When I was 13, my father’s cancer had worsened. He used to be in pain the whole day and sleeping had become a particularly troublesome issue. Throughout the night, he would keep gasping or letting out little squeaks as the pain became extremely unbearable for him. Over time, his control over his reactions reduced, and the gasps and squeaks changed to scream and wails. What it did was destroy my sleep schedule, for the next decade, ruining my sleep schedule forever, due to the trauma or something else (let’s not throw around important psychological terms for fun) , and made functioning as a normal human almost impossible. Psychiatric medications, anxiety and being an avid Battlefield series gamer obviously did not help. Furthermore, as ambitions turned into responsibilities and dreams into burdens, it became increasingly difficult to sleep without guilt or a constant fear of the unknown and fear of unknown unknowns. It was being Tony Stark, always worried about a future that may or may not happen.
When it came to daily functioning, being on edge due to sleeplessness, stress and anxiety coupled with any stressor or dispute made the issue a thousand times worse, often devolving from “it’s just a scratch on the door handle” to “how dare you scratch the door handle without fearing for your life”. Then came the “anecdotal” stress management; chamomile, rose water, ginger tea, marijuana, nicotine, workouts and of course controlling digital behavior and presence.
For not a second, were other parts of my life looked at or questioned about. Indian society, partially, and my honesty towards myself included, we just lied about our problems till we gaslit ourselves into thinking that my problem was because of various factors ranging from the time I spend on my phone to my astrological “situation”.
So, sleep hygiene….. the what’s, the how’s and the when’s.
Presuming that you are currently sold on the idea that you would like a better sleep schedule and a better sleep pattern, I would like to get to the point of how sleep hygiene is implemented. Because sleep and health are ‘sleep and health’ I will refrain from medical and psychological terms, two things I have no training or concrete education in.
1. Know your sleep cycle, your sleep states and sleep patterns.
The largest bad habit I have when it comes to being in bed is that I would live my life in it, if I could. At times I have spent a whole afternoon in bed trying to catch up on sleep, watching a movie, videos on Youtube reading something random, etc. Although parallelization is a great way to optimize computer code, and async is a great way to improve orchestrate execution, it is REALLY HORRIBLE when it comes to human brains and similar computers. As humans, our brains are not just computers with built in logic but we also have emotions, a seemingly limitless ability to be cognitively capable and furthermore, a very “redundant” computing format that works on chemicals, reactions and the pure laws of physics. There does not lie much more abstraction within the human brain for even seemingly complex tasks. It is brute force computation, at its best. A
All said and done, our brains abstract processes in a much different way than normal computers do. Although they can be correlated to sub-routines, task scheduling and orchestration, our brains follow a large input-process-output cycle that is also littered with secondary and derivative processes that branch off with every operation it does. Furthermore, our brains also work in much more complex ways when it comes to the actual processing of information and have a multitude of sub-routines within them. Functions like memory recall, emotive capabilities, the inherent changes in the physical and chemical make-up of the organ further complicates things.
That said, parceling and packeting subroutines is quite a good phenomenon for us to understand as much more abstracted beings, but furthermore, it is a great way to understand ourselves. We often can recognize, breakdown, understand and change a lot of our behaviors, thoughts and patterns using this method. And this is nothing new, we do this ourselves either subconsciously or ourselves, much more often than we realize.
We often can observe and see how our brains (and our bodies) respond to various different stimuli and environments. We can also notice changes and their rate, and also change ourselves based on it.
This is what we use, to make our sleep better.
Our brains are better off being calm and non-distracted when trying to sleep. The more cognitive load one puts on the brain, the higher the chemical activity in it. And on a larger scale, the higher chemical activity directly corelates to higher levels of certain neurotransmitters that keep you awake.
Can’t keep your phone away? Can’t keep your research or curiosity away for even a second?
Well, find a way to reduce cognitive load. As much as everyone does say that phones are best kept away when trying to sleep, and rightly so, our lives and deviance is much more intricate and nuanced than being able to just press the power button on your laptop or phone and “shut your brains down”. In today’s day and age, where stimuli are king, it is much difficult to not do certain things.
Sleep Cycles and Sleep States
Humans have a certain predictability and pattern to their sleeps. It is widely accepted that humans go through a few states of sleep from NREM 1 through NREM 4 and then REM sleep. All of these are equally important, but, the REM stage, is considered a major factor. These 5 stages of sleep together make-up a cycle, and usually this repeats for about 3-4 times. Each cycle is anywhere from 1.5 hours to 2 hours or more and varies from person to person. All you need to know, is that when a cycle is interrupted, you won’t be feeling your best.
Furthermore, what you need to observe is how you respond and function to varying levels of sleep and sleep quality. For me, one night without good sleep is not significant, and usually results in minor memory function issues and lethargy as well as physical complaints like heavy eyes. Two nights, is when things start getting interesting. Apart from the previous there will be much more “on-edge” feeling along with easy triggers for anger and impulse control issues. Also, my ability to absorb and store information reduces drastically. Furthermore, I start feeling exhausted and even a basic workout is a strongman championship.
All this is to say that you need to know the how sleep change and its rate affects your daily life.
Because the human body has a “stateless” control loop, positive changes do affect your sleep in a positive manner. A rather important factor that has an asymmetric contribution is food. What, how much and when you eat can drastically affect sleep, sleep quality and furthermore even your next day. Certainly, I am not talking about just the Venti Iced Coffee you had 2 hours before bedtime.
In my trial and error method, I have found that fairly heavy meals during the day and a comparatively basic meal before bed time helps me have a good night’s sleep. I also found that a protein shake or any food that provides a slow but extremely large source of energy helps me sleep longer and better. I often have overnight oats, along with other things for breakfast. But, surprisingly enough I found that overnight oats along with a protein shake can help much more with hunger if I have them before bed. Although this has changed my eating habits to accommodate 5 meals a day, especially 2 breakfasts, it has helped tremendously with my hyper-metabolism.
Another thing that has definitively helped me were my vitamin and sunlight exposure levels. Although this article is in no way hard science or a study, nor am I professional, in my anecdotal experience my sleep becomes better if I have consumed fresh fruits and vegetables and had some sunlight exposure. Now, the scientific reasoning and validity of this is beyond the scope at which this article is written, and as such my only suggestion would be to try and see what works.
Bed Hygiene
Except the phone, we often have eaten, read, and done a hundred other things. Seemingly redundant, but, our brain’s associative memory and associative tendencies often start correlating the bed with eating, sleeping, studying, etc. than with sleeping. The fun fact is, the more often you do it, the more it feels normalized but at the same time, you might be frustrated with how much it can affect sleeping patterns.
Fresh out of a relationship and in a bad breakup, I picked up the habit of eating ice-cream in bed while watching “cringe-y” shows that are not exactly what I expected to like. Either way, I understood 2 important things that were seemingly not co-related until then. My processing and emotional health, especially the healing and grief related aspects took a turn for the gallows if my sleep wasn’t good. And more importantly, I figured out that eating in bed, made me hungry every time I was awake and sat back in my bed because I felt sad. Another connection was, that sleep and hunger are obviously correlated, but so are metabolism and physical recovery. I found that sleep plays an important role in not just helping you gain muscle and maintain it but also in how you respond to exercise as a whole.
That’s it. It’s unfortunately that simple.
Although these may not seem like many, these are the largest factors that impacted my sleep. These might not be the most novel and unique factors and you may as well have read, heard or watched about these while trying to figure out improving sleep. I hope that this article provided a better outlook towards implementing a regimen that help with better sleep and happier days.
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