Do you ever wake up in the morning and feel like you need a nap?
You might not be getting good, restful sleep. According to the American Psychiatric Association, more than 30% of Americans say their sleep quality is poor, or they aren’t getting enough sleep each night.
So, how can you fix that? Developing a morning and bedtime routine is one place to start, says Shelby Harris, a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in behavioral sleep medicine.
“If you’re someone who really hasn’t made sleep any sort of a priority in your life, or you’re struggling with it, or you’re just even struggling to get enough sleep — like making time for sleep — routine is a really useful thing to help your body know when it should be getting sleepy,” Harris says. “And then in the morning, waking up is the same thing. Sleep is not an on/off switch. It needs to kind of be coaxed into waking up, happening at bedtime, and the routine is that thing that really helps to get you there.”
4 questions with Shelby Harris
What should we consider doing at bedtime to help us sleep?
“There really isn’t one thing that is the magic thing that helps, but the idea is to really try to aim for at least a half hour to one hour. If you can’t find a half hour, start with 10 minutes of just moving towards your bed and doing something that’s quiet, calm and relaxing, ideally in dim light. So it helps to put the end of the day. It could be journaling. It could be stretching. It could be listening to a podcast, whatever it is. A little bit of a buffer between the day and the night is really important. Dim the lights, really create almost that fake sunset in your house just to help you be able to set that stage to go to sleep.”
What should you avoid at bedtime?
“Unfortunately, the older you get, it tends to take longer to metabolize caffeine. It takes about eight hours on average for half of the cup of coffee that you’re having to be eliminated from your body. That’s the halfway. So really try to limit it at night.
“Alcohol, heavy meals, vigorous exercise, liquids, try to limit all those things within three hours of going to bed because that can definitely impact the quality of the sleep that you get. And then also a lot of people will talk about the blue light and the screens. Believe it or not, it’s actually been debated a lot in the field just how significant of an impact the blue light makes. But I do caution people just try to stay away from a screen for about 20-30 minutes before bed because you will get sucked into stuff. All these social media apps are meant to be addictive, and so many people just stay up later because they’re hooked on using them.
“Moderate exercise for some people is not a problem. The vigorous exercise, what it does is it raises your body temperature, and when you’re going to bed at night, you actually want to have your room be really cool because your body temperature is supposed to drop throughout the night. So if you’re going to bed already having a very warm core, it can make it harder to set into sleep.”
How should we think about a morning wake-up routine?
“The first thing to do is just to get light, right? And not everyone has the ability to spend lots of time going out for that leisurely walk. I mean, just open your shades. And even if it’s a cloudy day out or you don’t have the most light in your room, get those shades open and just try to bathe your eyes in some light as you’re getting ready in the morning. A lot of people just kind of lay in bed for a while with the shades pulled down as they’re slowly waking up. That’s not going to help. The light really helps to set the circadian rhythm.
“And then also hydrate. So a nice cup or glass of cold water is really helpful to help wake you up a little bit because sleep is actually very dehydrating. And then go downstairs, have that cup of coffee if you really want that. What are those cues that are alerting you that start the day? Is it the smell of your coffee being made? Is it the smell of some eggs being made? Something like that can really be useful.”
How can you start establishing a morning and bedtime routine?
“Start small. Start with one thing. Is it maybe five minutes before bed, you start to detach from using your phone? Maybe that’s a good place to start. In the morning, it could be something like, ‘I’m not gonna use my snooze alarm’ … because the snooze alarm actually can make you feel more sleepy in the morning. You’re going back into sleep, and then you keep waking up from it, and then the sleep you’re getting is not restorative. So really, in the morning, maybe just starting to be consistent with that wake time as often as possible, because then you’re going to start to learn when to wake up. So one thing, when you’ve done it pretty well for a week or two, then you add on.”
This interview has been edited for clarity.
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Samantha Raphelson produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Raphelson also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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