Hey sleepyhead! Tips for getting more slumber

For now, our advice would be to simply be sure you are following them — if your sleep starts running smoothly, you can then read on and learn why at your leisure!

Sleep Hygiene Instructions

• Avoid going to bed until you are drowsy. Maintain a consistent rising time, even if you go to bed late, whether during the workweek or on weekends.
• Limit napping. If you must take a nap, it should be short — about half an hour — and finished by mid-afternoon.
• Avoid all caffeine after noon. Limiting yourself to one cup in the morning is best.
• Avoid nicotine and alcohol in the evening, or if you awaken at night.
• Avoid exercising in the late evening, or if you awaken at night. Vigorous exercise ending four to six hours before bedtime, on the other hand, may deepen your sleep.
• Limit fluids as much as possible in the four to six hours before bedtime.
• Be sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, and well ventilated. Keep it at a comfortable temperature. Turn your clock so you cannot read the time if you awaken at night. Be sure your pet is not disturbing your sleep.

We understand that these prescriptions are deceptively straightforward.

It’s easy enough to pledge to “Limit napping,” for example, but much harder in practice to pass up the opportunity to catch up on sleep for an hour or two after a particularly rough night. If your sleep does not improve following reasonable compliance with these instructions, do not despair. We have written this book with you in mind. We won’t pretend that it will make you a full-fledged sleep specialist. But you should be able to perform tune-ups and basic repairs.

Let’s get started with a discussion of why something as fundamental as sleep can nonetheless be so unreliable. You will soon learn that the apparent simplicity of sleep is also deceptive — its appearance actually depends upon the coordination of a complex array of factors. Moreover, some of the key attributes that differentiate our species from other animals also predispose us to sleeplessness. In effect, insomnia is all too human!

Sleep Is Complicated
Sleep used to be thought of as a kind of backdrop — a dark, inert curtain against which our waking lives played out. We believed sleep simply appeared by default whenever alertness waned. But after more than fifty years of research, we can decisively reject this lifeless view of sleep. Sleep is actively produced by subcortical brain mechanisms. Its structure (known as its architecture) reflects a three-way parlay among competing interests: the body’s requirement for deeper, quieter Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep; intermittent need for more physiologically active and cognitively stimulating Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep; and a fluctuating propensity to be awake. The result of such internal negotiation is a cyclic alternation of NREM and REM sleep stages occurring about every ninety minutes, with the deepest NREM sleep stages, known as Slow Wave Sleep, taking precedence in the initial cycles and REM sleep gaining ascendancy later in the night. Ideally, five or so NREM/REM cycles provide us with about eight hours of sleep, after which we should awaken refreshed for the day ahead.

The complexity of sleep goes beyond its structure. Sleep is

• a physical state, characterized by relative stillness and repose.
• a mental state, characterized by reduced arousal and lowered vigilance.
• motivated by a physiological drive — our craving for sleep grows stronger when we stay awake and is sated as we slumber.
• regulated by an inner body clock that orchestrates our internal workings while keeping us synchronized to the cycle of day and night.
• responsive to behavior — sleep is inhibited by activity and induced when we are sedentary.
• dependent upon finding an appropriate environment.    

In all these ways, human sleep is similar to sleep found throughout most of the animal kingdom. Animals generally seek out safe havens and stop moving when they sleep, although there are surprising exceptions — such as the dolphins that sleep with half their brains at a time as they slowly circle on the water’s surface. The timing of most animals’ sleep is cyclic, with one major sleep period — whether during the night or day — aligned to the environmental light/dark cycle via the same biological clock we humans share.

Again, there are exceptions, such as the repeated snoozes of your house cat, reflecting its predatory heritage.

Excerpted from “The Insomnia Answer: A Personalized Program for Identifying and Overcoming the Three Types of Insomnia” by Paul Glovinsky and Art Spielman. Copyright © 2006, Paul Glovinsky and Art Spielman. All rights reserved. Published by Perigee Trade. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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