You can be doing everything right, but if you aren’t sleeping well or long enough, your brain will suffer and rebel—which results in more “stupid” injuries, silly mistakes, and life-threatening lapses in judgment.
If you’ve been breathing in fight or flight all day, then how can you expect your body to just flip the switch and go to sleep at night? All day, you’ve been telling your nervous system that it’s in code red, and now, just because you decide it’s bedtime, you think your body is going to slow down and calm itself enough to turn off as you would a computer. No way. Your body has to enjoy several moments of calm throughout the day in order to get a good chunk of decompression at night.
There’s the good news and then there’s the bad news. The good news: while most people “ventilate” less while sleeping, at least their style of breathing is better (less Vertical, more Horizontal/Lateral). The bad news: the better style of breathing at night doesn’t make up for bad daytime breathing; in fact, it barely nicks the surface of the problem.
So when I talk about sleep, I’m covering several different issues.
1. You can’t get to sleep because the chatter (“the committee”) won’t shut up. Your brain won’t turn off, and you find yourself getting angry at it.
2. You wake up too early (often in a mild panic state, which I call “slap awake”).
3. You wake up intermittently and toss and turn before going back to sleep.
4. You snore (which is a big red flag for apnea, meaning you’re holding your breath throughout the night—very detrimental to your health).
Kids have rituals to tell their bodies it’s time to go to bed. They need to take a tubby, get into their jammies, and pick out a book. Adults don’t have rituals, but if they did, there would be fewer fifth cups of coffee and reduced complaints of insomnia and fatigue around the conference table the next day. Here are some nonnegotiables related to “sleep hygiene” that you have to integrate into your evening routine.
1. If you have items on your list such as “I can’t go to bed and fall asleep unless the dishes are done,” cross them out. You actually might have to “retrain” yourself to be able to leave dishes in the sink—they aren’t going anywhere and will be there tomorrow. This is just an example of a perceived “must do” that truly can wait. (You’ll learn in the next chapter how to determine when your stress is self-inflicted.)
2. Get mean about your sleep. If your friends or family don’t get your polite boundaries regarding your sleep, get nasty. You have my permission.
3. Nix all the buzzing, beeping, and little red/green lights. Be really stealthy about checking—if you do it carefully, you’ll probably find there are at least one or two little red lights that signal to your brain it shouldn’t turn off completely.57 Same thing with potential buzzing; your average home has a laundry list of things that go off, including beeping when batteries are low.
4. Turn it off. Turn what off? All of it. If it is a device that needs to be charged or plugged in, if it has a big or small screen, turn it off. The temptation is huge, but set a time at night when all your gadgets turn off, no matter what. The worst thing that can happen is that the next morning at the office you won’t be part of the conversation about the talking dog video that got over 20,000 hits while you were sleeping.
5. Many people will tell you they keep their phones on just in case of emergency. Shorten that list of emergency folks by half and then set your phone to ring only if it’s one of the select few (after you have told them firmly what your bedtime is).
6. Soft pajamas, classical music? Figure out what your triggers for sleep are. Just remember, they’re helpful, not magic. And make sure you heed rule number 4.
Your otherwise demure significant other snores like a freight train at night? Earplugs might be your new best friends. Try different brands to see which ones work for you. Got a big presentation tomorrow? Separate beds or crating for the snoring pooch doesn’t mean you don’t love them (spouse and pet, respectively); it’s just being practical and protective of your stress levels.
FAQ: As I train my body and brain to agree that it’s bedtime, will the time I take falling asleep get shorter and shorter? Yes! Just like the active toddler who falls asleep in the car, you can train yourself to go bed as long as you’re firm with your rules. While during the first week your pre-bedtime ritual may take an hour, after a month you can get it down to forty-five minutes, and so on. Although that may seem like a lot of time for your brain to “get” that it’s bedtime, remember, it’s been on high alert for ten hours straight (plus, it’s better to take the extra time before bed rather than having an hour or two of tossing and turning later).
FAQ: I’m not a nap person, but I’d like to be. Any suggestions? Often, it’s about finding the right time and space, and knowing it’s only going to be ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes. Troubleshoot and get creative. Often, just getting away for a few moments from all the different types of information being hurled at you will let you get into a quasi-sleep state that can be a great reboot.
Lobbing a pillow at them may be enough to get your college roommates to roll over and stop snoring. It has been confirmed that the supine sleeping position—sleeping on your back—causes excessive nasal airway pressure that in turn can lead to constriction and snoring. Sleep apnea is a broad condition of disorders that cause pauses (ten to thirty seconds) in breathing during sleep due to cramped airways, leading to oxygen deprivation, interrupted sleep cycles, and lower overall health. Really, it’s not just snoring.
And it’s documented that these disorders have increased dramatically in the last two decades. Critical as well is the fact that this condition also carries risk factors for stroke and serious cardiovascular diseases.
The remedy of choice is forcing air down your pipes with a Positive Airway Pressure (PAP) machine. Mouth guards that create space in the mouth have varying success rates. Losing weight and rolling over (prompted by a shove from the other side of the bed or a vibrating sleep position trainer) are often the simple solutions that might improve this very serious problem.
REM deprivation causes mild psychological disturbances, such as anxiety, irritability, hallucinations, and difficulty concentrating; moreover, it may cause appetite and aggression to increase.
Did you know that there is no official terminology to distinguish between disparate types of snores? The British Snoring & Sleep Apnoea Association tells us that, nonetheless, “t here are differences that are circumstantial, qualitative and—with respect to noise level—quantitative. There are, for example, those ‘conventional’ snores, which might be emitted by almost anyone at some point, that are in effect rhythmic but somewhat noisy breaths that happen while the person is asleep … At the other end of the spectrum are those extremely loud snorts that follow the ominous silence of a sleep apnea … [and] are an overt sign of a serious medical condition.”
Sleep deprivation disrupts the hormones in the body that control appetite. Obesity increases the risk of breathing-related sleep disorders such as snoring and obstructive sleep apnea, which in turn impair sleep quality and contribute to sleep deprivation.58
Whether it’s insomnia or your (or someone else’s) snoring, “bad” sleep can stress you out and make your daytime cortisol level higher. The result: a vicious cycle of sleeplessness and stress.
While you’re reorganizing your life to support your new quest for better sleep (by losing weight and training yourself to sleep on your side to overcome your sleep apnea), a daily fifteen-minute meditation that puts you into a deep meditative state can count as a well-deserved and much-needed nap. More important, it immediately lowers your cortisol, so that flipping the switch to sleep at night will be far easier.
1. Make sure you’ve addressed all the sleep hygiene issues spoken about previously.
2. Stop yourself from getting dramatic or fatalistic about your lack of sleep—that will just rile you up. Even if you don’t quite believe it, repeat to yourself that rest is almost as good as sleep.
3. Put an eye pillow or bag of rice on your belly and do a hundred belly breaths. You can substitute your favorite calming breath count as well.
4. Listen to the sound of your breath—actually try to make it noisy. Hearing your breathing can help you get to sleep.
The belly breath helped me sleep. I’d put a bag of rice on my belly so that it wouldn’t fall and wake me if I fell asleep, and tried to get to one hundred. The first week I got to eighty, the second and third it got faster and faster. I’m now trying to set a new record. —Jennifer, age 54
On Sunday night, I’d lie in bed trying to get to sleep, but my brain would not be able to turn off. I’d run through scenarios, to-do lists, everything about the week ahead of me. As time went by, I’d get more upset at what was left of the night for me to sleep, knowing for sure I’d now be starting Monday tired. Relearning how to breathe and oxygenating myself better during the day, then having a relaxing breathing practice for before getting into bed, has meant that rarely happens anymore. —Santino, age 49
57 If you really want to find out what those light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are doing to your sleep, check out Kathleen E. West et al., “Blue Light from Light-emitting Diodes Elicits a Dose-dependent Suppression of Melatonin in Humans,” Journal of Applied Psychology 110, no. 3 (2011): 619–26.
58 For more on this, see M. F. Fitzpatrick et al., “Effect of Nasal or Oral Breathing Route on Upper Airway Resistance During Sleep,” European Respiratory Journal 22, no. 5 (2003): 827–32.