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Hi, I'm Dr. Emerson Wickwire, a biobehaviorally trained clinical psychologist and sleep disorder specialist. These are my top sleep tips.
First, you need to set enough time for sleep. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults obtain a minimum of seven to eight hours of sleep per night. That means that if you go to bed at midnight and have to get out of bed at 6:30, there's no way you can obtain enough sleep. It's going to take you a little bit of time to fall asleep. You're going to have a little bit of tossing and turning. Set aside eight to nine hours for healthy sleep each day.
Number two, establish a bedroom environment that is conducive to sleep. Your bedroom should be cool, dark, quiet, and uncluttered. Visual clutter equals mental clutter, and mental clutter is incompatible with sleep.
Number three, establish a soothing pre-sleep wind-down routine. Just the same way, whether you're religious or not, you know that when you enter a church or a synagogue or a mosque, there are certain rituals that you follow. Develop rituals to help you unwind before bed. For example, wash your face, brush your teeth, put on your pajamas or nightgown in the same order. And depending on your activity level during the day, this wind-down period can last between 30 minutes and two hours. Establish a soothing and consistent wind-down before sleep.
Number four, manage your stress. It is normal to experience stress. It's a part of life. All of us experience higher and lower levels of stress on any given day. It's important not to let your stress levels get too high because stress is incompatible with sleep. In fact, the centers of the brain that control stress and alertness and emotions like fear or disgust are exactly the centers of the brain that keep us awake. So we need to relax our brains and manage our stress levels. Exercise is a great way to do that.
Number five, spend time outdoors. This is important for two reasons. First, the more that we're outside, the more active that we'll be, and that's going to help lower the stress levels like we just talked about. Second, bright light is a very powerful melatonin suppressant. You've heard of melatonin; it's the hormone that sets the stage and helps us sleep at night. Bright light activates our brain and helps us feel more engaged during the day when we want to be, so that we can be more disengaged and sleep more deeply at night when we want to.
Number six, be judicious with your use of caffeine and other stimulants, particularly in the afternoon and evening. Caffeine makes it more difficult to fall asleep and it makes sleep quality worse. Even if you feel like an extra cup of coffee has no impact on your sleep, the fact is that it does. You might just not realize it.
Number seven, be careful with screens. And when I say screens, I'm talking about the digital devices that seem to control our lives. Bright light suppresses melatonin, particularly bright light in the blue spectrum. Blue light is very important when we talk about devices because blue light does two things. First, it increases what we call positive affect. Blue light makes us feel good, so it creates a reinforcing property of using your phone, for example, more and more. The second thing that blue light does is it suppresses melatonin, a hormone that helps set the stage in our brain for sleep. The last reason to be very judicious and even avoid electronic stimulation close to bedtime is that most of the things we read on our phones or on our tablets or on our devices are designed to engage and enrage. I've spoken to thousands of people about their sleep, and I've never met one for whom the news is relaxing.
I hope you found these tips entertaining and useful to help you obtain the high-quality sleep that you need and deserve.