Do deep-breathing
exercises. Listen to a soothing podcast. You could sit in a chair and draw or
knit. Then, when you start to feel drowsy again, get back into bed and try to
go to sleep. Just don’t get into bed unless you are tired. “You would never sit
at the dinner table waiting to get hungry,” Walker said. “So why would you lie
in bed waiting to get sleepy?”
Screens in the bedroom
One reason sleep has suffered this past year is that people
are sacrificing their slumber to catch up on all the fun things that they
missed out on during the day, such as scrolling through Instagram and watching
YouTube videos. This phenomenon, known as revenge bedtime procrastination, is
made worse by our attachment to our phones and screens, which often follow us
into our beds. (How many times have you been glued to your phone long past your
bedtime?)
We all know that we shouldn’t look at bright screens late at
night because the blue light they emit tells your brain that it’s time to be
awake. But many of us do it anyway. So follow this guideline: If you are going
to use your phone or device after your bedtime, then use it only while
standing. When you feel like sitting or lying down, you have to put the device
away. “You’ll find after about 10 minutes of standing up at your normal bedtime
that you’re going to say, ‘I need to lie down’ — and that’s your body telling
you that you need to put the phone away and get to sleep,” Walker said.
Wake up at the same time
Our bodies follow a daily circadian rhythm, and waking up at
different times throws it out of whack. It is best to keep your wake-up time
consistent. Don’t sleep in, even on weekends. “When the alarm goes off, get out
of bed and start your day regardless of how much you’ve slept,” Rosen said.
“You may not feel great for a few days, but you’re reinforcing that when you’re
in bed, you sleep.” The same goes for your bedtime: Keep it consistent. The
less you deviate from your normal bed and wake-up times, the better you’ll
sleep.
Get sunlight every morning
If you don’t commute to work, it can be easy to spend your
entire mornings inside. But exposure to sunlight serves an important purpose:
It shuts down the release of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. “Most
brain fog in the morning is caused by continued melatonin production,” said
Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and author of “The Power of When.” “When
sunlight hits your eye, it sends a signal to your brain to tell the melatonin
faucet to turn off.” Aim to get at least 15 minutes of sunlight first thing
every morning.
Make your bed a haven
Working from home — sometimes from our beds — has erased a
lot of the boundaries between work and sleep. But turning your mattress into an
office can condition your brain to view your bed as a place that makes you
stressed and alert, which can lead to insomnia. That’s why sleep experts say
you have to reserve your bed for two activities only. “The bed is for sleeping
or sex,” Rosen said. “If you’re not doing either of those things, then get out
of bed. If you have the luxury of going to a different room, then that’s even
better. You have to break the association of being awake in bed.”
Exercise for better sleep
The pandemic led people to cut back on physical activity.
But exercise is the easiest way to improve sleep, Breus said. “Sleep is
recovery,” he added. “If you don’t have anything to recover from, your sleep
isn’t going to be that great.” At least 29 studies have found that daily
exercise, regardless of the type or intensity, helps people fall asleep faster
and stay asleep longer, especially among people who are middle-aged or older.
According to the Sleep Foundation, people with chronic insomnia can fall asleep
about 13 minutes faster and gain up to 20 extra minutes of sleep per night by
starting an exercise routine. One caveat: End your exercise at least four hours
before bedtime; otherwise, it could interfere with your sleep by raising your
core body temperature, Breus said.
Follow the two-drink rule
If you drink alcohol, limit yourself to two drinks in the
evening and stop at least three hours before bed. Alternate each drink with a
glass of water. Because alcohol is a sedative, some people drink a nightcap to
help them fall asleep faster. But alcohol suppresses REM sleep and causes sleep
disruptions, which will worsen the overall quality of your sleep. “The closer
you drink to your bedtime, the worse your sleep is going to be,” Breus said.
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