One recurring problem I hear over
and over again from my patients is that they have difficulty falling asleep.
More specifically, they can't shut off their minds. Thoughts are racing,
preventing them from relaxing or falling asleep. What inevitably follows is the
vicious cycle of stressing about not falling asleep, which amps up anxiety and
makes it even harder to fall asleep. Sound familiar?
I could tell you the key to slowing
the mind at bedtime is to reduce stress in your life (which is true), but I
know firsthand that managing stress is easier said than done. We're not going
to solve the multidimensional problem of daily stress this moment. But there's
another cause of racing thoughts at bedtime that is much more easily remedied:
being overtired.
Right about now, you may be
thinking, Overtired? Exhaustion can actually prevent sleep?
Yes. When I hear a patient describe
his or her struggle to fall asleep, I immediately think that this person needs
an earlier bedtime. When we wait too long to go to bed, we miss the window of
tired and become overtired—our bodies get jacked up on cortisol and actually
prevent relaxation and eventual sleep.
My
Experience With Exhaustion
I, too, had never heard of this
concept. I was a firm believer that as long as you got enough sleep, it didn't
matter what your sleep schedule was. I went through most of college sleeping 2
a.m. to 10 a.m., and I saw no problem with this sleep schedule, apart from the
fact that it horrified the adults in my life at the time.
Then I became an adult myself and
had a baby. At first, it was fun to be the hip parents who kept their baby up
until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., nursing while binge-watching Broad City or
entertaining late-night guests (Hey, guys, we had a baby, but nothing's
changed; we can still hang out!). Until one day I was enlightened by a book
called healthy sleep habit, happy child, by Marc Weissbluth, M.D., which taught
me about the concept of "overtired" and the importance of an early
bedtime. Before long, we had our baby on a textbook early sleep schedule, and
this philosophy transformed our sleep as well.
The
Science of Being "Overtired" & the Magic Bedtime
Overtired happens when you don't
fall asleep when you're tired, and the body releases cortisol, a stress
hormone, to meet the demands of staying awake. This results in wakefulness and
sometimes a stress response. Overtired babies are irritable, and it
paradoxically gets harder rather than easier to get them to sleep. It slowly
dawned on me that adults suffer from the same issue. When babies get overtired,
they're irritable and they cry. For adults, it can manifest as feeling tired
but wired, a state of mind in which we can't shut off our minds just as we're
trying to fall asleep.
The fact is, there's a window of
time when you're sleepy. For most of us, that's about three hours after sunset,
or somewhere in the range of 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. in our local time zones. If
we push through and stay up past that window, whether it's because we need to
finish work, check off a few more boxes on the to-do list, or we get sucked
into one more episode on Netflix, our body thinks: Oh! We're not going to
sleep even though we're tired; there must be a good reason: We must be at war
or on the great transcontinental migration. In an effort to help us meet
the demands of whatever may be keeping us up, the body releases cortisol, which
gives us a jolt of energy, wakefulness, and stress. Thousands of years ago,
this response was helpful for survival. But today is a different story. For us,
this can feel like anxiety, panic, agitated wakefulness, or racing thoughts,
even though we're exhausted. With cortisol coursing through the veins, we
attempt to crawl into bed at midnight, or 1 a.m., and, big surprise, we can't
sleep.
The
Bedtime Experiment
I know a bedtime between 9 p.m. and
11:30 p.m. is unfathomable to the average 20- or 30-something. Often we're not
even getting home from work or dinner until then. But I encourage you to try
this for a week as an experiment.
1.
Observe your second wind of energy.
When you start to look for it,
you'll notice when your body passes the threshold into the overtired state. You
might suddenly feel warm, or you might get what feels like a "second
wind" of energy. You might find yourself falling down an internet rabbit
hole with renewed vigor or even embarking on projects like cleaning the
kitchen.
2.
Notice your "tired window" or when your second wind begins.
Also, when you start to look for it,
you can even notice your tired window. Perhaps it's 9:30 p.m. or 10:00 p.m.,
and you feel like curling up and falling asleep on the couch. But instead your
first instinct is that it's too early to go to bed. You might even feel too
lazy to start the process of brushing your teeth and getting ready for bed. So
instead you glance at your phone. Resist the urge! We know too well what it's
like to emerge from the phone vortex an hour later, bleary-eyed and overtired.
3.
Take action: Go to bed.
Next time you detect that window of
tiredness, brush your teeth and crawl into bed. Whatever you needed to finish
can be done the next day when you feel rested and rejuvenated. In fact, you'll
probably work more efficiently and produce better-quality work after a good
night's sleep. By acting fast when the wave of tiredness hits you, you're
preempting the overtired state, and you'll be able to drift off to sleep when
your head hits the pillow rather than lying in a cortisol-fueled haze while
racing thoughts crowd your mind.
While reducing stress overall is the
definitive solution, a quick fix to prevent racing thoughts when you're trying
to fall asleep is to aim for an earlier bedtime, somewhere between 9:30 p.m.
and 11:30 p.m., and crawl into bed right when you feel the first wave of
tiredness hit. Even if this seems incompatible with your lifestyle, at least
give it a try and view it as an experiment. Pilot a 10 p.m. bedtime for a week,
read about your sleeping position, and experience the ease of falling asleep
without the drama of cortisol-fueled racing thoughts.
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