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The secrets to sleep and waking up

Sleep is so important. If you have problems waking up, like I have, then what I have to say here may be of help to you…

According to psychologist and sleep expert David F. Dinges, Ph.D., of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology and Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, irritability, moodiness and dis-inhibition are some of the first signs a person experiences from lack of sleep. If a sleep-deprived person doesn’t sleep after the initial signs, said Dinges, the person may then start to experience apathy, slowed speech and flattened emotional responses, impaired memory and an inability to be novel or multi-task. As a person gets to the point of falling asleep, he or she will fall into micro sleeps (5-10 seconds) that cause lapses in attention, nod off while doing an activity like driving or reading and then finally experience hypnagogic hallucinations, the beginning of REM sleep. (Dinges, Sleep, Sleepiness and Performance, 1991)

So lately I’ve been treating myself like a sort of human guinea pig. I’ve always been ‘plagued’ by sleep problems for as far as I can remember, so I decided to do a little testing. Here’s what I’ve found so far…

I use an iPhone app called ‘Sleep Cycle’ and so far it’s been the best alarm clock I’ve ever had. It’s designed to sense if you’re in a deep sleep or not and then attempts to wake you when your in the partially awake cycle. It doesn’t do this 100% of the time but its better than a standard ‘unintelligent’ alarm clock.

I found that when waking in a deep sleep your mindset is different to that when waking close to the awake state. By different I mean that your mind seems to only be able to think about how to get back to sleep, and it will be ingenious in reasoning while doing so! For instance you wake at 8:03, you’ll reset the alarm for 8:05. Then at 8:05 you’ll reason to reset it to 8:10. After all, what difference does a few minutes make? And then BAM you fell into a deep sleep again, managed to turn off the alarm without your concious brain knowing and its now 10:23, you’ve overslept. Thus enforcing the belief system that “I can’t wake up on time” and annoying anyone who was relying on you to be somewhere at a certain time.

A glass of water can pull you out of the deep-sleep-waking conundrum of wanting more sleep. It’s like an emergency defibrillator and thus you should keep one handy before you go to bed. When you wake up feeling like you want to go back to sleep, just sit up and drink a pint of water. It will help.

In contrast there’ll be times you can relate to where you’ve woken up and had no problem waking up. You have all your faculties and there’s really no problem. This is what happens when you wake up in a partially awake state and not from a deep sleep state. Your mind is more on the day ahead of you rather than finding ways to reason with yourself for going back to sleep.

The thing I’ve discovered is that half an hour can be all it takes to make a difference. This is really important. Just getting to bed half an hour earlier it can make you wake up in a partially awake state instead of a deep sleep state.

Another thing I’ve also discovered is to cut caffeine at least 6 hours before you intend on going to bed. Even if you don’t think caffeine affects you that much any more. It’s not that it doesn’t affect you any more, it’s that you’ve become so used to it from abusing it!

Drinking alcohol or beverages containing caffeine in the afternoon or evening, exercising close to bedtime, following an irregular morning and night-time schedule, and working or doing other mentally intense activities right before or after getting into bed can disrupt sleep.

If you have trouble getting to sleep quickly or you often find yourself staying up on the computer, take sleeping tablet an hour before you want to sleep, I promise you it will trigger a subconscious countdown in your head that will enable you to get things done quickly that you intended to get done before sleeping tonight and will prevent you from procrastinating. And you’ll feel so beautifully drowsy come the time you actually should be in bed you’ll have no option not to, in fact you’ll want to, instead of staying up all night on facebook, youtube, games, or some other poison.

Stress is the number one cause of short-term sleeping difficulties, according to sleep experts. Common triggers include school- or job-related pressures, a family or marriage problem and a serious illness or death in the family. Usually the sleep problem disappears when the stressful situation passes.

You may think you only need 4 or 5 hours sleep a night, but intend on getting 8 anyway. 8 is the magic number (3 is not so magic in this case!).

So this is what I’ve discovered so far, feel free to share your experiences and discoveries in the comment section below. I’m interested to hear!

Quotes cited from: http://www.apa.org/topics/sleep/why.aspx