Have you had a sleepless night? It can be a common, one-off occurrence – especially when there is a heat wave or you are feeling unwell.
In this blog post, Dr Lindsay Browning explores what can cause a sleepless night, its impact on your health and how to try to reduce the occurrence of sleepless nights, with good bedtime habits.
What can cause a sleepless night?
A lot of different things can cause a sleepless night. Sometimes, people don’t get enough sleep because they are not prioritising it, but others struggle to fall asleep or don’t get good quality sleep due to anxieties and pressures of the day causing frequent night-time awakenings.
However sleepless nights may not always be due to psychological reasons, but physical comfort too. In a 2021 sleep study they asked what was keeping people up at night and these were the top ten reasons:
Top 10 disturbances
- Being too hot – 55%
- Anxiety – 36%
- Needing the toilet – 30%
- Partner snoring – 23%
- Your phone – 20%
- Depression – 17%
- The light (street lights or brighter mornings) – 16%
- Being too cold – 16%
- A headache – 15%
- Pain – 14%
It’s interesting to see that being too hot came out as the top reason that people struggle to sleep. This could be because when we go to sleep our body temperature naturally drops, but when we are too hot, our body temperature struggles to reduce, and, in turn, it is making it hard to sleep.
It is also worth nothing that anxiety was the second cause most reported. Often, people find that their mind won’t “switch off” at night and, instead, is full of things like worries and to-do lists. If people don’t make time during the day to think about what is on their minds, then once they lie down in bed, in the silence of the night, this can be the first chance they have had to “think”. With this opportunity, their mind can become filled with anxious thoughts, stopping them from being able to sleep.
Why is sleep important? Does a sleepless night or two matter?
Sleep, although not always a top priority for people, is vital for our longevity. When we sleep, our brains physically repair our bodies and regulate important hormones, which control the functioning of our bodies during the day.
In the short run, a lack of quality sleep can negatively affect concentration, memory and cause us to be groggy. This is due to not completing the full sleep cycles. Sleep is made up of three main parts. Dreaming sleep (REM sleep), light sleep and deep sleep. These happen in sleep cycles throughout the night – always starting as light sleep, deep sleep, back to light sleep and then dreaming sleep, then the cycle repeats again.
Each sleep cycle is approximately 90-110 minutes long. As much as “deep sleep” might sound like it is the most important part of sleep, that isn’t really true. We need all the different parts of our sleep to be healthy as they provide different functions. This is why we feel groggy after a 50-minute nap, it is because we are not completing our full cycle.
Dreaming/REM sleep is vital for helping us to process our emotions and make sense of what’s going on in our lives. If you are depressed or having a particularly difficult time in your life you might find that your dreaming sleep is not functioning to help you process the painful emotions you are going through. Similarly, deep sleep is when our bodies repair and remove toxins.
If we don’t get the right amount of sleep or the right kind of sleep in the long term, then our bodies will not be properly repaired during the night. For example, when we sleep our brains wash away the build-up of amyloid plaques which can cause Alzheimer’s disease and when we don’t get enough sleep our brain doesn’t have the time to do this physical spring cleaning of our brain and we are more likely to develop dementia. Also, if we don’t get enough sleep then our brain doesn’t regulate the hormones that control our hunger drive (ghrelin and leptin), which can lead to weight gain and obesity.
People who get too little sleep (fewer than 7 hours per night), or too much sleep (more than 9 hours per night) have been shown to have increased all-cause mortality risk, i.e. you are more likely to die earlier due to any reason, compared to people sleeping between 7-9 hours.
For all of these reasons and more, regular sleepless nights and interrupted sleep is not good for us.
How can we reduce sleepless nights?
1. Have a regular bedtime and wake time
Keeping a regular wake up and bed time seven days per week will help you sleep better. When you keep a regular sleep schedule your body develops a robust circadian rhythm, which helps you to sleep at the right time at night. If you go to bed early and wake up early on weekdays, but stay up late and have a lie-in on the weekend, you are giving yourself weekend “jet-lag” – making it much harder to go to sleep early on a Sunday night ready for another early start on Monday morning!
2. Increase your exercise levels
As well as being essential for overall health, exercise directly impacts your need for “deep sleep” at night. The more you exercise, the more deep sleep you will have. Deep sleep helps you to feel refreshed when you wake up and helps with sleep continuity.
Make sure that you exercise during the daytime and not too close to bedtime, as exercise in the evening can sometimes be disruptive to sleep, due to the release of endorphins and adrenaline.
3. Stop your caffeine intake at 2pm
Caffeine has an average half life of 5-7 hours. That means that 5-7 hours after your cup of coffee, half of the caffeine is still in your system! Caffeine is not only found in tea and coffee, but also in chocolate and in soft drinks, such as cola and energy drinks, including the sugar-free variety. If you have trouble sleeping, then it is recommended for you to have your last cup of caffeine of the day at around 2pm.
4. Night time digital detox
A recent study found that 1 in 5 people are kept awake by their phones. Make sure that you switch off your electronic devices an hour before bed, in particular, your phone.
Smartphones emit blue light which is similar to daylight. This tricks the brain into thinking it is day time which can make it difficult to transition into sleep mode when bedtime rolls around. Try reading a book or meditating before you sleep instead.
5. Have a warm bath before bed
Having a relaxing warm bath before bed will not only help you to wind down after a busy day, but also the temperature of the bath will help you sleep. When you go to sleep, your body temperature naturally decreases.
If you have a warm bath, then you artificially raise your body temperature and when you come out of the warm bath, your body temperature will naturally start to drop, mimicking the drop in temperature that happens as you fall asleep, making you feel sleepier.
6. Don’t lie in bed for long periods if you can’t sleep
If you can’t sleep, then lying still in bed trying to sleep is one of the worst things you can do. The longer you lie in bed trying to sleep and clock watching, paradoxically, the more anxious you are likely to get about not sleeping.
Navigating Sleeplessness
For more useful information about sleep and great guidance about reducing sleepless nights, check out Dr Lindsay Browning’s book – Navigating Sleeplessness – available now.