Does making your room completely dark help one to sleep better?

From the Zeology blog:

http://blog.myzeo.com/

Q: I read Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival and one of things the author recommend is making your bedroom completely dark. Has anyone tried this? Do you sleep better? Does it work?

A: There’s no doubt about the importance of a dark environment for sleeping.  When we expose our bodies to lower light conditions in the evenings, sleep comes more easily due to melatonin release after the sun goes down.

There’s no doubt about the importance of a dark environment for sleeping. In the pre-electric past, people naturally got sleepy and went to bed after the sun went down.

When we have a regularly scheduled sleep pattern mixed with lower light conditions in the evenings, sleep comes more easily due to melatonin release after the sun goes down, as part of our body’s circadian rhythms.

In order to keep this process on track, it’s best to limit exposure to bright light from computer monitors, TVs, and smartphones at night, as this can delay the release of melatonin leading to staying up later.

Limiting light exposure in the morning can also help you get more sleep, as the lack of light can delay the body’s natural call to “wake up”, allowing you to get more deeper, restful sleep. 

Using an eyemask, or turning your bed away from the window can help limit this exposure.

For those who work evening and night shifts, it’s best to sleep in rooms with heavy curtains that block all light, as well as wear blue-blocking sunglasses on the morning drive home, in order to prevent the stimulation of the waking circadian rhythm.

Related Content:

• How does light impact our circadian rhythm?
• How can I increase my time in Deep Sleep?
• Jetlag: Is it better to take a 30-minute power nap or just push through and go to bed early?
• What can one do to promote good sleep?

Sweet Dreams

Sleep Disturbance Linked to Aging Eye Lens

Bring on the Blues -- Light Therapy! I ordered one of these devices on Amazon to give it a shot!

 

 

Philips goLITE BLU Light Therapy Device

 

 

 

 

By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Published: September 06, 2011

 

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

Action Points

• Explain that sleep disturbance correlated significantly with reduced blue light transmission to the retina resulting from aging and yellowing of the lens.
• Point out that the odds of sleep disturbance also increased significantly with the extent of autofluorescence, a measure of lens transmission and yellowing.

Sleep disturbance correlated significantly with reduced blue light transmission to the retina resulting from aging and yellowing of the lens, Danish investigators reported.

Every one% increase in blue light lens transmission reduced the odds of sleep disturbance by five%. The association was similar across age groups and remained significant after controlling for a variety of potential confounders, as reported in the September issue of Sleep.

"To translate the odds ratios into a clinical example, a 50-year-old, nonsmoking, nondiabetic female with a low risk of ischemic heart disease who was in the 97.5% upper normal range of blue light lens transmission ... had a risk of sleep disturbances of 16.4%," Line Kessel, MD, PhD, of Glostrup Hospital and the University of Copenhagen, and co-authors wrote.

"[In contrast] a similar ... 50-year-old female who was in the 2.5% lower normal range of blue light lens transmission ... had a risk of having sleep disturbances of 37.9%."

The odds of sleep disturbance also increased significantly with the extent of autofluorescence, a measure of lens transmission and yellowing.

Regulation of sleep patterns and circadian rhythms occurs through the retinohypothalamic tract in response to stimulation of retinal ganglions, primarily by blue light.

With aging, the lens acquires a yellowish discoloration from accumulation of chromophores that preferentially absorb in the short wavelength region of the light spectrum. The authors hypothesized that lens yellowing might act as a filter for blue light in older people, who are more prone to sleep disturbance.

"Theoretically, the aging process of the lens of the eye may be an important causative factor in sleep disorders," the authors wrote.

To examine the relationship between lens aging and sleep disturbance, investigators recruited participants from an ongoing epidemiologic study (Inter99 Eye Study) of associations between ophthalmic parameters and health.

The study of lens aging and sleep disturbance involved 970 people, ages 30 to 60. The study population consisted of 142 participants with a high risk of ischemic heart disease, 107 with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes, 11 participants with a history of diabetes, 147 participants with impaired glucose tolerance, and a miscellaneous group of 61 participants. The control group had 502 participants.

Investigators assessed sleep disturbance by means of questionnaires and prescriptions for sleeping medications. Lens aging was determined by autofluorometry. Sleep disturbance was defined as answering "yes" to "having trouble sleeping and/or purchasing a sleep medication in the past year."

Overall, the prevalence of sleep disturbance was 24.4%. and more than 80% of participants with sleep disturbances said the problem occurred frequently and required treatment with sleep medication. The prevalence ranged from a high of 32.5% of participants, ages 55 to 60, to a low of 15.7% in participants ages 30 to 35 (P=0.0002).

Sleep disturbance affected women more often than men (32.2% versus 18.4%, P<0.0001). It also was more common in participants with diabetes (30.7% versus 22.5% for normoglycemic individuals, P=0.016) and smokers (28.6% versus 21.0% of nonsmokers, P=0.007).

The inverse association between sleep disturbance and blue light lens transmission was represented by an odds ratio (OR) of 0.95 per 1% increase in lens transmission (95% CI 0.93 to 0.97, P<0.0001).

Adjustment for age, sex, diabetes, smoking, and risk of ischemic heart disease resulted in an OR of 0.97 (95% CI 0.95 to 0.99, P=0.016).

The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that decreased blue light transmission reduces stimulation of retinal ganglions containing melanopsin, which has a key role in photoentrainment of circadian rhythms.

"Melanopsin is stimulated by predominantly blue light with a maximum absorption around 480 nm in humans, the very part of the visible spectrum that is mostly affected by the aging process of the human lens," the authors wrote.

"The results of the present study indicate that the spectral characteristics of the light reaching the retina, and specifically the total amount of blue light that penetrates the refractive media of the eye, may have a profound impact on sleep quality, most likely mediated via reduced ocular photic regulation of melatonin secretion," they added.

"Our results support that choosing the right indoor lighting conditions may have a beneficial effect on sleep and that blue light therapy might be used to modulate circadian sleep disorders," they concluded.

The study had some limitations including the risk that some patients were misclassified because sleeping medication may be used for other conditions, such as benzodiazepines for anxiety.

The study received no industry support, and the authors had no relevant disclosures.

Primary source: Sleep
Source reference:
Kessel L, et al "Sleep disturbances are related to decreased transmission of blue light to the retina caused by lens yellowing" Sleep 2011; 34: 1215-1219.

Some Simple Sleep Hygiene Tips from "Train Your Brain to Get Happy"

What to Do to Get the Sleep You Need

Stick to a regular bedtime schedule. Try to get out of bed at the same time, even on weekends and holidays.

Create an ideal sleep environment. Moderate the room temperature between 68-degrees F and 72-degrees F. Block out any light, and limit noise and/or distractions, such as video programs.

Wind down after a long day. Meditation, relaxation exercises, slow stretches that involve slow rhythmic breathing, and writing in a journal are all good choices. Choose the activities that give your mind a rest.

Create a bedtime ritual. Whatever you choose, make it something that helps you relax, and do it for ten minutes every night.

Limit your caffeine consumption.

Try drinking milk. Milk contains L-tryptophan, the amino acid that is a precursor of melatonin and serotonin.

Have a light snack. Simple sugars and fats reduce the oxygen supply to the brain, which decreases alertness and makes you sleepy. Foods that contain L-tryptophan include bananas, oats, and poultry. Yogurt and crackers or a piece of bread with a small slice of cheese are perfect bedtime snacks.

Use natural sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners and additives tend to increase alertness and interfere with sleep.

What Not to Do

Don’t exercise two hours before bedtime. If you must, try eating a light snack of carbohydrates and dairy products just before bedtime.

Don’t drink alcohol an hour before bedtime, and don’t drink excessively. The more alcohol you consume, the less REM sleep you will get and the less rested you will feel.

Don’t overload your stomach. Don’t eat a heavy meal within four hours of bedtime.

Don’t smoke before bedtime. Heavy smoking can disrupt your REM sleep.

And here's a few more tips:

How to fall asleep and stay asleep

Contrary to what you might hear, falling asleep and staying asleep are part of a natural process for most people. Some call this luck. Others understand it is likely the result of conscious lifestyle and dietary choices that promote restful sleep. Called "sleep hygiene", these behaviors can actually support sleep before, during, and after bedtime.

The following is a list of practices supported by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine as conducive to restful sleep:

• Go to bed only when you are drowsy.
• If you can't fall asleep or stay asleep, leave your bedroom and engage in a quiet activity elsewhere. Do not allow yourself to fall asleep outside the bedroom. Return to bed once you are sleepy.
• Maintain a regular wake-up time, even on weekends, holidays, and vacations.
• Use your bed only for sleep, illness, and intimacy.
• Avoid daytime naps; if you must nap, limit it to less than one hour and no later than 3 p.m.
• If you are a nighttime worrier, schedule your planning, worrying, and problem-solving for earlier in the day. Make it a task you complete before bedtime. If you're still prone to worry at night, have a notepad or stack of cards by the bed to write down your concerns, confident they will keep until morning.
• Avoid alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine for four to six hours before bedtime.
• Although a light snack a few hours before bedtime can help promote sound sleep, a heavy meal can thwart it.
• Participate in regular exercise, but schedule strenuous workouts at least four hours before bedtime.
• Distract your mind: Read, listen to music, watch a videotape, or get lost in a book on tape.
• Minimize light, noise, and temperature extremes in the bedroom. Block light with a black-out shade or by wearing an eye shade, and mitigate noise with earplugs or by listening to white noise.
• Avoid watching the clock. Face it away from you to avoid obsessing about the passing hours.
• Take a warm bath, have a massage, meditate, pray, sip some decaffeinated tea, or choose other soothing rituals before getting into bed.

Noise-Killers

Today, my thoughtful co-worker Jerry brought to work the "noise killers" he was issued in the Navy, during his service in the seventies. I've seen similar "noise-cancelling" headphones at the big Box store, and thought of buying a (expensive) pair, so I was delighted to try Jerry's set out for free.

They work like a charm. It's really a bear to concentrate in a cubical when you're writing (even with an iPod on), what with all the wild inter-cube and office ruckus. With these heavy-duty plastic earmuffs on, you can barely hear a thing.

I have super-hearing -- perhaps a quasi-"proto-Aspie" trait of mine -- and I often find environmental noise quite irritating. Lately, I've even taken to wearing the foam earplugs I used to wear only while sleeping, to read in my apartment. Without the earplugs I can hear a TV set yammering three or four apartments away, or the constantly screaming kids in the pool. I really hate hearing moffled yet somehow still loud cheering and clapping during TV sports broadcasts.

I'd love to try these noise-killers out while sleeping. I already wear a mouth guard (thanks to grinding my teeth), foam earplugs, a CPAP mask, and an eyeshade. Perhaps I could combine most of this gear into a mask/helmet, and experience total sensory deprivation. How I miss the youthful days of simply lying down, closing my eyes, and going (and staying) asleep.

Memory contest experts rig up blacked-out glasses and earmuffs to enhance their powers of concentration. It really is impressive how much more you can focus at the office with these noise-killers on. Of course you also look like a dork, but what the hey.





David K. Randall: Rethinking Sleep

Vincent van Gogh , The Siesta (after Millet), December 1889-January 1890, oil on canvas, H. 73; W. 91 cm, Musée d'Orsay.

Sometime in the dark stretch of the night it happens. Perhaps it’s the chime of an incoming text message. Or your iPhone screen lights up to alert you to a new e-mail. Or you find yourself staring at the ceiling, replaying the day in your head. Next thing you know, you’re out of bed and engaged with the world, once again ignoring the often quoted fact that eight straight hours of sleep is essential.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Thanks in part to technology and its constant pinging and chiming, roughly 41 million people in the United States — nearly a third of all working adults — get six hours or fewer of sleep a night, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And sleep deprivation is an affliction that crosses economic lines. About 42 percent of workers in the mining industry are sleep-deprived, while about 27 percent of financial or insurance industry workers share the same complaint.

Typically, mention of our ever increasing sleeplessness is followed by calls for earlier bedtimes and a longer night’s sleep. But this directive may be part of the problem. Rather than helping us to get more rest, the tyranny of the eight-hour block reinforces a narrow conception of sleep and how we should approach it. Some of the time we spend tossing and turning may even result from misconceptions about sleep and our bodily needs: in fact neither our bodies nor our brains are built for the roughly one-third of our lives that we spend in bed.

The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. The world’s population sleeps in various and surprising ways. Millions of Chinese workers continue to put their heads on their desks for a nap of an hour or so after lunch, for example, and daytime napping is common from India to Spain.

One of the first signs that the emphasis on a straight eight-hour sleep had outlived its usefulness arose in the early 1990s, thanks to a history professor at Virginia Tech named A. Roger Ekirch, who spent hours investigating the history of the night and began to notice strange references to sleep. A character in the “Canterbury Tales,” for instance, decides to go back to bed after her “firste sleep.” A doctor in England wrote that the time between the “first sleep” and the “second sleep” was the best time for study and reflection. And one 16th-century French physician concluded that laborers were able to conceive more children because they waited until after their “first sleep” to make love. Professor Ekirch soon learned that he wasn’t the only one who was on to the historical existence of alternate sleep cycles. In a fluke of history, Thomas A. Wehr, a psychiatrist then working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., was conducting an experiment in which subjects were deprived of artificial light. Without the illumination and distraction from light bulbs, televisions or computers, the subjects slept through the night, at least at first. But, after a while, Dr. Wehr noticed that subjects began to wake up a little after midnight, lie awake for a couple of hours, and then drift back to sleep again, in the same pattern of segmented sleep that Professor Ekirch saw referenced in historical records and early works of literature.

It seemed that, given a chance to be free of modern life, the body would naturally settle into a split sleep schedule. Subjects grew to like experiencing nighttime in a new way. Once they broke their conception of what form sleep should come in, they looked forward to the time in the middle of the night as a chance for deep thinking of all kinds, whether in the form of self-reflection, getting a jump on the next day or amorous activity. Most of us, however, do not treat middle-of-the-night awakenings as a sign of a normal, functioning brain.

Doctors who peddle sleep aid products and call for more sleep may unintentionally reinforce the idea that there is something wrong or off-kilter about interrupted sleep cycles. Sleep anxiety is a common result: we know we should be getting a good night’s rest but imagine we are doing something wrong if we awaken in the middle of the night. Related worries turn many of us into insomniacs and incite many to reach for sleeping pills or sleep aids, which reinforces a cycle that the Harvard psychologist Daniel M. Wegner has called “the ironic processes of mental control.”

As we lie in our beds thinking about the sleep we’re not getting, we diminish the chances of enjoying a peaceful night’s rest.

This, despite the fact that a number of recent studies suggest that any deep sleep — whether in an eight-hour block or a 30-minute nap — primes our brains to function at a higher level, letting us come up with better ideas, find solutions to puzzles more quickly, identify patterns faster and recall information more accurately. In a NASA-financed study, for example, a team of researchers led by David F. Dinges, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, found that letting subjects nap for as little as 24 minutes improved their cognitive performance.

In another study conducted by Simon Durrant, a professor at the University of Lincoln, in England, the amount of time a subject spent in deep sleep during a nap predicted his or her later performance at recalling a short burst of melodic tones. And researchers at the City University of New York found that short naps helped subjects identify more literal and figurative connections between objects than those who simply stayed awake.

Robert Stickgold, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, proposes that sleep — including short naps that include deep sleep — offers our brains the chance to decide what new information to keep and what to toss. That could be one reason our dreams are laden with strange plots and characters, a result of the brain’s trying to find connections between what it’s recently learned and what is stored in our long-term memory. Rapid eye movement sleep — so named because researchers who discovered this sleep stage were astonished to see the fluttering eyelids of sleeping subjects — is the only phase of sleep during which the brain is as active as it is when we are fully conscious, and seems to offer our brains the best chance to come up with new ideas and hone recently acquired skills. When we awaken, our minds are often better able to make connections that were hidden in the jumble of information.
Gradual acceptance of the notion that sequential sleep hours are not essential for high-level job performance has led to increased workplace tolerance for napping and other alternate daily schedules.

Employees at Google, for instance, are offered the chance to nap at work because the company believes it may increase productivity. Thomas Balkin, the head of the department of behavioral biology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, imagines a near future in which military commanders can know how much total sleep an individual soldier has had over a 24-hour time frame thanks to wristwatch-size sleep monitors. After consulting computer models that predict how decision-making abilities decline with fatigue, a soldier could then be ordered to take a nap to prepare for an approaching mission. The cognitive benefit of a nap could last anywhere from one to three hours, depending on what stage of sleep a person reaches before awakening.

Most of us are not fortunate enough to work in office environments that permit, much less smile upon, on-the-job napping. But there are increasing suggestions that greater tolerance for altered sleep schedules might be in our collective interest. Researchers have observed, for example, that long-haul pilots who sleep during flights perform better when maneuvering aircraft through the critical stages of descent and landing.

Several Major League Baseball teams have adapted to the demands of a long season by changing their sleep patterns. Fernando Montes, the former strength and conditioning coach for the Texas Rangers, counseled his players to fall asleep with the curtains in their hotel rooms open so that they would naturally wake up at sunrise no matter what time zone they were in — even if it meant cutting into an eight-hour sleeping block. Once they arrived at the ballpark, Montes would set up a quiet area where they could sleep before the game. Players said that, thanks to this schedule, they felt great both physically and mentally over the long haul.

Strategic napping in the Rangers style could benefit us all. No one argues that sleep is not essential. But freeing ourselves from needlessly rigid and quite possibly outdated ideas about what constitutes a good night’s sleep might help put many of us to rest, in a healthy and productive, if not eight-hour long, block.

David K. Randall is a senior reporter at Reuters and the author of “Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep.”

In the News: Using iPads before bed 'can lead to a poor night's sleep'




Using tablets like the iPad or Galaxy Note late at night can inhibit sleep, according to research. Photo: ALAMY

 




Using tablet computers like Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Note just before bed can lead to a poor night’s sleep, according to research.

by Stephen Adams, The Telegraph Medical Correspondent

Sep 10, 2012

More and more people are taking their tablets to bed with them to surf the web, check Facebook or email before switching off the light.

But researchers are warning that the blueish light their screens emit can stop users getting a good night’s sleep.

That is because this type of light mimics daylight, convincing the brain that it is still daytime.

Blue light suppresses production of a brain chemical called melatonin, which helps us fall sleep. This is because our brains have evolved to be wakeful during daylight hours.

By contrast, light which is more orange or red in tone does not suppress melatonin production, perhaps because our brains recognise it as a cue that the day is ending.

Neurologists have known for years that staring at screens late in the evening can disrupt sleep - be they television screens, computer screens or mobile phone screens.

However, because mobiles and tablets are by nature portable - not to say addictive - more people are taking them into the bedroom.

Users also tend to hold them much closer to their eyes than a computer or television screen.
Researchers at the Lighting Research Centre, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, are warning that looking at tablet displays for more than two hours “leads to a suppression of our natural melatonin levels as the devices emit optical radiation at short wavelengths” - in other words, they emit bluer light.

They say: “Although turning off devices at night is the ultimate solution, it is recommended that if these devices are used at night displays are dimmed as much as possible and that the time spent on them before bed should be limited.”

They drew their concludions after measuring melatonin levels in 13 volunteers, after they had spent time viewing iPads at full brightness at a distance of 10 inches, for two hours.
Melatonin levels were significantly lower after they had done this, than they were after the volunteers had viewed their iPads for the same time, but while wearing orange glass goggles, which cut out the blue light.

They wrote in the journal Applied Ergonomics that tablet makers could "tune the spectral power distribution of self-luminous devices" so that they disrupted the sleep patterns of users less.

It is not just a good night’s sleep that could be jeopardised by too much late night screen time.
Researchers know that persistent disruption to sleep patterns can lead to an increased risk of obesity, and even breast cancer.

However, these studies tend to be comparisons of those with chronic sleep disruption, such as long term shift workers, with those who have normal sleep patterns.

What Is the Ideal Time To Go To Bed?

by Jason Thibodeau, Software developer, science geek

  Studies on circadian rhythms suggest that sleeping 10 PM to 6 AM will give the most returns. This considers not only when the body appears to be the most geared for sleep, but also when the body is ready for other activities in the day.

For example, it appears we are most alert around 10 AM. It has been suggested that this time is ideal for performing your most challenging tasks of the day. The late afternoon appears ideal for physical exercise. Being awake and rested, and on a schedule, can help you take advantage of your highs and lows throughout the day.

Studies of the health impacts of working night shift have shown various negative factors, including higher risks of developing chronic health problems. A well known 2001 study suggested that women who worked graveyard shift had a significantly higher risk for developing breast cancer, due to exposure to light, suppressing the normal nocturnal release of melatonin, which in turn has an impact on estrogen release.

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/c...

A BBC Horizon episode "The Secret Life of your Body Clock" attempts to answer the question of what we should be doing at what times of the day, in regards to our internal "body clock."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/...
(The complete episode may be found on Youtube. Search: "BBC Horizon body clock")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cir...

Morning larks and night owls

The majority of people appear to be "morning larks," who optimally would sleep at 10 PM and rise at 6 AM. However, it is estimated that 10-20% of the population are what are referred to as "night owls," people who are more mentally alert later in the day. Night owls are reported to be "less happy" than morning larks, often waking with a scowl in early hours.

By age 60, most people are morning types, the researchers found. Only about seven percent of young adults are morning larks, but as the population ages, this switches -- in the older years only about seven percent of the population are still night owls.

Since light exposure appears to be the trigger for many of our biological processes, this article suggests a regular waking time and exposure to natural light in the early morning could help "convert" a night owl into a morning lark. The reason for the difference is not known.

http://news.discovery.com/human/...

Further reading on delayed sleep phase syndrome:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del...

How to Sleep Right, Tonight

by: Liesa Goins

If you are sleeping with stress—and waking up at all the wrong times—here's how to put yourself on snooze control

Finding yourself wide awake after a few hours of sleep, or waking often during the night is called "sleep maintenance insomnia," and it's much more common than people think. A 2005 National Sleep Foundation poll found that 75 percent of adults frequently have symptoms of a sleep problem, including waking during the night.

Just as the victims in slasher flicks make fatal errors (why are you running up the stairs?), we are often our own worst enemies when it comes to a solid night of sleep. "People think that because they're able to fall asleep they'll stay asleep, even if they've had too much caffeine," says Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., a sleep and dream specialist at Andrew Weil's Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.

But for most of us, the culprit's not that ill-conceived espresso at 5 p.m. "The root of most sleep problems is stress," says Jeffrey Thompson, director of the Center for Neuroacoustic Research and creator of an audio sleeping aid called the Delta Sleep System.

We're overloaded, over-stimulated, and overwhelming our bodies' ability to relax. "Our nervous system is built for a sprint, but we're living in a stress marathon," he says. "If you go to bed worried you're probably going to wake up in the middle of the night," Dr. Naiman adds. And when that happens, as you probably know, the next day is pretty much shot.

A new generation of sleep scientists are overturning the conventional wisdom about parasomnia. (Counting sheep? Out.) They say: You can do it. With a few simple changes in your routine, a little visualization, a couple of surprisingly counter-intuitive moves and perhaps an attitude adjustment, a peaceful night of slumber can be yours. Here's their best advice:

Throw out your definition of a good night's sleep

Just as three square meals a day has given way to all-day grazing and smaller portions, "what's good for you" has changed here, too.

"Thinking it's necessary to stay asleep for 8 hours straight may be unrealistic," says David Neubauer, M. D., associate director of the Johns Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center and author of Understanding Sleeplessness: Perspectives on Insomnia. "Just as we experience a dip in alertness mid-afternoon, the inverse is a dip in sleepiness in the middle of the night. There's strong evidence that there's a kind of awakening that's totally normal."

History supports this take, Dr. Naiman says. "Before the industrial revolution, people had their first sleep for 3 to 4 hours, awoke for an hour or two, then slept for another 3 or 4 hours."

Even waking every 60 to 90 minutes can be part of a healthy sleep pattern. The deeper stages of sleep, or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, occur about every 90 minutes and get longer as the night goes on, so your brain might become more alert between those cycles.

Since we're conditioned to think that waking during the night is a problem, when it happens, we panic. That reaction causes our brains to awaken even further, Dr. Neubauer explains.

If you find yourself awake in pre-dawn hours, Dr. Naiman advises first assessing your physical state. Do you have an ache, a cramp, or need to go to the bathroom? If so, take care of it.

If you don't have a physical complaint, then chances are you are experiencing a normal stage of the sleep cycle. Knowing this "helps replace worries that you'll be useless without 8 solid hours of sleep with more neutral thoughts," suggests Sat Bir Khalsa, Ph.D., instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. "The useful thought is: ‘I can handle the disruption and still feel rested.'"

Get bed-ready

After an action-packed day (or one equally packed with worry), our brains need some time to catch up, to make order of things, and to slow their frenetic firing before we're ready to sleep. Pure bodily exhaustion can probably get you at least that first hour of dozing, but then worries will rise to the surface and cause you to stir. How can you get your mind to chill?

"We need to learn to apply the brakes before the car is in the garage," Dr. Naiman says. "Clearing your head is key to a good night of sleep." Simply taking 15 minutes to sit quietly, meditate, pray, or do rhythmic breathing can allow your mind to slow down enough to sleep through the night.

Establishing any ritual that you do before bed—anything but checking your e-mail!—will do more than relax you right then and there. The repetition also conditions your brain and body for sleep, Thompson explains.

While you're transitioning to Z-mode the same way night after night, you're also creating a Pavlovian response to your ritual. So simply sitting in the spot where you do your breathing or turning on the shower water signals your mind that it will be sleeping soon, Thompson says.

Another way to condition yourself sleepward is by playing off the body's internal clock. Dr. Naiman suggests simulating dusk about an hour before you plan to go to bed and dimming the lights significantly. This triggers natural circadian rhythms that help us prepare for sleep.

Make the breath-brain connection

Dr. Khalsa recently supervised a small Harvard study using specific breathing techniques to treat insomnia, and all subjects reported an improvement in the quality and quantity of sleep. "There is evidence that long, slow abdominal breathing will reduce anxiety and arousal," Dr. Khalsa explains.

Dr. Naiman recommends one breathing exercise (similar to those Dr. Khalsa used) called the 4-7-8 breath exercise. With your tongue resting on the roof of your mouth, just behind your upper teeth, exhale completely. Close your mouth and inhale through your nose for four counts. Hold your breath for seven counts. Then, exhale while mentally counting to eight. Repeat the cycle three more times. Both are important for restful sleep.

Take a pose to the doze

"There's a feedback loop between the muscles and the brain," Dr. Naiman explains. "When you stretch and release tension, the brain relaxes too." The deepest meditative state is known as "sleepless sleep."

To get to a sleepful state, Dr. Khalsa finds the yoga Bridge pose especially useful. Lie on your back with knees bent at a 90-degree angle and your heels parallel, close to your butt. Lift your hips and arch up onto your shoulders. Lace your palms together underneath your body and press your arms into the floor or mat. Hold the posture while taking 10 to 15 long, slow breaths.

When you wake up anyway

Despite all your best efforts, here you are, awake at an hour even a fisherman would call ungodly. What do you do now? First, here's a big don't: "If you open your eyes and see the clock, that's it for many stressed people," Dr. Walsleben says. "Seeing the time can trigger them to become fully awake." Keep your eyes closed, roll over, or move the clock so the display isn't visible.

If you're still far from dreamland try a mantra. Silently repeat any word that's soothing or pleasant to you, or simply think "inhale" as you inhale "exhale" as you release your breath.

Thinking the words over and over focuses and relaxes you, but requires less energy and attention than counting sheep, which can actually be too engaging to work the way it's supposed to.

"Get out, get out"

After 15 minutes of lying awake in bed, you need a change of venue. "When someone can't sleep, the bedroom can become a torture chamber," Dr. Khalsa says. "Staying there is counter-productive." And you risk associating the bed with your trouble sleeping, which will exacerbate the problem in nights to come.

Go to go to another room. You don't want to become too alert, so make sure you have a nightlight in your hallway and won't need to turn on brighter lights. Occupy yourself with something calming like knitting, listening to chill music on your iPod, or even performing your pre-sleep ritual again. Only when you feel drowsy, Dr. Khalsa says, should you go back to bed. In a very short while, you should be the picture of blissful sleep.

Getting your nap on

It's not just for toddlers. Napping makes great sense for adults, whether or not it puts you in touch with your inner child. When adults napped between 2 and 4 p.m., one recent study showed, they performed better on tests and had no problems falling asleep at night.

NASA found that military pilots and astronauts who took a 40-minute nap improved alertness by 100 percent and performance by 34 percent, and recent Harvard University research also revealed that college students who napped between tasks performed better than those who stayed awake.

How does napping work its brain magic? "It may protect brain circuits from overuse until those neurons can consolidate what's been learned about a procedure," says Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., coauthor of the Harvard study.

Unless you know the correct way to conduct a daytime doze, however, you could snooze and lose. "Napping can steal the drive for nighttime sleep, so you need to be cautious," says David Neubauer, M.D., associate director of the Johns Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center. "The key is to nap early and short."

By early he means daylight hours, at least five hours before you plan on going to sleep that night (between 2 and 4 p.m. is prime). Any later and your circadian rhythms will kick in, possibly making you feel disoriented upon waking and likely preventing you from conking out come your regular bedtime. As for short, keep your naps to less than an hour; 20 to 30 minutes is enough for most people to get the benefits.

To help stick to this nap-plan, stay out of the sack—likely not a problem at the office—since you associate your bed with long periods of rest. Find a quiet couch or carpeted floor where you can lie down. Even shutting your eyes in your office chair for 20 minutes will relax and refresh you. (That's if you can stifle your phone; if not, find an unused conference room.)

Home or work, you'll find that—just like in kindergarten—after a nice restorative nap, you'll play much better with others.

"The Head Trip," A Tour Through Your Mind, Youtube Video



Author Jeff Warren.


A tour through sleeping, dreaming and waking consciousness with Jeff Warren, at the Toronto launch of his "The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness" (Random House, 2007). For author contact, speaking information and reviews of the book, go to: www.headtrip.ca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhZ4yo1vfwA

Sleep Game Changer: "The Head Trip"

I've written before about how little research has been done on sleep and chronic insomnia. While in Anchorage I found a real winner (as the review below claims, "an instant classic") at the Title Wave used book store, Jeff Warren's The Head Trip Adventures on the Wheel of Conciousness.

I'm only part way into it, but already, I highly recommend this book for anyone with sleep issues, as well as Gayle Greene's Insomniac.

From Amazon, "A world at once familiar and unimaginably strange exists all around us–and within us. It is the world of consciousness, a protean mental landscape that each of us knows intimately in bits and pieces yet understands in its totality scarcely at all. Tied to the body and the brain, consciousness is nonetheless beyond our ability to measure or quantify. Despite the attempts of scientists and mystics, poets and dreamers, crackpots and geniuses, to map its contours and explain its secret workings, the mind remains mysterious. And the more we learn about it, the more mysterious it becomes.

But that is not to say that we know nothing about consciousness. In fact, as gonzo science journalist Jeff Warren demonstrates in this A provocative, often hilarious, and always fascinating synthesis of cutting-edge research and personal experience, just how much we do know is little short of astonishing. And when Warren fits the pieces together, the implications of that knowledge are, well, mind-blowing.

Warren begins with the insight that consciousness is not a simple on-off proposition, with rigid demarcations separating waking awareness from the murky depths of sleep, but rather a round-the-clock continuum regulated by natural biorhythms. He then sets out to explore, and to experience for himself, the seemingly miraculous, all-but-untapped potential of the human mind.

From the full-immersion virtual realities of lucid dreaming to the esoteric disciplines of Eastern meditative practices that have reached outposts of consciousness far beyond the grasp of Western science, from techniques of hypnosis and neurofeedback to such exotic states of awareness as the Watch and the Pure Conscious Event, Warren takes us on an incredible journey through our own heads–a journey conducted with the adventurous spirit and intellectual curiosity of a Darwin coupled with the sensibility of a stand-up comedian.

Part user’s manual and part travel guide, The Head Trip is an instant classic, a brilliant summation of consciousness studies that is also a practical guide to enhancing creativity, mental health, and the experience of what it means to be human. Many books claim that they will change you. This one gives you the tools to change yourself.