Kathryn Pinkham – Three Things You Need to Know to Improve Your Sleep
We’re delighted to have partnered with sleep expert and founder of The Insomnia Clinic, Kathryn Pinkham, for a three-month collaboration to share Kathryn’s knowledge and expertise with our audience.
When you have insomnia, it’s easy to feel as though there’s no way out. If you struggle to fall asleep or keep waking through the night, your GP has only offered sleeping pills and you don’t want to rely on these, or you feel like you have tried everything, but nothing has helped, then don’t despair, there are things you can do!
In this blog Kathryn discusses the three things you need to know about to improve your sleep, and why you are stuck in the cycle of poor sleep.
Sleep drive
The first thing you need to know about is sleep drive. Our sleep drive is like an ‘appetite’ for sleep, the hungrier we are the better sleep we get. This drive is created by how much time you spend out of bed. This sounds counterintuitive as the first thing we do when we are tired is go to bed earlier, but without building up an appetite for sleep- you become vulnerable to a poor night.
So, if you want to improve your sleep, going to bed early and getting up later isn’t going to help.Instead, go to bed later and set your alarm for half an hour or so earlier. This way, you’ll be reducing the time you’re spending in bed, and this will build up a healthier appetite and momentum to sleep well. So, put simply, spend less time in bed!
Body clock
The second thing that controls how well we sleep is our body clock. This doesn’t only control sleep and wake times, but also things like hunger, thirst and when you use the toilet. So, if you are in the habit of waking up at three AM, your body has simply got into a new pattern that you have unconsciously trained it to do.
A good way to explain this is that if I set my alarm for three AM for a week, then the week after, I probably wouldn’t need to set the alarm anymore as my body would naturally go into a lighter sleep and wake at that time. This is what happens when you wake and lie in bed feeling upset or frustrated, it becomes a habit.
One way to break this behaviour is to change this one habit. When you next wake up at three AM, you’re no longer going to look at the clock. We all do it as we want to know how much sleep we had or how much time we have left. But, when you check the time, firstly, you cement that routine by confirming to your body that it woke at the same time again so the cycle continues the next night. What’s more, it also triggers a negative thought process. When you see the time, you start to worry about the impact it’s going to cause. For example, how terrible you’re going to feel tomorrow or how it may impact your ability to work or parent well. Instead, simply set your alarm for the morning, go to bed later and wake up earlier and if you wake in the night, do not look at the time! This will help break the pattern.
Connection with your bed
The connection you have with your bed is key when it comes to good sleep. It might sound obvious, but if you spend 50% of your time in bed tossing and turning, wide awake, feeling frustrated and ruminating on your anxieties, then your bed will be attached to those negative feelings.
Good news, if you trained yourself to feel anxious in bed then you can re-train yourself to feel relaxed and sleepy again. The way we do that is by preempting these feelings. So, during the day, you need to take a pen and paper and write down all the feelings and worries you have. Some may be about sleep; some may be about other things. Just the act of writing them down is therapeutic, and signals to your brain that you’re allowing it space to think about these things.
We are all so busy we rarely make time to process our worries and fears, so instead they lay dormant until you go to bed and then they work hard to get your attention. This way, you take back control, make space for them during the day, make a plan for the anxieties that are within your control, and then at nighttime it will be easier to let the worries drift away.
I hope you’ve found these tips useful. If you want to work more on your sleep, I have an exclusive offer running on my Sleep Well & Live Better online course, offering £30 off for DREAMI customers with the code DREAMI30.