Darkness/Clock Watcher

I hope your first month of this sleep challenge went well.  That you are finding it easier to fall asleep and/or stay asleep.  I would love it if building a bedtime routine and/or controlling your room temperature has created some improvement to your sleep.  If you are charting your progress and feel comfortable sharing, please leave a comment below.  It may help someone who is struggling to see they are not the only ones having these sleep issues. It may be useful for some to hear about the wind down routines that are working for people in the challenge.

The purpose of these challenges is to try them for a month, as some of these techniques require adjusting your routine and you will need the time to figure out if it is working for you.  It might take time to become a habit and a way to retrain your brain.  More than likely it will be a layering of several techniques and tips that result in consistent successful nights of good sleep.

While there has been study after study on sleep.  I could not find any specific studies that firmly placed lack of sleep as the blame for any specific illness.  Many studies were just a review of groups of studies trying to find some common links to mortality.  My biggest take away from all of this research. Is that regular lack of sleep affects our emotional state, cognitive state and the fatigue it causes interferes with our reaction time.  It seems as if these are side-effects of lack of sleep not an illness in its own right.  Most of these side-effects go away when we can string a few nights of good sleep together. Sleeplessness is a symptom of some illnesses; it does not seem to be the cause of those illnesses.

With the sleep tracking technology available today, I don’t know why sleep research can’t get more specific.  That is the one thing that frustrates me the most about research studies, they seem to be written in vague terms that look like they are trying to avoid a lawsuit.  So many disclaimers.  I often wonder if these researchers are really trying to find a solution, or are just trying to find reasons for additional research and funding.  I believe some researchers are sincerely attempting to find cause and cures.  It’s just hard to sort the good research from the poor research as a non-scientist.  I will be addressing this topic in future blogs.

Especially when media outlets often use vague research and spin it as if it is fact. Of course, they will place some “tiny print” in the last paragraph to absolve themselves of the inaccuracy of their entire article or news segment.  In their twisted minds, it’s not their fault you only read the misleading headline and not read thru to the end.  Fear, anxiety, envy and anger sell.  So, media outlets will keep pushing these emotional buttons until it isn’t profitable for them anymore.  So be prepared for this to keep happening as each media outlet tries to out fear their competition.   

So many research papers, articles and media outlet propaganda end with, not conclusive more research needs to be done.  Or that the study was too small and the data was not statistically significant and a larger study or more research needs to be done. Until we get truth telling in headlines, I suggest before reading an article, scroll to the last paragraph to see if the title, matches the closing statement or disclaimer. That can give you a clue to if it is worth your time or more fear impersonating fact.  You don’t have to give away that time, just move on.

The best research is the research we do on ourselves, within reason, of course.  That’s why I decided to concentrate on one easy to do challenge every month. That you can layer easily onto your bedtime routine.  Keeping your own record of your individual progress.

If at any time during your personal sleep research, you get concerned that nothing is working and your physical or mental health are suffering from lack of sleep.  Take the records you have been keeping about what you have tried and how each has worked or not worked to your doctor.  That information may be valuable to help your doctor see what is the next step and speed up their diagnosis.

On a lighter note, this month we will be looking at two more easy to do tasks, one to help fall asleep and one to help stay asleep.  As we tackle Light Pollution and Nocturnal Time Monitoring.  Otherwise known as make your room darker and clock watching anxiety. 

These two tasks may even be easier to do that last month’s challenge.

Too much light in your room whether its artificial or natural can stall your falling asleep. Depending on the orientation of your bedroom windows, you may be getting streetlights, car lights or even your own outside lights, shining a bit too much light into your room.  You may also have the challenges of the indoor light we have all acquired. All those standby lights on the electronics in your room, your light up digital clock, phone notification alarms, even reading from screens and watching TV in your room can be too much light.  Interfering with your falling to sleep.

I’m not advocating complete and total darkness, even a slight reduction can work wonders in helping you fall asleep.  Total darkness poses other problems, specifically tripping hazards and disorientation if you wake up and get out of bed in that total darkness.

If you have bright lights outside your home and you suspect that might be interfering with your falling asleep, try adding black out curtains or shades to your room’s windows.  If you’re not sure if outside light is the problem, you can always try something temporary to block the light and “test” to see if that is an issue you were unaware of.  You can build an easy temporary light blocker with some cardboard, tape some pieces together and size it to fit into your window, or tack up a blanket to block the light.   You will probably know within a week or so, if having a darker room is useful.  Then you can make it nicer if that light blocking needs to be permanent. Look around your room and see if there is any light pollution you need to clear out. See if that can help falling asleep become a little bit easier this month. 

That takes care of our tip for falling asleep, this one for staying asleep is just as easy. If you describe your insomnia by saying you woke up at 1am, 2am, 3am 4am and so on. 

You have nocturnal time monitoring issues feeding your sleep anxiety.  Clock watching can increase insomnia.  We all wake up in the night, most of us just don’t know it because we fall right back to sleep.  But if you look at the clock and note the time, it can increase sleep anxiety in people who are anxious about sleep.  Creating a viscous circle, where every time you look at the clock your anxiety increases.  Sometimes to the point that you get little to no sleep, or very poor sleep quality.

Easy fix! Turn the clock around. Put a box over it or in front of it. No picking up your phone to see what time it is either.  Place your phone face down, out of arms reach.  The studies that I read, show patients fall asleep easier and wake less if they stop looking at the clock. If you’re a clock watcher, give this tip a try this month. Let me know how it works out for you.

If you want to track your success and failures while taking on these challenges here is a simple sleep chart template.  If you want to use it you can copy it, down load the pdf, or use it as a guide to mark up your personal calendar whether its paper or digital.

If you have a watch or ring type fitness tracker – many of them also track your sleep and that can collect valuable information for you to include on your chart.  Using one of those trackers can be a more scientific way to see if you are having improvement and if you should keep up that particular strategy. It can also show you if you are waking up and falling right back to sleep or if you’re not falling right back to sleep.

Sometimes we don’t notice the small improvements if we are not looking closely enough.  Then when you layer a new strategy on top of that one that is working a little bit, you can see if they compound to work better, or if there is no change. 

In my opinion, if you try to do too many new things at once and that combination works, you don’t know which one or two might have been the key.  Or it can overwhelm you and you stop doing some of the things.  Maybe you stop doing the one that worked and your back to the beginning. 

Sleep improvement challenge 2021, sleep is our quest, mental and physical health will be our reward.