Goodnight Mind (3 page)

You may find the activities listed above (reading, surfing the web, etc.) relaxing, so the answer may be not to stop these habits, but rather to move them to a different place and time. For more on this topic, read chapter 5.

Now for more obvious arousal-producing culprits: stress, anxiety, and worry. Bedtime can be the first time all day that allows you quiet and undistracted thought, and this unfortunately can lend itself to problem solving, list-making, and planning. These are all good activities for the daytime, but thinking about what will happen tomorrow can set off worry. Chapters 5 through 10 are specifically geared toward helping produce the last ingredient in our sleep recipe:

A quiet mind and body, and a comfortable sleep environment

Summary

This chapter introduced you to the workings of your sleep system. Understanding the body clock and the sleep driver system is the first step toward improving your sleep. You now know, for example, that spending too much time in bed can prevent you from getting enough quality sleep, and some things you may have thought were sleep aids can get in the way of a peaceful night’s rest. If you can reduce or eliminate activities or substances that produce emotional, physical, or mental activation and can interfere with sleep, you will not need to try so hard to fall asleep. As you read this book, keep in mind our three key ingredients for sleep:

1. A regular and optimally timed sleep opportunity (sleep window)
   
2. A strong drive for sleep
   
3. A quiet mind and body, and a comfortable sleep environment
   

My Sleep Diary

Chapter 2

Build a Stronger Drive for Deep Sleep

A
s we discussed in chapter 1, one of the main ingredients for good sleep is to build a strong drive for deep sleep. Deep sleep is the type of sleep that gives you longer stretches of continuous or uninterrupted sleep and makes you feel more rested when you wake up. This chapter will teach you how to get your sleep driver system back on track by adjusting your sleep schedule, increasing your activity levels, and adjusting any habits that may be getting in the way of building a strong drive for deep sleep.

Give Your Sleep System a Tune-Up

Have you ever thought about
how
your body produces deep sleep? If you seem to not get enough deep sleep, perhaps you are worried that your body’s system for producing deep sleep is broken or has malfunctioned. Luckily, this is rarely the case. In fact, you will be relieved to learn that there are things that you can do to help your sleep system work better for you.

As we mentioned in chapter 1, your body’s natural system that balances sleep and wakefulness does not usually make up for lost sleep by producing
more
sleep the following night. It makes up for lost sleep by producing
deeper
sleep. You can get the most of this system merely by understanding how this system works and what behaviors get in the way of the deep sleep you desire. For example, if you spend too little time out of bed, or expend very little energy during the day, the drive may not be strong enough to produce deep, continuous sleep that night. Your drive for deep sleep becomes stronger when you are awake and active for most of the day.

This information can provide some comfort when you are sleeping poorly, because you can count on your body to produce enough deep sleep to make up for lost sleep. This also means that any efforts to make up for lost sleep will backfire; such efforts include going to bed early, staying in bed longer, or attempting to nap. These behaviors may weaken the buildup of a drive for deep sleep. Similarly, to make up for lost sleep you may increase your caffeine consumption, but caffeinated products such as cola and coffee interfere with the buildup of one of the chemicals needed for deep sleep. Efforts to catch up on lost sleep and the use of caffeine are common and understandable responses to sleep loss, but these behaviors send the wrong message to your body and prevent adequate drive for deep sleep.

Strategies for Increasing Deep Sleep

There are several ways you can make your sleep system work for you and get the (deep) sleep of your dreams.

Limit Your Time in Bed

In general, you should spend only about as much time in bed as you can sleep. We will give you detailed guidelines for limiting your time in bed later in this chapter. Even if you choose not to set and observe a new sleep schedule as we recommend, try to follow these two important rules.

Do not sleep in.
Spending more time in bed in the morning takes away from how much drive for deep sleep you can build on a given day because, unless you go to bed later the next night, the time for your sleep drive to build is shortened. The sleep you get in the morning hours is not particularly restorative anyway. So, set an alarm and stick to a given rise time (chapter 3 will help you determine the right one for you), and you will be rewarded with a stronger drive for deep sleep.

Do not go to bed early to make up for lost sleep.
Going to bed early after a poor night’s sleep stops the buildup for deep sleep too early. This means that you are unlikely to get enough deep sleep and you may be more likely to wake up in the middle of the night.

Do Not Nap

Napping during the day robs you of some of the deep sleep you would get at night. When you get up from a nap, you have to rebuild the sleep drive you lost, and it is unlikely that you will have built a strong enough drive for deep sleep by the time you go to bed for the night. When you get less deep sleep, your sleep may seem less restful and you may wake up in the middle of the night.

Avoid Dozing (“Nodding Off”)

Nodding off and dozing have the same negative effects as napping and should be avoided. Use an activity—preferably one with physical movement—and bright light to manage the urge to doze. If you can, ask someone to wake you up if they see you dozing. Avoid situations that make it more likely you will doze, such as watching television or movies in low light, or reclining on a couch or chair in the evening.

Be Active during the Day

Increasing your activity levels is good for your health, your mood, and your sleep. Being physically active builds more sleep drive and can increase deep sleep. If you are awake but inactive or resting for most of the day, you are less likely to be able to have a deep, sound sleep.

Limit or Eliminate Caffeine

Since caffeine interferes with the buildup of sleep drive and can reduce sleep quality, limit your intake. Consume no more than 250 milligrams of caffeine per day (a 12-ounce mug of coffee has just over half this amount), and try not to have any caffeine within six hours of your bedtime. If you are particularly sensitive to caffeine, you may need to restrict your caffeine to mornings or eliminate it altogether.

Reduce the Time You Spend in Bed

The strategy above—“Spend only about as much time in bed as you can sleep”—is one of the most effective ways to achieve deeper sleep. Many people are unclear about how to spend only as much time in bed as the amount of sleep they produce, because the amount of sleep they get varies from one night to the next, sometimes greatly. The key to determining how much time you should spend in bed is to figure out how much sleep you get on average. When asked to estimate their average amount of sleep, people tend to remember their worst nights, so without hard data, underestimation is a risk (one that can have consequences for your efforts to improve your sleep). A sleep diary can paint a more accurate picture of your sleep pattern.

Step 1: Record Your Sleep

The best way to discover how much sleep you get on average is to write down a few details about your sleep each morning for two weeks. You can use a sleep diary as described in chapter 1. When you are recording information about your sleep, the sooner in the day you do it, the more accurate it will be, so try to prioritize completing your sleep diary entry early in the morning. You may find that leaving your sleep diary and a pen either on your nightstand or at the breakfast table increases the likelihood that you will fill it out consistently and accurately.

Do this starting now: record information on your sleep for two weeks, and do not read any further in this book until you have. You may be tempted to skip this step and keep reading, but the way to get the best results is to first have accurate information about your sleep. In the meantime, you can use what you have learned so far to set the stage for a better night’s sleep. Place a bookmark here for now… .

Step 2: Figure Out How Much Time You Spent in Bed

Welcome back! Now, what is the average difference between the time you got into bed and the time at which you got out of bed over the past two weeks? That is, how much time did you spend in bed? For example, if you got into bed at 10:00 p.m. to watch television and then got out of bed at 7:00 a.m., you spent nine hours in bed. Figure out how much time you spent in bed each night and total these times, then divide by the number of days you monitored your sleep (14, if you monitored for two weeks, as we suggest). This will give you your average time spent in bed per night. People who have sleep difficulties are often surprised by how much time they spend in bed each night. Nine hours in bed is not unusual. However, most adults cannot produce nine hours of sleep, so spending this much time in bed makes it more likely that you will be awake in bed and that you will spend less time building sleep drive out of bed.

Step 3: Figure Out How Much Time You Spent Sleeping

To find how much actual sleep you got, subtract the length of time you were awake in bed from the length of time that you were in bed. For example, if you were in bed for nine hours and it took you an hour to fall asleep, you spent ninety minutes awake in the middle of the night, and you did not get out of bed for an hour after you woke up in the morning (maybe you tried to get back to sleep), the time spent awake in bed was three and a half hours, so actual sleep time was five and a half hours. To arrive at the average amount of sleep your body produced, add together the times spent asleep on each of the nights you monitored and then divide the sum by the number of days you monitored your sleep (14, if you monitored for two weeks, as we suggest).

Step 4: Figure Out How Much Time You Should Spend in Bed Each Night

Now that you have calculated the average amount of sleep your body produces, this is essentially the answer to the question of how much time you should spend in bed. To make your sleep driver system work well for you (by producing deeper, more continuous sleep), you should be in bed only for about as long as your body usually sleeps. You can decide to be strict and aim for only the length of time you calculated in step 3, or, if you like, you can add an extra half hour to allow for the fact that even people who sleep well spend some time awake in bed, usually no more than thirty minutes. For example, if your average time spent asleep was five and a half hours, you can spend six hours in bed each night so that you get the amount of sleep you have been getting on average. If the average amount of time you spent asleep was less than four and a half hours, go ahead and give yourself five hours, because if you were to track your sleep for longer than two weeks your average would probably be at least four and a half hours; also, we recommend that you never spend less than five hours in bed, to avoid sleep deprivation. Write down your goal:

I should be spending no more than ___________ hours in bed each night.

What is the difference between the time you have been spending in bed on average over the past two weeks and your new time-in-bed recommendation? It is not unusual for there to be more than an hour difference between the two figures. In our example, the difference is at least three hours. The greater the difference, the more your sleep drive will build in the nights to follow.

Step 5: Make and Follow a New Schedule

The number of hours from step 4 is the new length of time you should spend in bed each night, seven nights a week.

If this is six hours, you might set a twelve o’clock bedtime and a six o’clock rise time (see chapter 3 for determining your best rise time). However, do not use your optimal length of time in bed to justify sleeping in if you go to bed late one night; stick to your rise time. That night you will be in bed for a shorter time, but this is okay because it will increase the pressure on the sleep driver to produce more deep sleep the next night.

You should also adhere to your new schedule each night even if you slept poorly the night before. Remember, you are trying to allow your body’s system to make up for lost sleep by producing greater amounts of deep sleep. If you give in to the understandable temptation to spend more time in bed in the morning following a night of poor sleep, you will undo the desired effect and will not receive the reward of deep sleep. In fact, you will likely sleep less deeply the following night because you will have spent less time building sleep drive.