Need a good night's sleep? Trying changing how you think about it

From bbc.com/future

Our hectic modern lives can often leave us feeling sleep-deprived, but what if much of a good night's sleep was down to our state of mind? 

How did you sleep last night? If you tossed and turned, or stared at the clock, it's likely you'll probably feel less-than-refreshed. But that groggy, tired feeling may not just be down to the quantity, or perhaps even the quality, of your sleep – it can also depend on your mindset. Because what you tell yourself the next day about how you slept, and about how much it matters, can make a difference to how you perceive your tiredness.

"Everybody knows the idea of sleep quality. They assume that it is based on people's sleep performance during the night, as something that you can measure," says Nicole Tang, director for the Warwick Sleep and Pain Lab at the University of Warwick in the UK. "But what happened afterwards, and what happened just before, could also have an influence."

Tang's own work in this area is part of a growing body of research that suggests sleeping through the night isn't the only key to feeling refreshed the next morning. Our perception of sleep, our mood when assessing how tired we are and what we are doing at that time can all make a difference, Tang and her colleagues say.

The idea that mindset directly affects our sleep isn't new. Decades of research has largely agreed that, in fact, psychological processes are likely the main driver behind insomnia: our sleep is disrupted when we're in an elevated state of psychological arousal, which often results from our thoughts, beliefs, and how we focus our attention.

Still, many of us would assume that, if we feel tired, it's because we slept poorly – tossing and turning all night, unable to fall into the kind of rejuvenating slumber we all hope for.

For decades, however, a phenomenon often called "paradoxical insomnia" has puzzled scientists. This is where people believe they had a poor night of sleep, feel fatigued – and yet when their sleep is objectively measured, such as with polysomnography, it is within the normal range. This state may be more common than people realise. Some research suggests it could apply to the majority of insomnia cases. One systematic review of studies identified the findings on prevalence among insomnia patients as ranging from 8% to 66%.

To be clear, insomnia, and its potential risks, are very real. And no one would argue that, if you consistently feel tired, you shouldn't make whatever tweaks to your sleep that you can. But the idea that how we view a bad night's sleep could change how tired we feel is an intriguing, and potentially empowering, consideration. At best? It means you might be able to feel more awake without having to clock up more hours of shut-eye.

The problem of sleep problems

This approach can conflict with what we're often told about sleep: namely, that consistently logging a certain number of hours, without wakes, is absolutely crucial to well-being, one of the main ideas driving a $78bn (£58bn), and growing, industry. In fact, experts say, the exact relationship between sleep duration and our long-term health remains unclear. The research tends to be mixed and even when a link is found, studies generally highlight associations between sleep and health, rather than causations. In other words, the lack of sleep could be the cause of the problem, or it could be down to an underlying issue that keeps someone from sleeping well – people with respiratory problems, for example, often suffer poorer sleep.

The idea that our modern lives are leaving us increasingly sleep deprived may just be part of the problem (Credit: Getty Images)

"We're problematising our sleep," says David Samson, an evolutionary anthropologist and director of the Sleep and Human Evolution Lab at the University of Toronto, as well as author of the forthcoming book The Sleepless Ape: The strange and unexpected story of how social sleep made us human. By using objective measures such as actigraphy, which monitors activity and rest cycles, he and other researchers have found that people from hunter-gather societies typically get between 5.7 and 7.1 hours of sleep per night – on the lower end of the scale compared to industrial societies. Their sleep is also more fragmented.

But it also doesn't bother them, says Samson. Of two groups he looked at, in Namibia and Bolivia, less than 3% of foragers said they had trouble falling, or staying, asleep – a fraction of the up to 30% reported in industrial societies. Neither group had a word for "insomnia" in their languages.

"When I ask them 'Are they happy about their sleep? Are they satisfied with their sleep? Is sleep okay?' – however you try and get at this question – 9.5 out of 10 say, 'Yeah, I love my sleep'," Samson says. "Yet we know, quantitatively, that these foragers in these small-scale societies are sleeping less than those in the economically developed world.

"We have this narrative in the West [that] humans have never been more sleep-deprived," he adds. It's total rubbish, he says.

Focusing too much on sleep doesn't just make it harder to get shut-eye – it also can mean feeling more fatigued the next day

Samson is one of a growing number of researchers pushing against the idea of universal "rules" for exactly how much sleep we all must get. In one recent academic article, for example, researchers at the University of Oslo questioned the idea that we're experiencing an "epidemic of sleeplessness". They point out that laboratory experiments – which have given rise to the concerns that poor sleep inhibits health – are very different than real-life findings.

"Sleep need should be regarded as dynamic, with the potential to adapt in response to environmental circumstances," the researchers write. "This means that there is not an optimal amount of sleep for an individual across situations and times. Rather, sleep is a negotiable quantity that is affected by environmental, cultural, psychological and physiological factors, which must be balanced against competing needs and opportunities for various behaviours."

Sleep anxieties

Believing there is only one "right" way to sleep isn't just, thus far, unfounded – it also can backfire.

That includes when we're trying to sleep. People with insomnia tend to have rigid beliefs about sleep (for example: "If I don't get seven hours, I'll feel terrible tomorrow") and often feel especially fearful of a poor night's sleep. They are also more alert towards sleep-related cues, such as watching the clock. All of these thoughts can increase arousal and anxiety at night, making sleep harder to attain. But they can even make a difference the next day, notes Tang. By making people more aware of how much they were awake the day after, it may exacerbate their feeling that they slept poorly – not only making them feel more tired, but also more worried about sleeping that night, continuing a "vicious cycle".

Often, however, these beliefs aren't actually based in fact. Those with insomnia tend to think that they require more sleep than is realistically necessary, for example, and to overestimate the impact of a poor night of sleep on their functioning.

As a result, traditional treatments for insomnia have tended to focus on cognitive-behavioural strategies to shift those thoughts and decrease arousal, such as practicing muscle relaxation.

This approach can help others struggling with sleep disturbances, too, like new parents, says Pamela Douglas, an Australian general practitioner, sleep researcher and founder of the Possums sleep intervention, an approach to parent-child sleep that has been adopted by health professionals around the world. She points out that most guidance on sleep for new parents emphasises focusing on tracking sleep duration and night wakes, for example. "Actually, we don't want to be looking at the clock or counting up hours," she says.

Technology such as smart watches allow us to know far more about our sleep than ever before, but they can also make us anxious (Credit: Getty Images)

Beyond the particular beliefs we have about sleep, the problem is how attached to them we are, says Jason Ong, a long-time sleep researcher at Northwestern University who is now director of behavioural sleep medicine at sleep diagnostics company Nox Health in Atlanta, US.

"For people with insomnia, it's not just the fact that they think things like, 'I need eight hours of sleep or I'm not going to function the next day'. It's the degree to which they latch on to it," he says. His research has focused on using a mindfulness-based approach that encourages detaching from those thoughts.

The day after

Focusing too much on sleep doesn't just make it harder to get shut-eye. It also can mean feeling more fatigued the next day – even if we slept fine.

Ong recalls one patient who insisted that he needed six hours to function. When Ong pointed out a day in his sleep diary where he'd logged five, the patient told him that it had been daylight savings, but he didn't realise it. Only later, at the end of a gym session, did he realise he'd slept 5.5 hours, not 6.5. Then he felt exhausted.

"I said: 'Just the knowledge that you slept one hour or less changed how you felt the rest of the day?'," Ong says. "Is it really important how much sleep you got, or just how much sleep you think you got?"

This may also mean that the rapid rise of sleep tracking devices could backfire, warn researchers including Tang and Samson. Say we wake up feeling fine, but our smartwatch tells us we had a poorer night of sleep than average: we may now feel more tired than if we didn't have that information.

Some research bears this out. In one study, for example, people with insomnia were given feedback that researchers told them was from sleep data on a smartwatch. Unbeknownst to the participants, the feedback was fake. Half were told they'd slept badly, half that they'd slept well. When they reported back later in the day, the group who were told they'd slept poorly said they felt more fatigued, less alert and experienced a worse mood than the group who were told they'd slept well.

It's natural to have multiple awakenings during the night

Feeling good about our sleep – even if it wasn't objectively great – doesn't just affect how tired we feel. It may even affect how well we perform. In one small recent study, participants in a laboratory were woken up after either five hours or eight hours of sleep, two nights in a row. But their clocks were set to make them think the opposite: those who slept five hours thought they'd slept eight, and vice versa.

When they were tested, the participants who slept five hours and thought they had slept eight had faster reaction times than those who slept eight but were told the truth. Those who slept eight hours, but thought they slept five? They had slower reaction times than those who really had slept five and were told so.

How we feel about a night of sleep also fluctuates throughout the day. "The way we think about our sleep can change, even after the sleep period," says Tang. In one study she co-authored, participants were asked multiple times throughout the day how they'd slept the night before. That sleep period didn't change – it was in the past – but their ratings of it did. In particular, if they were doing something they enjoyed, or physical activity, they suddenly had a more positive perception of how they'd slept the night before.

The importance of mindset doesn't mean we should adopt "toxic positivity", researchers caution. "We're not trying to get people to give themselves 'fake news'," Tang says. "But it's about being able to have that understanding, that nuance, that even if I don't get a very good night of sleep… I can still do things that I enjoy."

Sleep tips

So, if you struggle with poor sleep, what can you do? All of the usual tips apply, experts say – for example, practising good sleep hygiene, which typically includes strategies like avoiding alcohol and caffeine and keeping a regular bedtime. (Learn some of the other ways you can improve your sleep according to science.)

But beyond that, try to adopt a less black-and-white approach to sleep. You might remind yourself of times that you didn't sleep perfectly but still had a good day, for example. Adopting a beginner's mindset can also help: not assuming that, because you've previously had a bad day after a poor night's sleep, that is what will always happen. Researchers including Tang, Douglas and Ong also advise not letting a bad night disrupt your life more than necessary by, say, cancelling plans. 

Tang's research also suggests focusing on things that boost your mood in the morning could also go a long way towards improving your evaluation of how you slept.

Understanding more about how sleep actually works can help, too, Tang says. Knowing that it's natural to have multiple awakenings during the night, for example, can make those wakes feel less frustrating. (Read more about the forgotten medieval habit of biphasic sleep.)

"I'm not saying that sleep is not important to overall physical health and mental health," Tang says. "But there is a culture where, when people talk too much about sleep duration, they have forgotten the fact that there are so many individual differences, and so many circumstantial aspects. And that is causing a lot of unrealistic expectation and guilt and disappointment for lots of people."

In fact, it has probably been making you feel more tired. How exhausting.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241014-need-a-good-nights-sleep-trying-changing-how-you-think-about-it

What Is the Point of Sleep Tracking? Experts Say Chasing a ‘Perfect’ Sleep Score May Backfire

From firstforwomen.com

While wearable sleep trackers can be helpful when used properly, low-tech options are just as good 

Smartwatches and apps that track your activity are all the rage, from counting your steps to examining your sleep habits. But what is the point of sleep tracking, and does it help—or hurt—your nightly slumber?? As supporters of sound sleep, we turned to the experts. And it turns out trying to achieve the “perfect” night’s sleep can actually backfire. 

                                                                                                                                           AndreyPopov

What is the point of sleep tracking?

Sleep trackers analyse your sleep patterns to help determine your total sleep time, how often you’re tossing or turning and what phases of sleep you’re in throughout the night. Using them is “a way to understand what might affect your sleep quality so you can make changes, like adjusting when you go to bed or figuring out what keeps waking you up,” explains  Shelby Harris, PsyD, DBSM, director of sleep health at Sleepopolis. 

Lauri Leadley, sleep educator and founder at Valley Sleep Center adds that sleep apps (or trackers) can even help resolve sleep disorders or clue you into health conditions like sleep apnoea or chronic stress. However, she recommends starting with a sleep study to gather data first, since sleep tracking devices don’t measure sleep directly. 

How sleep tracking can backfire

While there are benefits to sleep tracking, experts worry that fixating on achieving the perfect “sleep score” can lead to poor sleep quality and an increased risk of developing sleep disorders such as insomnia. In fact, the issue has become so common that it’s been dubbed orthosomnia.

“Orthosomnia is when someone becomes overly obsessed with getting the ‘perfect’ sleep, often because of what their sleep tracker tells them,” says Harris. “The irony is that the more they stress about their sleep data, the harder it gets to sleep well.”

Ultimately, this behaviour can disrupt your circadian rhythm, and the lack of sleep can lead to more potential long-term health issues. 

Sleep tracking can cause anxiety

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According to a study from Nature of Science and Sleep, specialists were concerned that orthosomnia could harm people’s sleep quality in the long run. This can occur for various reasons: “First, individuals may overestimate the accuracy and reliability of their sleep tracker or mobile phone app data, which can lead them to misunderstand how well they sleep,” the study authors note. 

Additionally, too much tracking can cause anxiety while you sleep. That stress makes it harder to relax and fall asleep at night. The authors of the study caution against using these devices if you find yourself obsessing over the data, as they can potentially disregard proper treatment for sleep problems or in-depth sleep tests. 

If achieving perfect anything is the goal, then it’s counterproductive, Leadley notes. Instead, she suggests adopting healthier habits to improve the quality of your sleep. 

How to use a sleep tracker successfully

Constantly monitoring every little change in your daily sleep habits likely won’t improve your sleep in the long run. “Focus on the big picture instead of obsessing over every single night,” says Harris. “Sleep naturally varies, so look at trends over a week or month and use it to spot patterns, not to beat yourself up if you have an off night.”

It’s also important to use trusted devices or apps. “ I like the ones developed by neuroscientists—individuals that know a thing or two about sleep health,” says Leadley. She suggests the Sleep Genius app (available on both iPhone and Android), as experts in neuroscience, sleep, sound and music created it. The app pairs with a headband that has built-in speakers, which allows it to play specific tones and music that improve your sleep.

If you prefer a traditional wearable fitness tracker, the Oura Ring 4, Apple Watch Series 10 and FitBit Charge 6 can all monitor your sleep cycle to help you snooze soundly, too.

If you’re wary of obsessing over gadgets, experts say it’s best to stick to basic sleep hygiene. Practice going to bed and waking up at the same time, says Harris. Reading, meditating or taking a calming bath before bed can also signal your body that it’s time to wind down. 

Don’t knock on classic pen and paper, either. “Even just jotting down how you feel in the morning in a notebook can help you track your sleep without getting sucked into tech overkill,” says Harris. You can also write down when you went to bed, when you woke up and if there were any instances of wakefulness during the night.

https://www.firstforwomen.com/health/sleep/what-is-the-point-of-sleep-tracking-how-to-prevent-insomnia

Why Do Some People Need More Sleep Than Others?

From time.com

By Jeffrey Kluger

My bed and I spend less time together than the experts say we should. Most nights, my head hits the pillow around 11:00 pm, and I’m up—without an alarm—at 5:30 am. That six and a half hours of shuteye puts me behind the seven to nine hours the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society recommend for adults. Does it hurt me? Not so I can tell.

I may be a bit of an outlier as far as the guidelines are concerned, but I am by no means alone. Our sleep needs change over the course of our lifetimes—from 17 hours a day as a newborn, to up to 12 hours as a schoolkid, to the seven- to nine-hour benchmark for adults. But those figures are just averages. Plenty of people, like me, get by on significantly less for their age, while others require a good bit more. What is it that makes some folks short sleepers, some folks long sleepers, and others smack-in-the-middle sleepers? A lot of things, as it turns out.

Your sex matters—a little

When it comes to the differing sleep needs of men and women, one of the most commonly cited statistics is that women require more—but only by a tiny bit, about 11 extra minutes a night. The finding comes from a 2013 study in the American Sociological Review that surveyed nearly 73,000 participants in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey. The sample group included only people in the 18 to 64 age range—eliminating the youngest and oldest respondents, whose sleep needs often fall on the highest and lowest end of the scale—to arrive at the small but statistically significant difference.

The researchers cited a range of factors that might explain the small gap—including the round-the-clock responsibilities of unpaid housework, which women still perform more commonly than men—and few opportunities for catch-up naps during the day. 

The American Sleep Foundation reports additional possible explanations, including menstruation, menopause, and pregnancy, all of which can interrupt sleep and lead to women staying in bed a little bit longer to make up for the periodic awakenings. Other findings suggest that women fall asleep a bit faster than men, meaning that they enter their sleep cycle with an edge of a few minutes. And then, of course, there’s the burden of caring for children—especially small children—which falls more heavily on mothers than fathers.

“When you have kids, you’re always dealing with them,” says Dan Gartenberg, an adjunct professor in biobehavioural health at Penn State University and CEO of Sleepspace, a sleep-assistance app. “Women may report having to get more sleep simply because they’re being woken up all the time.” Still, while more studies have been conducted on male-female sleep differences since the one in 2013, they have not turned up anything dramatic. “Honestly, the effect for gender is small,” says Gartenberg.

The wages of insomnia

About one in three adults worldwide experiences insomnia—or the inability to fall asleep or stay asleep—at any given time, according to the Cleveland Clinic. About one in 10 suffer from the chronic form of the condition. known as insomnia disorder, which is defined as three or more nights of sleep problems per week lasting three or more months. Insomnia can occur at different phases of the sleep cycle. So-called initial insomnia involves difficulty falling asleep; maintenance insomnia occurs when you wake up in the middle of the night but are able to go back to sleep; and late insomnia is waking up too early and being unable to go back to sleep. A lot of things can cause insomnia, including anxiety, depression, chronic pain, acid reflux, a family history of sleep problems, and stressful life circumstances that make it difficult to unwind. 

By definition, people with insomnia get less rest, which increases their need to stay in bed longer fighting to sleep or finding the time to nap during the day. “If your sleep is very broken up, you’re going to need more of it,” says Gartenberg.

There are several treatments for insomnia. Benzodiazepines and sedative-hypnotics are options, but also dangerous ones, as they can lead to dependency and addiction. What’s more, they lead to poor quality of sleep. “Ambien, for example, is not meant to be used every day because it’s going to reduce your deep sleep,” says Gartenberg.

Other, safer options include such sleep-hygiene strategies as going to bed and getting up at the same time every day; avoiding over-the-counter stimulants like certain cold medicines; limiting TV time or other stimulating activities before bed; and taking a bath, listening to soothing music or meditating in the evening. The goal, says Gartenberg, is to achieve sleep that is “regenerative and consolidated”—restful without medications and, if possible, without interruption. The closer you get to those twin goals, the more your sleep needs will fall back into the recommendations for your age.

The role of sleep apnoea

Next to insomnia, apnoea - or the periodic cessation of breathing during sleep, leading to micro-awakenings or full awakenings throughout the night - is the most common sleep disorder. “About 20% of the U.S. population has sleep apnoea, which is technically defined as literally choking five times an hour or more,” says Gartenberg. “If you have a severe case, you’re choking 100 times per hour.” In addition, he adds, about half of the population who do not meet the technical definition of sleep apnoea have suboptimal breathing during sleep, choking two to four times per hour.

There are two types of sleep apnoea, each with its own cause. Obstructive sleep apnoea occurs when the muscles in the back of the throat relax and collapse during sleep, cutting off breathing. Central sleep apnoea occurs when the brain fails to send signals to the central nervous system instructing respiration to take place. Overall, men are two to three times more likely to suffer from apnoea than women. About 4% of women have a related condition known as upper airway resistance, that can also disrupt breathing and sleep, according to Gartenberg. That condition occurs in only 1.5% of men.

As with insomnia, apnoea can cause people to require more hours of sleep, as they try to make up for the disruptions and awakenings that occur over the course of the night. The worse the apnoea is, the more catch-up time may be required. There are multiple treatments for apnea, including weight loss, CPAP sleep masks, implantable devices, and surgery.

Screwy circadian rhythms

Your body is a walking clock, built to respond to the cycles of the day. We awaken as the sun rises, sleep after it sets, and go through peaks and valleys of high and low energy in between—with the greatest highs occurring two to four hours after we wake up and again before the dinner hour, according to Gartenberg. But as technology takes us further and further from the state of nature, our circadian clock is coming unsprung.

“Since the invention of the light bulb, we're getting the wrong signals based on our circadian rhythms, which is hindering our sleep quality and our ability to have a regenerative night’s sleep,” says Gartenberg.

If the problem began in the late 19th century, it’s being turbocharged in the early 21st. We cocoon ourselves in brightly lighted cities, where 56% of the world’s population lives; work remotely at all hours—no need to follow a nine-to-five schedule if you can wake up, log on, and put in your time whenever you want; and spend our days and nights in front of screens, which bathe us in blue light, a wavelength that suppresses the production of the sleep hormone melatonin. All of this leads to poor-quality sleep and the need for more than the baseline for your age.

It’s not necessary to move out of the city or ditch your electronics to recalibrate your internal clock. Instead, you can nudge it into alignment by imposing a regular structure on your day. Try to wake up at the same time every morning and go to bed at the same time every night, exercise during those morning or early evening peaks, have your meals at set hours, avoid eating dinner too close to bedtime, and power down your phone or tablet an hour or two before sleep. 

The role of the genes

It is the rare person who can get by on just four and a half hours of sleep—but those individuals exist. Not only do they need relatively little slumber, they also tend to score higher than average on tests of energy, optimism, and pain tolerance. Those people, known as short sleepers, have been found by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco to have a mutation in seven genes that play a role in regulating sleep and, the studies suggest, mood—though to date they have published papers only on four of them.

“There are many people who think everyone needs eight to eight and a half hours of sleep per night and there will be health consequences if they don’t get it,” Dr. Louis Ptacek, a neurology professor at UCSF and the co-discoverer of the short sleeper genes, told TIME in 2020. “But that’s as crazy as saying everybody has to be 5 ft. 10 in. tall. It’s just not true.” 

Still, no one suggests that it’s terribly common to have short sleep written in your DNA. So far, only about 50 families with the short-sleeper genes have been identified.

A few sleep hacks

Go easy on alcohol and cannabis: Even a little bit of drinking can scramble your sleep—helping you drift off more easily, perhaps, but causing you to awaken more during the night. Additionally, when you have alcohol in your system before bed, you get less rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the deepest sleep phase. “Alcohol totally wrecks sleep quality,” Gartenberg says. Cannabis, similarly, has sleep-inducing benefits in the early part of the night, but sleep-disturbing effects later.

Get some variety in your day: One of the reasons babies sleep so much is because they spend their waking hours vacuuming up information about the world. Consolidation of this information happens during sleep, so babies need to conk out early and often to preserve what they’ve learned. That doesn’t change in adulthood—meaning that the more novel experiences you have, the better you might sleep at night. “If you’re riding your bike and follow the same route again and again, maybe instead go a different route,” says Gartenberg. “When we learn and expose ourselves to more information, there’s actually an effect where you get more deep sleep.”

Figure out your natural sleep cycle. The next time you’re on vacation, take the time to learn about yourself. Rather than setting an alarm every day and dashing off to an activity, try going to bed at the same time for at least three nights running and not setting an alarm at all. Ideally, you will sleep until your body determines it has had enough. “This is a close estimation of what your unique sleep needs are,” says Gartenberg. If you’re sleeping, say, eight and a half hours, you can make sure you get to bed early enough when you get back home so that you can log that much time each night.

https://time.com/7064982/how-much-sleep-do-you-need-health/