how to get a good night's sleep: consistency is key and trends are temporary
7 minute read
the quantity of sleep matters, but it’s the quality that people should pay more attention to. the best way to do that is to simply assess how you feel when you wake up.
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in today’s society, sleep has taken a backseat to almost everything else in people’s lives, leading to the damaging normalization of chronic and commonly accepted sleep deprivation. new research has shown that nearly half of all canadians deal with sleep issues, whether they result from the demands of life or from sleep disorders.
the harsh truth is that continuing to normalize a lack of sleep as something that “just happens” to everyone isn’t just going to make you hit the snooze button a few more times before getting out of bed. it can have pretty heavy consequences on the whole of your life.
dr. david greenberg, a general physician based in toronto, works with patients who struggle with sleep, whether by not getting enough hours or not having good quality sleep. he notes that the damage from a lack of sleep is nothing to scoff at.
“a lack of sleep, or poor sleep, or inadequate sleep, contributes to things like obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, potentially sleep apnea, and then all kinds of mood stuff, anxiety, depression, and generally feeling unwell or feeling lousy,” he said.
he also notes that, aside from the increased risk for various diseases and conditions, a lack of sleep can affect your life in other ways because when a person isn’t well-rested, they don’t show up in the world as their best self.
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when exhaustion sets in from a lack of sleep, someone’s entire persona can change from happy and pleasant to miserable and horrible, not because they are awful or miserable or unreasonable, but because their brains are too tired to function as they usually would.
“imagine somebody who’s really not well rested. do you want to be that person’s partner? do you want to be that person’s coworker? do you want to be that person’s friend? no,” he said.
putting sleep on the backburner
keeping sleep at the bottom of the priority list is not something new. researchers have examined how people approach sleep and found that high-quality sleep is a rarity for canadians.
a survey done by narrative research found that only 16 per cent of canadians get restful sleeps every night of the week, and 30 per cent of canadians found that the issue continues to get worse as the years roll by.
in that same survey, 32 per cent of participants got less than three nights of restful sleep a week, which can lead to disaster later in life.
technology plays a role, as well as inflation and the cost of living, driving people to need more time to work and provide for themselves. but the issue isn’t just caused by environmental factors.
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“we sleep when we’re not busy, and what we need to do is start being busy when we’re not sleeping,” said dr. greenberg. “we don’t prioritize sleep at all. we sort of slide it in between stuff, and we need to be the other way around.”
following sleep trends as a band-aid solution
people often aim to improve their sleep patterns by following new and inventive trends, a process now aptly named sleepmaxxing.
they buy the gadgets they need to track their sleep, inform themselves on the inner workings of sleep cycles to see where they stack up and set goals to get as much shut-eye as possible. but following trends isn’t always the best way to go.
“everybody’s looking for a hack. everybody’s looking for a shortcut. everybody’s looking for something to make things easier or better, but if the problem didn’t exist, the solution wouldn’t have been invented,” said dr. greenberg.
sleepmaxxing is geared toward providing people with these trendy hacks, including using weighted blankets, sleeping in an ultracold and ultra-dark room, spraying magnesium on the feet, or taping their mouths shut. while dr. greenberg would never suggest a person stop doing any of these things, especially if they feel it works for them, he knows that getting to the root of the issue is a much more viable approach.
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“my problem with a lot of these trends is that they’re not sustainable,” he said. “if you can’t see yourself doing it two years from now, and i promise you, nobody will be doing it six months from now, then it’s not the right answer.”
dr. greenberg parallels these sleep trends to those in the diet and fitness world. sure, they may work for a time, but if they’re not something a person can keep up with, they become a temporary solution for a problem that needs to be adequately addressed for long-term change.
you have to get to the root of your sleep problem
“the fact is that there are a whole lot of older guys who don’t sleep because they get up in the middle of the night to pee and can’t get back to sleep, right? well, we can fix that. there’s a whole lot of menopausal women who are getting up with hot flashes in the middle of the night. we can fix that. the people with sleep apnea, we can fix that. so, first of all, let’s figure out why you’re not sleeping,” he said. “then, what we look at is, how do we optimize your sleep?”
how do you know if you’re not sleeping well?
many people try to stick to the 7-9 hours rule, and while that’s a great start, it’s not the entire picture. the quantity of sleep matters, but it’s the quality that people should pay more attention to. the best way to do that is to simply assess how you feel when you wake up.
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“the most important metric is, how do you feel when you wake up? do you feel well-rested? are you ready to take on the day?” said dr. greenberg.
for a person who sleeps six hours a night, an hour less than what is recommended, waking up refreshed and ready to take on the day most or all the days of the week is their version of getting adequate sleep because their body is functioning as it should even with the hour less.
however, a person with nine hours of sleep who wakes up feeling as though getting out of bed is the hardest thing they’ll ever have to accomplish might want to consider finding out why they struggle to wake up.
when it comes to what well-rested looks like upon waking, dr. greenberg suggests that finding a balance and looking inward is the best way to go about it.
“i think everybody’s got their own measure of that,” he said, later continuing. “there are going to be mornings where maybe you don’t want to get out of bed, and i get that, too. but on balance, right?”
he also notes that in some cases, hitting that snooze alarm isn’t as bad as many people think, and it may not mean that you’re not getting restful sleep. it might just mean that ten extra minutes was all you needed to get to a better place.
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“it’s happened to me,” he said. “i’ll get up, and i’ll just say to myself, you know what, i just need ten more minutes, and i’ll get up ten minutes later, and i do feel better, but on balance, i’m ready to go now.”
reclaiming your ability to sleep
it’s not always easy to make a health commitment to better sleep hygiene. however, it is essential for overall health, so people must “do the best you can with what you got,” according to dr. greenberg.
for the best sleep, it’s recommended that people avoid screen time for at least an hour before bed, engage in calming activities before sleeping, go to bed and wake up around the same time every day, avoid alcohol, caffeine, and cigarettes in the evening, don’t eat too close to bedtime, and engaging in regular physical activity earlier in the day.
other interventions, such as keeping your room as a place for sleep and sleep alone is a good place to start, but dr. greenberg recognizes that it’s not always possible for some people. in those instances, pivoting toward other interventions can be beneficial.
the latest therapy avenues, such as cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia (cbt-1), which can be found online, and medications that work to keep you asleep throughout the night without the groggy hangover feeling in the mornin are also available to people through their physician.
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since many people don’t have the option to completely overhaul their lives to set themselves up for adequate sleep, doing everything correctly before bed every single day is often a non-starter. but that doesn’t mean they can’t make tweaks to improve their odds of having restful sleep.
“it’s not easy, especially when you’ve got ingrained behaviours that have happened over years and when you’ve got all these external factors that you have to literally try and shut out of your life to make it work. i get that,” he said. “i’m not judging. i’m just saying, and if you can do it, great. and if you can do it and improve things a little bit or more than a little bit, awesome.”
he continued, “there are going to be times in life where all you can do is try your best.”
march 14 is world sleep day. to learn more visit the canadian sleep society’s website.
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