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Tips to Help You Sleep Better!

sleep better

Sleep! You might have already so many articles about this especially when you’ve not been getting quality sleep. Before we go deeper into how you can sleep better, let us first understand how we define sleep!

As per the world’s sleep research, William Dement (Author of promise of sleep) defines sleep as the ‘Moment when the brain starts producing theta waves’.  

Too technical! What exactly are theta waves? I don’t want to get too technical, so I will talk about medical jargon in the most simplest way possible.

The Brain Produces ‘Waves’ All The Time!

While you are awake (concentrating), your brain produces beta waves. When you are daydreaming, relaxing or lying around, your brain produces alpha waves. While your body is in the transition from relaxing to sleeping, that’s when your brain starts producing theta waves. When your body is in deep sleep, your body produces delta waves. sleep better

During this period, your body starts producing growth hormones. I always tell this to my patients. Your body undergoes repairs when you enter deep sleep which is very crucial for overall well being.

When I was learning more about sleep, the one question that often came to mind was, “How and when do we get dreams?”

After theta waves, there is one interesting thing which happens. It is called as REM Sleep or Rapid Eye Movement Sleep. This is when your eyes are moving with closed eyelids. You might be dreaming but you will not remember your dreams completely the next day.

According to me, these are just basic things about sleep which everyone should be aware of (and with good reason).

Do you ever get a feeling of waking up tired after sleeping for almost 9 hours?

When I ask this question to my patients, they say, “I am tired all the time!”

This is called as Sleep Deprivation.

How Do You Know That You Are Sleep Deprived?

I read a lot! One of the books that I read on sleep is the Promise of Sleep. The book spoke about a very cool way of figuring out if we are sleep deprived or not. Check out the steps below:

  • Go to bed with a spoon in your hand
  • Your hand should be in a position where the spoon is over the floor and not over the bed
  • Note the time when you plan to sleep
  • As soon as you fall asleep, your hand muscles will relax. Once this happens, the spoon will fall on the floor and the noise will wake you up.
  • Note the time when you wake up. That’s your own sleep latency.

There are many other sleep tests which are done as well to figure sleep deprivation out.

Now that we understand what happens when we sleep,

Follow These Tips to Sleep Better

As always, we go back to our basics: Sleep Hygiene

  • Restrict Tea/Coffee/Green Tea and other caffeinated drinks. Caffeine circulates in the system for at least 7.5 hours. Taking caffeinated drinks close to bedtime can mess your sleep schedule.
  • Make sure you create a sunset kind of environment post sunset with yellow dim lights so your body realises that it’s the time for you to relax, rest and sleep. Same thing goes for the gadgets! Blue light from your devices block the sleep hormone production. If you have long screen hours, try using blue blocking glasses post sunset.
  • Make sure that your room temperature is around 19-20. Usually, our body temperature tends to fall when we sleep. This will help you in maintaining an ideal body temperature when you wake up.
  • Try to avoid exercising, watching exciting/horror movies which will keep your mind active for a long period of time.

Apart from the basics,

Try the Sleep Restriction State Method

  • If you think you sleep 4 hours per night, then sleep for 4 hours only
  • Go to bed at 1 AM and set your alarm clock for 6AM. You’re not allowed to go to bed earlier than 1AM, or wake up later than 6AM.
  • You will be tired the following day. Extremely tired! That’s a good thing. You will be wondering, what is good in being tired but this will drive you to sleep earlier the next day
  • The next day, you add ½ hour to the sleep time. You go to bed at 12:30AM instead of 1 AM and wake up at 6AM.
  • Keep increasing your sleep window by ½ hour per day till you feel the sleep debt is paid off.

Why are we doing this? It’s because during this time of the sleep window, you won’t be allowed to use stimulants to keep yourself up. No coffee or any kind of caffeinated beverages. We are doing this so that your body starts building up the fatigue, drowsiness and eventually you will end up sleeping. This will help in recovering your sleep debt.

Sometimes, stiff neck muscles will decrease the blood supply to the brain, which results into fragmented sleep. Getting a physio evaluation for the same will also help in improving sleep quality.

Hope these tips help you sleep better! Do type your thoughts and queries in the comments below!

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Sleep Deprivation linked to High-calorie food choices

Sleep-deprived

Photo Credit: iStock

There is more science supporting that getting a good night’s is best for your health.

A new study published in the journal Food Product Design, by Author Colin Chapman, MSc, of Uppsala University says that obesity found in people who were deprived of one night’s sleep purchased more calories and grammes of food in a mock supermarket on the following day.

Sleep deprivation also led to increased blood levels of ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger, on the following morning; however, there was no correlation between individual ghrelin levels and food purchasing, suggesting that other mechanisms such as impulsive decision making may be more responsible for increased purchasing.

The Uppsala University of Sweden is the oldest university of the Nordic countries and offers courses in Science and Technology, Medicine, Humanity and Social Sciences. Researchers at Uppsala University investigated whether sleep deprivation may impair or alter an individual’s food purchasing choices based on its established tendency to impair higher-level thinking and to increase hunger.

They hypothesised that sleep deprivation’s impact on hunger and decision making would make for the ‘perfect storm’ with regard to shopping and food purchasing-leaving individuals hungrier and less capable of employing self-control and higher-level decision-making processes to avoid making impulsive, calorie-driven purchases.

On the morning after one night of total sleep deprivation, as well as after one night of sleep, the researchers give 14 normal-weight men a fixed budget (approximately $50). The men were instructed to purchase as much as they could out of a possible 40 items, including 20 high-caloric foods and 20 low-caloric foods. The prices of the high-caloric foods were then varied to determine if total sleep deprivation affects the flexibility of food purchasing. Before the task, participants received a standardised breakfast to minimise the effect of Hunger on their purchases.

Sleep-deprived men purchased significantly more calories (+9%) and grammes (+18%) of food than they did after one night of sleep. The researchers also measured blood levels of ghrelin, finding that the hormone’s concentration was higher after total sleep deprivation; however, this increase did not correlate with food purchasing behaviour.

Their finding provides a strong rationale for suggesting that patients with concerns regarding caloric intake and weight gain maintain a healthy, normal sleep schedule.

This study supports a link between sleep loss and Obesity.

Findings from a study published in the journal Nature Communications that found losing sleep can make you more likely to crave junk foods rather than healthy foods. Other studies have linked poor sleeping habits to increased appetites.

Results from the study show that sleep deprivation significantly decreased activity in appetitive evaluation regions within the brain during food desirability choices, combined with increased activity in the amygdala. This change in brain activity is further associated with an increase in the desire for weight gain promoting high-calorie foods following sleep deprivation.

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