For some people, it’s not enough to get to sleep, but it’s staying asleep that’s hard
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Sleep is vital to good health.
“You want seven to eight hours of sleep at least to promote health,” said Casey Donovan, nurse practitioner at Fulton Primary Care. “It helps your body recover and regulate. If you don’t have a good sleep, it affects how your body functions and can affect your mood.”
If you regularly fall asleep well, but wake up too early, most sleep advice does not seem to apply. Falling asleep isn’t really the problem.
For people with disrupted sleep, tackling sleep hygiene represents a good first step. Avoid drinking too much in the evening and nix caffeine after lunch. Exercise earlier in the day, not right before bed. Some people find a warm bath and light snack before bed as a good way to wind down. Skip screen time a few hours before bed and dim the lights. Engage in a quiet activity that’s not overly stimulating.
Wear comfortable pajamas and use appropriate bedding. The bedroom should be cool, dark and quiet. Using a fan or air conditioner for white noise may help. Blackout shades or an eye covering can help block disruptive light.
Reserve the bedroom for only sleep and intimacy. Watching TV, paying bills or doing other stimulating activity in bed trains the body to not sleep in bed. Avoid allowing piles of laundry, papers and other clutter in the bedroom as these can generate stress. The bedroom needs to be a place for peace and rest.
One area commonly overlooked is the bed itself. Hailey Kobielski, sales consultant at Joe Tahan’s Furniture, said that mattresses should be replaced about every 10-15 years, as most mattress company warranties last only a decade. Her store has several locations in the Mohawk Valley region.
“It depends on how well you take care of them,” she added. “A lot of times, you’re not supposed to flip them, but you’re supposed to rotate them. A lot of mattresses have inner springs that are one side only.”
Sleeping on a worn-out mattress “can affect your body every single day with back, neck, hip and knee aches and pains,” Kobielski said. “If you don’t hit the REM sleep cycle, then it can affect your mental health on top of that.”
Even after following the tenants of sleep hygiene, staying asleep can be problematic.
Alice Hoagland, Ph.D., at Rochester Regional Health, said that “anytime someone has slept four to five hours, they’ve ‘bled off’ the sleep pressure. When we first go to sleep, we’re sleepier than later in the day. It’s related to physiological causes as to why we are so sleepy. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not sleepy, but you’re not as sleepy as when you first went to bed. It gives your brain the opportunity to start to think. Most human beings start thinking about things that have been troubling them throughout the day. It produces histamine. It’s a very alerting neurotransmitter. This is one of the reasons that when people wake up at 2 a.m., they fire off histamine that keeps them awake one or two hours, when they run out of histamine.”
Under a professional’s guidance, it may help to temporarily go to bed a little later to help train the body to sleep longer.
She cautioned that using a screen, unnecessarily urinating and reading an interesting book in the middle of the night are ill—advised as these activities can stimulate wakefulness.
Sometimes, people have racing thoughts that keep them awake. Hoagland said that learning how to control “catastrophic thinking” can help restore better sleep.
Writing down thoughts and setting them aside may help, as can planning to tackle those issues tomorrow.
Over-the-counter supplements like melatonin are more geared toward helping people fall asleep. Hoagland said that its short half-life isn’t helpful in keeping people asleep, even extended-release formulas.
As for sleep—aid medication, “they should not be using them, primarily because there are long-term cognitive consequences for using them for an extended period of time,” Hoagland said. “Countries all over Europe are banning their use. People take them because they’re over-the-counter and they presume they’re safe.”