Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
It’s 3:27 am. You do the math all over again and it's official. You can't sleep. Now what?
If I fall asleep now, I’ll only get 4 hours and 32 minutes of sleep.
Then, everything snowballs. You worry about the morning meeting you have, the deadline you’re up against, your student loans, and somehow, you also worry about something you said on a date 7 years ago. Why?
Table of Contents
When we can’t fall asleep, our minds tend to wander to all of the worries we’ve ever had.
So what do we do about it? Do we try to relax, change up our nighttime routine, or give up on sleeping in the middle of the night in favor of getting things done?
Since we aren’t sleep experts, we turned to the experts at the Sleep Foundation and a few other places to figure out what to do when we’re held captive by the middle-of-the-night clock ticking by.
If you need to skip ahead (like, if you need to sleep now) we created these jump links for you.
5 Reasons You Can’t Sleep
We’ve rounded up the usual suspects when it comes to the inability to sleep. If you’re experiencing insomnia on a nightly basis, we’d encourage you to speak to your healthcare provider.
If you’re experiencing sleep loss due to current stressors or bad pre-bedtime habits, you could switch things up to encourage better sleep habits and create a better sleep cycle.
1. Your Circadian Rhythm is Off
Your circadian rhythm is basically your internal clock, which works on a 24-hour schedule. To put it simply, your circadian rhythm is a symphony that includes your cells, hormones, body temperature, and metabolism.
All of the players that make up your circadian rhythm—and how it works—respond to one thing in common: light.
Our circadian rhythms don’t really like technology too much, especially the technology that comes with blue light.
Our circadian rhythms also rely on habits that mimic the sun’s activity. In short, when the sun rises, so too, should your body (okay maybe an hour or so after). Once the sun sets, your body’s circadian rhythm will also mimic it by winding down.
What to Do:
Keeping your circadian rhythm in check relies on two main things—light and consistency. These two elements can be extremely difficult to achieve, especially in a “screens on” world.
To keep yourself regulated, try these two fixes:
- Limit screen time before bed (translation: at least one half hour of no blue light before bed)
- Try to keep your sleep schedule consistent. This means waking and going to sleep within an hour timeframe, every night, or whenever possible.
2. Your Screen Time is Keeping You Awake
We sort of touched on this, but our screens feed into everything. Aside from the blue light that’s messing with your circadian rhythm, your screens can also jumpstart stressors and anxiety.
When your mind starts to wander, you might even seek out other stressors. It’s scrolling 178 weeks back on your ex’s Instagram, mistakenly hearting a photo, and the resulting meltdown.
What to Do:
Create a rule. Put your phone, tablet, or computer in another room, Try, really try, to disconnect from all devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime.
Instead, replace your late-night IG stalking with a bedtime journal or by hacking away at your paper books that have been piling up on your nightstand. Is there anything better than falling asleep to a good book? Doubtful!
3. Caffeine, Alcohol + Food Ingestion
What you ingest before bedtime has a huge effect on your sleep. If you’ve ever gone directly to bed after having a few cocktails, you know how what I’m talking about. Aside from the dehydration and low blood sugar that alcohol causes, it also disrupts your sleep.
Alcohol disrupts your body’s temperature, your nighttime hormone activity, and your cortisol release, which results in junk sleep. Similarly, caffeine and spicy foods disrupt your sleep by creating discomfort and delaying melatonin production.
What to Do:
Nutritionists generally advise that you eat your last meal three hours before bed. This allows digestion to begin, preventing heartburn and reflux.
Caffeine is a little tougher to pin down, so we turned to the experts. Dr. Natasha Bhuyan of One Medical explains that it takes six hours for half of the caffeine consumed to break down in your body.
Bhuyan advises drinking your last cup of coffee ten hours before bedtime. This is dependent on your tolerance levels. Generally speaking, the last cup should be consumed before 2 pm.
4. Your Anxiety, Stress, or Depression
If you’re experiencing insomnia due to elevated stress or anxiety, you’re certainly not alone.
Millions of people are kept awake by worries every single night. According to a National Sleep Foundation survey, 43 percent of people aged 13–64 have reported lying awake at night due to stress at least once in the past month.
Stress and anxiety do much more damage than stealing your precious sleep time. That’s why it’s so important to manage. If you're suffering from depression, you might find yourself wanting to sleep all the time or completely unable to capture any rest.
What to Do:
Before diving into our fun, non-medical expert tips, if you suspect that you are suffering from chronic stress or chronic anxiety, please seek professional guidance from your physician.
If you’re having a particularly stressful day, week, month, or year, then keep in tune with it.
Journal: Journaling before bedtime has proven to be an effective way to reduce bedtime worry and stress. Take about 5-10 minutes to jot down the worries you are currently navigating and how you could work towards assuaging your worries tomorrow. Close your journal and try to put it to bed, too.
Schedule "Worry" Time: Another similar technique is to create designated “worry time” in your day. This could be a great way to pick yourself up during the 1 pm to 3 pm slump, which is commonly a “tired time” for all of us.
In short, try to suss out your biggest worries before you hit your super comfortable mattress and curl up under a blanket.
If you're suffering from depression, please look to resources to address your mental health, because it is so important. Seek out a therapist to treat your depression—whether with talk therapy, medications, or a combination of the two.
Here are some resources to help you get started :
- SAMSHA Helpline
- ADAA (Anxiety and Depression Association of America)
- NIMH
- American Psychological Association
- Care for Your Mind
5. You Have a Sleep Disorder
Finally, again, we aren't experts on sleep or sleep disorders.
In fact, all we know is our own experiences with a lost night of sleep due to stress, a nighttime waking, or a screaming baby. If you are self-treating with sleeping pills or sleep medications that are no longer working, seek professional treatment. If you're experiencing symptoms of insomnia—like frequent waking, unsatisfactory sleep, or difficulty falling asleep—get some assistance.
Sleep loss can be due to other medical conditions. In addition to that, long-term sleeping issues can cause medical conditions like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and more.
However, if you suffer from disordered sleeping, please contact a medical professional. Some of the most common sleep disorders include:
- Restless Leg Syndrome
- Insomnia
- REM Sleep Behavior Disorder
- Sleep Apnea
- Narcolepsy
- Chronic Pain
What to Do:
Contact a medical professional to diagnose and treat a sleep disorder or a medical condition that is keeping you from achieving a good night's sleep.
While it’s only advantageous to follow common sleep advice and practice good sleep hygiene, seek medical intervention if you’re experiencing elongated sleep problems. A professional sleep study could tell you a lot about why you're missing sleep and how to treat your condition.
How to Fall Asleep
So how do we make sure we fall asleep? How do we change our daytime activities to make sure our sleep is as delicious as we want it to be?
Here are a few lifestyle changes to help you get the sleep that you want—to refresh your mind and your body.
1. Create a Cozy Bedtime Routine
If you’ve ever met a toddler, you’ve met an expert on the nighttime routine.
Toddlers, usually led by their doting parents who are studying their sleep-wake cycle, require approximately 80 books, dim lights, soothing words, perfectly-warmed glasses of milk, dark environments, a thermostat setting between 68- 72 degrees, and a humming white noise sound machine to get to sleep. Oh yeah, and another book—and one more glass of water, please!
If a toddler can win down and get to bed, then so can you. Our advice? Mimic a toddler’s bedtime routine.
Go To Sleep Checklist:
- Make space for wind-down time (at least 30 minutes) without electronic devices or blue lights.
- Read a few pages of a book or write in your sleep diary
- Make sure your room is at a pleasant temperature
- Diffuse any light pollution with darkening curtains
- Comfortable sleep clothing
- Calming scents (like lavender) on your pillow or eye mask
- White noise machine or fan
2. Try Relaxing Breathing Techniques
Try some relaxation techniques using a tool you already have—your lungs.
Controlled breathing can help create a sense of calm. Also known as pranayamic breathing, these relaxation techniques help to reduce stress in the nervous system while prepping your brain for a night of sleep.
We found these three breathing techniques to be very helpful:
- Controlled Breathing aka Persed Lip Breathing
- 4-7-8 Method from Dr. Andrew Weil
- Square Breathing aka 4x4 Breathing
3. Progressive Muscle Relaxation
If you haven't tried progressive muscle relaxation, then you are in for a treat. Progressive muscle relaxation allows you to check in with every part of your body and let it go.
You can progress from your feet up or vice-versa, focusing on these muscle groups:
- Feet
- Lower legs
- Thighs
- Hips and buttocks
- Stomach
- Back
- Wrists and forearms
- Hands
- Chest
- Shoulders
- Front of the neck
- Around your mouth
- Around your nose and eyes
- Forehead
Here's how to do it:
- Step One: Breathe in and tense your first muscle group hard (but not to the point of pain) for 4 to 10 seconds.
- Two: Breath out and completely relax the muscle group quickly.
- Step Three: Relax for 10 to 20 seconds before repeating on the next muscle group. notice the difference between how your muscles feel when they are tense or relaxed.
- Step Four: Once finished, count backward from 5 to 1 to bring your mind back.
4. Sleep-ify Your Day
Make sure that your day’s activities all lead to a good night of sleep. This includes:
- Exercise (at least 20 minutes a day + yes, walks count)
- Limit naps to 10-20 minutes
- Watch your diet for easily digestible foods + eat your last "big" meal 3 hours prior to bedtime
We also have more tips on how to spend your day so that you can get rest and become a morning person for you to check out!
25 Things to Do When You Simply Can’t Sleep
When you can’t sleep, and you’ve tried everything, what can you do? If it's a one-time thing, then maybe you can use this unexpected awake time to get some things done.
If you can't sleep and you have to get out of your bed, you can. Michael Perlis, PhD, director of the behavioral sleep medicine program at the University of Pennsylvania, explains why you should get out of bed if you can't fall back asleep.
He explains, "The problem with staying in bed for any appreciable amount of time is that this reinforces sleeplessness, physiologically and psychologically."
We created this list of things to do to alleviate stress and maybe tire you out a little bit so that you can get to sleep. Here are some activities to try with the intention of trying to get back to sleep in 20-30 minutes.
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Read a book or an article that's been on your list
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Take a shower or a bath. Sometimes this could help you fall back asleep, especially if you tend to be a night shower person
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Listen to a podcast
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Listen to relaxation or meditation tracks. Calm or Headspace are great for this. Their bedtime stories are *chef's kiss*
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Clean something. Channel your energy into cleaning out your bathroom sink or cleaning your mirror. If you live with others, don't pull out the vacuum.
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Stretch or do some yoga
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Write down how you're feeling in a journal
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Try grounding techniques
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Meditate
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Listen to some low-key music
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Play a game with pen and paper (like Sudoku or a crossword puzzle)
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Color or draw
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Knitting something
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Wash your face
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Brush + floss your teeth
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Make a gratitude list
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Make a to-do list
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Create a list of goals
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Brew a cup of herbal tea
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Re-organize a junk drawer
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Fold some laundry
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Make a vision board
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Try a craft project
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Re-write a new draft of your resume on paper
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Create a savings plan
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Have some warm milk
