Noise, light, stress, and even pets could be sabotaging your sleep. Photo / 123RF
Noise, light, stress, and even pets could be sabotaging your sleep. Photo / 123RF
A sleep psychologist suggests ways to protect sleep from intrusions, align sleep drive with circadian rhythms and face anxieties earlier in the day to help you get more rest.
Q. Lately, I have been waking up at 3am and am unable to fall back asleep. Igo to bed at a reasonable hour and try to maintain good sleep hygiene. Because of these early wakings, I am tired. What can I do to stop getting up so early?
A. If you are struggling with early waking, consider culprits beyond the usual depression, sleep apnea and rebound as alcohol or sleeping pills wear off.
Here are a few things I have learned in my years as a sleep psychologist. These suggestions are not a substitute for individualised health care.
If you wake up before your normal rising time, it can be notoriously hard to get back to sleep.
Mask intrusive noises with a sound machine that can produce sound waves across the frequency spectrum and over a broad range of volumes. Find your optimal settings when the noise is at its worst for you. Then use ear plugs to dampen the sound of the machine, which even if low enough to be safe for hearing, may disrupt your sleep.
Choose room-darkening curtains or shades to ensure darkness, and cover indicator lights from devices like modems with blackout tape.
Try an eye shade. The most comfortable models have some convexity to prevent pressure against one’s eyes. Many of my patients keep the eye shade on a bedside table and slip it on after using the bathroom before sunrise; that way they don’t have to wear it all night.
Use a sunrise alarm. These alarms gradually brighten and change colour to simulate sunrise. But they also serve as a proxy for the time. If my patients wake in the middle of the night and the room is still dark, they know they can go back to sleep without having to consult the clock (which can make them anxiously calculate how little time is left for sleep). If the dawn simulator has begun to brighten, they know it will soon be time to rise. They might choose not to go back to sleep so as not to immerse themselves in another sleep cycle that will soon be interrupted.
Your body’s internal clock, or circadian rhythm, is influenced by light exposure—even from small devices. Photo / 123RF
Alternate early-morning duties. In a two-parent household, alternate early kid (or pet) duty, preferably giving each other at least two nights off duty in a row followed by two nights on duty so that time for sleep feels (and is) abundant.
Consider a timed pet feeder so you don’t have to haul yourself out of bed. Pets’ feeding time can also be shifted gradually later through use of the feeder.
Use a heated mattress pad until you get into bed. Then you can use blankets that don’t tend to overheat you as the night goes on.
Try desensitising yourself to disturbing stimulation (light, sound, texture, location) in daytime sessions to see whether you can learn to tolerate it and even tune it out. This advice may be especially helpful for those who self-identify as fussy about their sleep environments.
Align sleep drive and circadian rhythm
Sleep drive (roughly a function of how long we have been awake) and circadian rhythm (when in the 24-hour day we are programmed to sleep) harmonise to help us sleep. During the night, one is stronger when the other is weaker, ensuring a full night’s sleep.
But they can become misaligned through experiences such as shift work and jet lag. We may have plenty of sleep drive (and therefore feel exhausted), but be unable to sleep because it isn’t time.
Alternatively, sleep drive can dwindle during the night if we fall asleep prematurely, take long naps or sleep in to compensate for a bad night. Then circadian rhythm is not enough to rescue our sleep.
Premature morning light can signal to our biological clocks that the sun is already up, as if we are in too easterly a time zone, leading us to wake early.
So you may benefit from not introducing light until your desired rising time; not going to bed much earlier than usual; not spreading your sleep too thin by sleeping in; and speaking with a sleep professional if you can’t help falling asleep and rising too early on a regular basis..
Sleeping too early can actually cause you to wake up earlier than desired. Photo / 123RF
Face stress and anxiety earlier
Stress and anxiety can lighten sleep and incline us to awaken. In addition, the mind can latch on to all manner of stressors and anxieties once we are up, making it harder to get back to sleep. One of my favourite approaches is to face worries constructively long before bed so that they are less likely to arise during the night.
Lisa Strauss, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in the Boston area. She specialises in sleep disorders.
