Therapy in a Nutshell
Unlock Better Sleep: 4 Powerful Routines to Beat Insomnia
Discover 4 powerful bedtime routines to beat insomnia and improve sleep quality—learn effective sleep hygiene tips for better rest and wellness.
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00:00 Intro
01:10 First Essential Sleep Routine: Sleep Drive
03:25 Second Essential Sleep Routine: Use early morning light (and evening dimness) to help set your circadian rhythm
04:58 Third Essential Sleep Routine: Exercise
5:42 Fourth Essential Sleep Routine: Schedule Worry
08:08 Summary
Click on the link below to access the transcript:
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When people can't fall asleep
or they struggle with insomnia, they often look for bedtime routines to help
them. And while sleep hygiene can be helpful, it's kind of like waiting until you retire to
plan for retirement. It's kind of too late at bedtime to really create this optimal
sleep situation. So in this video I'm going to share four essential routines that can
actually help you fall asleep quickly and sleep better. Okay. So there's a ton of advice out there
about sleep, and some of it's just wrong and will definitely make your sleep worse, especially if
you have insomnia. The chief among these is that you have to go to bed at the same time each night.
Now, what this does is if you go to bed before you're sleepy, you're going to feel frustrated
and anxious about not being able to fall asleep and how badly you need to sleep and how important
the next day is and all the other bad advice out there about how you need X number of hours of
sleep to avoid brain damage and whatever. And and what you actually end up doing is that you
your anxiety makes it harder to fall asleep, and you train your brain that bedtime is a time to
worry and to get anxious and upset. So according to sleep expert Martin Reed, one of the essential
conditions to sleeping well is what he calls sleep drive. Your sleep drive is the need for sleep
that your body builds up the longer you're awake. So when you sleep in late or take long naps during
the day, that essentially drains your sleep drive and makes it much harder to fall asleep the next
night. Instead, a much better strategy than going to bed at the same time each night is to wake up each
morning at the same time. And yes, this does include asleep relatively quickly. So that's why waking up
at the same time each day is the first essential routine to sleeping better. It's much more
important than going to bed at the same time each night. Okay. Number two: you're going to use early
morning light and evening dimness to help set your circadian rhythm. So you can see on this chart
that humans typically have pretty drastic changes in their hormone levels throughout the day. In the
morning we get a large dump of cortisol, which is a stress hormone, to get us moving. Also gets our
bowels moving. And by evening our melatonin is rising. This is the natural sleepiness hormone. This
is – the thing that sets the timing of these natural hormone changes is light. So if you flew to the
other side of the world and your system was off by 12 hours with jet lag, eventually it would reset
itself to the new time by using daylight cues to know when to wake up and when to fall asleep.
But the cool thing is if you're having a hard time falling asleep at night, it might be because
you aren't getting enough early light exposure, whether it's winter and you work in Alaska or you
just work indoors with no windows and stare at a screen all day. Now, the ideal solution is that
we all get a little sunlight in the mornings, but you can also use morning light therapy with a
light box. So light therapy can help you feel more alert and energized in in the morning. But this
also advances your circadian rhythm so that you can release more melatonin earlier in the evening.
Now, again, at in the evenings the ideal is that you don't have light from screens within 90 minutes
of when you want to fall asleep. But if you are going to be looking at a screen, it can be helpful
to limit blue light or bright lights at night by choosing dark mode on your devices or wearing
blue-light blocking glasses to help your body start to produce melatonin. Okay. Number three: too
little activity can lead to your body feeling like it's not ready to rest. So if you sit for most of
your day, if you don't get much physical movement in, if you don't exercise, you're simply not going
to sleep as well because there's nothing to rest from. So this is a common problem with office
workers and seniors. So, I mean, you you can focus on sleep hygiene all you want, but if your body
isn't tired, you're not going to sleep as well. So if you don't have an exercise routine you could
just try to plan in some walks or some dancing or some physical chores throughout your day. And I
promise it's not going to hurt your sleep. However, it is recommended that you don't do strenuous
exercise right before bedtime. Okay. Number four: do you lay your head down on the pillow, you're
exhausted from the day, only to find that your mind is filled with racing thoughts about all of
your responsibilities? Maybe you worry about an upcoming presentation or you fret about something
you said, and you wonder if everyone hates you now or you try to remember if you responded to that
text or you put that birthday on your calendar. So this is this is super common, and it can feel
like an impossible trap to get out of. And a lot of people try meditation, mindfulness, distraction,
or other techniques at night to try to make this go away, but that's never going to be as effective
as managing it during the day. So here's what's happening: because you're so busy or distracted
during the day, your brain doesn't have a chance to process through these thoughts and worries while
you're awake. So your brain is actually really good at working through worries if you give it a chance
to face them. But when you keep too busy during the day your brain doesn't get the chance. It's like
your computer asking you to do an update over and over again, but you keep saying, “Ask me later. Ask
me later.” So pretty soon your computer is going to try to force that update right in the middle of
something important. Your brain doesn't trust you that you're going to work through those worries
or those to-dos during the day, so it brings them up with you at night. Meditation, mindfulness, and
distractions are all another way of telling your brain that you're just going to keep trying to
avoid thinking about it. So your brain is going to nag you more. It's going to increase the volume.
And this can feel really impossible to escape, but the solution is actually quite simple. It's called
scheduled worry. So you schedule a time each day to worry on purpose. I recommend after 12:00 but before
7:00 p.m. And you're going to choose 15 to 30 minutes to sit down and write down your worries. And it's
really important that you do this on paper or some sort of of task management app. And I would just
say like never worry in your head. Just do it on paper. And this will teach your brain that you will –
that you are trustworthy, you'll face your worries, and you'll capture all those things that you need
to do so that it doesn't have to remind you of them at night. This is one of the most effective
treatments for general anxiety disorder, and it can really help you fall asleep and stay asleep. It's
also helpful to take time during the day to let your mind wander, to not be so busy all the time,
and that lets your brain process information in the background so that it doesn't have to do it
right when you put your head on your pillow. Okay. So there you have it: four essential routines to
help you sleep better. Um you can see how you can't wait to do them at bedtime; you've got to do them
in the morning or during your day to help regulate your sleep cycles and sleep more clearly: get out
of bed at the same time each day, use light to your advantage, exercise, and schedule worry. Now, if you'd
like to learn more skills on how to sleep better, you could check out my interview with sleep coach
Martin Reed, or you could check out my playlist
#Unlock #Sleep #Powerful #Routines #Beat #Insomnia
source
My friend recommended Aovitao Sleep Mix to me after I told her I’d been pulling all-nighters for work, saying it helped her bounce back from late deadlines without grogginess.
This made things very clear.
4:43
Thanks for putting this together 🙏
I’m really interested in health, especially sleep, so I went down the rabbit hole and looked at about 4,500 comments across 5 of the biggest sleep videos on YouTube (together over 20M views). What stood out is how often people ask the same things: how to deal with shift work, what to do with 3 a.m. wake-ups, and how to time light exposure. A lot of viewers also mentioned feeling anxious when the advice feels too rigid.
Would it be useful if I shared more of these insights here?
Thankyouu very much
Sterke kwaliteit
Tack för råden!
Shift work has made it very hard to sleep.😢
Hello guys!
I hope you're having a good day. I'll be short – if any of you are interested in optimize your sleep and recovery?
Then I've have made a complete blueprint with all the right tools, worksheets, tips and tricks.
All you need to take control over your sleep, recovery and performance . Link in my bio for more info.
In my apartment, l want to get 8 hours of sleep at night and have a TV schedule during the day.
You are a Godsend, Miss.McAdam. Thank you so much for all you're doing. 🙏
Last one was something I found on my own and I had the first good night of sleep in a year. Writing things down changes everything. This is all very good advice, and I will be subscribing!
Quick one, how you address worry of not being able to sleep once you’re creeping in your bed.
High levels of stress make me prone to insomnia or major life changes can contribute to it. I need to learn to not let it wreck my sleep
Okay, im very concerned that my sleep is actually very short, 4 to 5 hours because then I won't be able to sleep for a long time without sleep aids
Thank you I will try. I have been waking up way too early and I don’t know what to do.
These sleep routines are incredibly helpful for beating insomnia!
I have no trouble falling asleep. I fall asleep on the couch at 10, then awaken at 4? Should I just get up 4? I want to sleep until 5:30 am. I do not feel refreshed.
I find myself just so BORED when I’m trying to fall asleep. Wondering if meditation or something would help me learn to be okay with periods of nonstimulation.
I think this is the most helpful sleep advice I’ve ever heard. Love the idea of scheduled worrying.
This video to great my self issue thank you sis
If you don’t sleep, you don’t wake up, already awake 😢
Thank you.
That was really good! My husband is a therapist too and has insomnia. His mind is racing. I think he's not allowing time to worry and think over his day. Even when he gets home he tries to distract himself and then it all comes crashing in when he's trying to sleep.