There’s nothing like the feeling of climbing into bed after a long day. With a smile on your face, you lay your head on the pillow and… nothing. Ten minutes go by, thirty, and then the next thing you know, you’ve been laying in bed staring at the ceiling for over an hour. If this sounds familiar, there’s likely more than one cause behind your sleepless nights.
As common as this problem is, there’s a host of reasons that could be causing it. But if you can identify it, you can work toward fixing it.
Identifying the Cause of Sleepless Nights
Stress, consuming alcohol or caffeine, screen time, medications – all these things and more can negatively affect your quality of sleep. By taking a closer look at your daily and nightly regimens, you can better assess what aspects of your routine may be impacting your sleep.
Once you’ve taken a look at your daily habits, you can start changing them one at a time, and you’ll be sleeping like a baby before you know it! There are also a number of products available to help supplement your sleep quality.
Can You Train Your Brain to Get Better Sleep?
The short answer: yes.
The long answer, however, requires a dedicated and purposeful change in habits. There are a number of behavioral and environmental components that factor into your natural circadian rhythm that could be behind the cause of your sleepless night. With the dawn of the technology age, these factors have grown to include time spent on your phone and in front of the TV or computer screen – all of which you can access from your bed.
But the good news is the elements that keep you from getting a good night’s rest can be fixed with practice and purposeful intent. For starters, try viewing the bedroom as a place of sleep and rest – which means don’t eat, do homework, or work on the computer in bed. Eventually, your body will begin to see the bed as the end-of-the-day shutdown, making it just that much easier to turn your brain off at night, eliminating one cause of sleeplessness.
If that doesn’t do the trick, try checking off the next thing on your list. It’s quite likely your lack of sleepless nights may be due to a combination of factors. Caffeine, stress, and the many side effects of bringing our phones to bed are among the top causes of sleeplessness in adults.
Monitor Your Caffeine and Alcohol Consumption
While you might think a nightcap will help take the edge off before bed, think again. Although you may find that alcohol helps you fall asleep quicker, the truth is that alcohol has a negative effect on Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which is the sleep stage responsible for memory retention. REM sleep is also important for processing emotional material. A decrease in REM sleep is linked to a repeat in traumatic memories, which are thought to be stored in maladaptive neural networks.
Caffeine, on the other hand, can make it hard to fall asleep and is linked to a decrease in deep sleep, which is the stage responsible for making you feel refreshed in the morning. A study performed by the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that 400mg of caffeine (equal to four cups of coffee) ingested up to six hours before bedtime can reduce your sleep by over an hour.
Put a Stop to the Before-Bed Screen Time
While bright light can certainly keep you up at night, blue light is the worst culprit. A Harvard study found that blue light suppresses melatonin production twice as much as other lights. The best way to avoid blue light at night would be to put down your phone, turn off the TV, and step away from the computer at least an hour or two before bedtime. However, if you can’t bring yourself to unclench your fingers and drop your phone on the nightstand or out of arm’s reach, there may be a solution for you.
As many of us have struggled to stay busy while also remaining COVID-safe during the off-work hours, more of us have turned toward technology as a source of enjoyment at night. So, when the in-bed screen time can’t be avoided, best grab a pair of blue-light glasses to block the blue light emitted by computers, TVs, and phones.
Does What You Eat Affect How You Sleep?
Most definitely.
Research on how your diet affects your sleep is still new, but the results are promising. One study found that a diet rich in saturated fat and sugar, and low in fiber, was linked to lighter sleep, with more frequent awakenings. However, it’s not just what you eat, but when you eat.
Trying different diets, or the new “fad diet,” and maintaining good sleep habits are more interlinked than you may know. Changing what and when you eat throws off your internal clock – effectively shifting your circadian rhythm – while poor sleep patterns are linked to making poor food choices and overeating.
Heavy, fatty, and spicy foods take longer to digest, so best to save the fried chicken and Indian food for lunchtime. Eating high-carb, high-sugar, heavily processed foods throughout the day can spike and fluctuate your blood sugar, leading to frequent fatigue throughout the day. Keep dinner on the smaller side, as larger quantities of food also take longer to digest, but maybe save a snack for bedtime. While you don’t want to try to sleep on a full stomach, you don’t want it to be empty either.
“It’s important for people to know that both what you eat, as well as the timing of when you eat, matter when it comes to sleep and long-term health outcomes,” says Kristin Eckel-Mahan, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Center for Metabolic and Degenerative Diseases at The University of Texas Health Science Center of Houston.
Check Your Medications
Could your medication be your cause of sleepless nights? Absolutely.
A number of prescription and over-the-counter medications can negatively impact the quality of your sleep or lead to insomnia, including:
- Heart medications – linked to nightmares, increased awakenings at night, and insomnia
- Asthma medications – linked to insomnia and daytime jitters
- Depression medications – linked to insomnia
- Anti-smoking medications – linked to nightmares and insomnia
- ADHD medications – linked to a decrease in REM sleep and insomnia
- Thyroid medications – linked to insomnia and daytime sleepiness
- Cold and allergy medications – linked to drowsiness, insomnia, increased awakenings at night, and decreased REM sleep
- Pain-relief medications – may contain caffeine and lead to insomnia
- Herbal medications – linked to sleep interference and overstimulation
If you’ve experienced one or more of these symptoms after taking one of the above medications, it may be a good idea to discuss it with your doctor or primary care physician. The answer could be as simple as switching to an alternative or taking your medications at a different time of day.
Stress: The Hidden Cause of Sleepless Nights
If ruling out the other causes didn’t work, stress could easily be the reason. Depression, anxiety, decreased concentration, headaches, fatigue, and appetite loss are all common signs of stress. Sit down and take a minute to collect your thoughts and assess what in your life may be causing you stress. Once you identify the culprits, you can take calculated steps toward reducing them.
There are a number of things you can do to relax your mind and calm your stress: Exercise, learn to meditate, practice yoga, try aromatherapy, or integrate deep breathing into your daily life. However, the most important thing you can do to reduce your stress may be learning to leave your work at work. Living in the 21st century has made this doubly hard with the creation of teleworking, but it’s more important now than ever, especially during COVID, to create a work-life balance – particularly if both of those activities occur at home.
So, what can you do once the clock strikes five?
Take the dog for a walk, light a candle, or draw a bath – relaxation looks different to everyone, so find what takes your stress away and keep going. Step away from your designated “working area” and spend some time with one of your hobbies. Outside of that, practice healthier eating, confide in a partner or friends, and take a deep breath – things will get better.
While the above techniques can be used to effectively reduce your stress, should the stress persist or worsen, it may be best to reach out to a therapist or other mental health professional.
Time to Make Sleepless Nights a Thing of the Past
Now that you’ve identified the many factors that might be behind your sleepless nights, it’s time to commit to fixing, or supplementing, them and creating new habits.
Like anything else, forming a new habit takes time and commitment. Although it may feel amazing to wake up late on Saturdays and stay up until 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning, that small boost of serotonin isn’t worth slugging through the following week.
Although supplements can be used to increase the quality and duration of your sleep, you can’t rely on them to do all the work. However, if you can put in the effort, supplements can be the perfect addition to a healthy lifestyle.
Routine is King
The secret you never wanted to know: Keeping a consistent schedule can drastically improve your sleep. Yes – that means even on weekends.
By observing the same wake-up and sleep schedule seven days a week, you’ll soon find you sleep better at night and wake up feeling more refreshed than if you’d slept in. That means no hitting the snooze button two or five times in the morning, or staying up late to catch the newest episode of your favorite show. (It’s the 21st century – just find it on the internet the next morning.)
Now, what may be the hardest part – get out of your own way. That means enrolling a friend or partner to keep you honest or even putting your alarm clock across the room, if necessary. That last one’s never fun, but if you really want better sleep, it might have to be done.
Melatonin vs. CBD and the Benefits of Combined Usage
Melatonin, a.k.a the sleep hormone, is produced by the pineal gland in your brain and is responsible for regulating your circadian rhythm and natural sleep cycle. Supplements are usually synthetically made and are readily available over-the-counter in the US. Although melatonin supplements come in up to 10mg doses and higher, studies have shown that consistently taking 0.5mg to 3mg of melatonin is most effective. Taking melatonin at too high of a dose can actually increase your sleeplessness during the day, as melatonin levels peak before 3:00 a.m each night.
Multiple studies have found that taking CBD before sleep significantly reduced cortisol levels and increased sleep duration. Cortisol, the hormone responsible for regulating your body’s stress levels, fuels your “fight-or-flight” instinct – and it’s the last thing you want circulating in your body before sleep. Studies have also found that CBD may help reduce REM sleep abnormalities and improve insomnia.
While you can use melatonin and CBD separately, melatonin-infused CBD oil provides the best of both supplements. Taking the capsules or tincture 30 minutes before bed can help calm your mind, regulate your sleep cycle, and promote a more restful night’s sleep. Although CBD oil with melatonin usually takes full effect from the first use, the effectiveness may increase with continued use.
Is it Time to Consult Your Doctor or a Sleep Specialist?
If you’ve tried and considered all of the above solutions and your sleep still isn’t improving, then it may be time to consult your doctor to find the cause behind your sleepless nights. Alternative health and wellness techniques can offer a great deal of help for everyday issues, but they can only do so much if there is an underlying health issue at the root of the problem.