12 Strategies for Fighting Insomnia

From orlandohealth.com

By Ziad R. Mattar, MD

It’s hard to know where to begin if you struggle to fall asleep. Roughly a third of all adults battle insomnia at some point in their lives, and the answer to a better night’s rest may be as simple as changing a few everyday habits.

Before you seek the help of a sleep medicine specialist, here are some strategies you can try to return to restorative sleep.

Start a Sleep Log

Before you make any changes, begin a sleep log to track what is and isn’t working. Record what time you go to bed and awaken, as well as what time you wake up at night, if that’s an issue. The more information you track, the better. You may find it helpful to also track what time you finished dinner as well as if you exercised during the day.

A sleep log is typically the first step recommended by sleep doctors. They will suggest that you go to bed and wake up at the same time consistently. Routine is key, and helping the body fall asleep is easier if it’s at the same time nightly.

Awakening at the same time every morning helps. Setting an alarm and rising, even if you're in a deep sleep, will help you in the future. This may be unpleasant for a few days but will pay dividends in the long run.

Get Help for Mental Health Disorders

If you battle anxiety, depression or PTSD, you are not alone. These common conditions all affect your sleep. A doctor can prescribe medication, but most will recommend beginning mental health counselling as a first step. Lack of sleep exacerbates mental health disorders, so addressing the issue is key.

If you have experienced major trauma, help from a therapist or psychologist is best. Practices such as cognitive behavioural therapy can regulate your nervous system, helping you to rest and feel safe again, allowing for proper sleep.

 

Take A Look at Your Medications

Many people don’t realise that their medications act as stimulants, keeping them up at night. This can be maddening, especially if you’re more symptomatic and take medication at night. Medications prescribed for the following are worth another look.

• Depression
• Asthma
• Blood pressure
• Allergies

Ask your prescribing doctor if an alternative medication or lower dose may work. With your doctor’s OK, you can experiment by taking the medicine earlier in the day until you find a time that allows for a full night of sleep.

Herbal medications may also play a role. These are not regulated by the FDA and can contain more ingredients than you realise. Talk to your primary doctor if you suspect any herbs or herbal supplements are affecting your sleep.

Move Your Body

Physical and even social activity are two of the best ways to ensure a good night’s sleep. Ideally, you’re getting 30 minutes of physical exercise, five days a week. If your week currently doesn’t contain any exercise, it’s OK to do what you can and build up the amount of time spent moving. Every bit helps, whether it’s taking the stairs at the parking garage or parking in the farthest space at the grocery store to get more steps in.

Limit Naps

Naps can help you recover from missed sleep, but napping for too long each day can prevent you from falling and staying asleep. If you must nap, limit it to no more than 15 to 20 minutes.

Monitor Caffeine Intake

Caffeine is one of the biggest obstacles between you and sleep. Stop consuming caffeine by 5 pm. If this still keeps you awake, try stopping an hour earlier and walk your way back to a time that works. If you’re more sensitive to caffeine, you might have stop drinking it by 11 am or noon.

Stop Eating Late at Night

Avoid meals and snacking late at night. Your body can’t get the full rest it needs if it’s busy digesting food. It’s recommended that you finish eating between 2 and 4 hours before bedtime.

If you can, have your largest meals at breakfast or lunch, and opt for a smaller, easier-to-digest dinner. A lighter dinner, such as salad or soup, will satiate you without keeping you up. Avoid fried foods at dinner as they are hard to digest. Pay attention to foods such as tomatoes and tomato products that can cause acid reflux and affect sleep.

Skip Sweets

Avoid chocolate before bed. Chocolate is a stimulant and also can induce acid reflux.

Limit alcohol

The occasional single glass of wine with dinner is OK, but any more than that, especially right before bed, could compromise your sleep. Alcohol can help you fall asleep, but you will metabolize it in about 3 hours, turning into sugar, which will then wake you up.

Stop Smoking Before Bedtime

Don’t smoke before bedtime as smoking exacerbates insomnia. If you’re a smoker, try to have your last cigarette or vape at least 2 hours before bed.

Create Ideal Sleep Environment

Avoid too much stimulation in the bedroom. Turn off the TV or music, and put away your smartphone, when you’re trying to sleep. Your brain needs to rest at night, and any stimulation can disrupt the sleep cycle. If you must have sounds, choose a noise machine, an audio book or something similarly soothing and relatively monotone.

Light also plays a role in your sleep. You want your sleep space to be pitch black, which may necessitate wearing a sleep mask or hanging blackout curtains.

Create Before-Bed Routine

The hour before bed is ideally devoted to relaxing activities. Take a warm bath, practice a bit of light yoga, read or listen to soft, soothing music.

If you try all these measures and are still having issues, it’s time to see a sleep specialist.

https://www.orlandohealth.com/content-hub/12-strategies-for-fighting-insomnia

The Power and Benefits of Mid-Afternoon Naps: Boosting Memory, Mood, and More

From medriva.com

The Power of Napping

In today’s fast-paced world, sleep often takes a back seat to productivity. However, new research suggests that incorporating a short nap in the mid-afternoon could offer several benefits, including boosting memory, improving job performance, lifting mood, and increasing alertness. Moreover, these power naps may alleviate stress and even symptoms associated with insomnia.

Unlocking Productivity Through Napping

Contrary to popular belief, napping does not equate to laziness. In fact, napping can be a powerful tool to unlock productivity. Short power naps of around 20 minutes are ideal for boosting alertness and reducing decision fatigue, while longer naps of 60-90 minutes can promote deep sleep, further enhancing cognitive function. Napping strategically during the afternoon offers a refreshing energy boost, allowing individuals to refocus and tackle tasks with renewed vigour.

Reducing Fatigue and Enhancing Memory

Research supports the benefits of napping in reducing fatigue and enhancing memory. Naps provide the brain with a momentary respite, reducing cortisol levels and offering a break from daily life pressures. This reduction in stress hormones has been associated with improved memory consolidation. In essence, napping may hold the key to learning and memory improvements, particularly for those juggling high-stress jobs or studying for exams.

Improve Mood and Overall Health

But the benefits of napping extend beyond productivity and memory. Taking a short nap in the mid-afternoon can also significantly improve mood and overall well-being. It acts as a mini-vacation, providing a short escape from the demands of the day. Furthermore, short naps have been found to reduce the risk of heart disease, underscoring the importance of this practice for overall health.

Napping and Night-time Sleep

Despite the myriad benefits of napping, it’s important to balance this practice with good night time sleep habits. Napping should be strategic and moderate, and ideally should not interfere with your night time sleep. Establishing a healthy nap routine, including the timing and duration of naps, can help ensure that you reap the benefits without compromising your night’s sleep.

Conclusion

In conclusion, napping, particularly in the mid-afternoon, can offer a wide range of benefits, including boosting memory, improving job performance, lifting mood, and increasing alertness. Whether you’re an insomniac looking for respite, a student needing a memory boost, or a professional seeking to unlock productivity, incorporating a power nap into your routine may be just what you need. If you’re struggling with getting a good night’s sleep despite napping, consider seeking professional consultation to balance your sleep habits effectively.

https://medriva.com/wellness/sleep-health/the-power-and-benefits-of-mid-afternoon-naps-boosting-memory-mood-and-more/ 

What You Need To Know About Your Sleep Gadgets

From codeblue.galencentre.org

By Sean P.A. Drummond, Monash University

Sleep gadgets have become ubiquitous but getting the information you need from them is more straightforward than you might think 

MELBOURNE, Feb 13 – Sleep technology is big business. All those watches, bedside devices, and mattress sensors designed to measure our sleep have become insanely popular.

Perhaps you received a gadget at Christmas or resolved to use the one you already have to improve your sleep this year.

Now you’re left with questions: “How do I make sense of the information the device is providing?” or “What does it actually mean to improve my sleep, and how the heck do I do that?”

Fortunately, the answers are more straightforward than you think.

Most sleep tech (or consumer sleep technology) is pretty good at determining how much sleep you got last night, how consolidated that sleep was, and when it occurred.

Those are the three most important factors to consider when trying to maximise the benefits of your sleep: quantity, quality, and timing.

Sleep quantity is simply the total number of hours and minutes of sleep you get. Adults need to average at least seven hours of sleep per night for optimal health.

Sleep quality, at least when measured objectively, is the percentage of time you try to sleep that you are actually asleep. No one sleeps 100 percent of the night. Around 85 per cent or more is perfectly normal.

Sleep timing is exactly what it sounds like: the clock times you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning.

Here, regularity is the key. Currently, the recommendation for good sleepers is to go to bed and wake up within the same one-hour window every day.

If you are currently struggling with insomnia, you probably want that window to be more like 15 minutes, as fixing insomnia requires tighter control of your sleep.

There are good reasons to focus on quantity, quality, and timing. Those are the aspects of sleep that best correlate with physical and mental health.

Sleep quantity predicts cardiovascular health (high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes) so strongly, it is included in the American Heart Association’s Essential Eight factors to protect cardiovascular health (alongside diet and exercise, among others).

Sleep quality, or the lack thereof in the form of insomnia, is a risk factor for a variety of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, alcohol dependence, and suicide.

Regularising sleep timing is a newer focus in the field of sleep health, and has quickly emerged as important for all-cause mortality and other health considerations.

That is, people with the most irregular sleep die earlier, regardless of cause, than those with the more regular sleep.

It is important to note, though, the measure of regularity in that study included more than just sleep timing. Nonetheless, sleep timing is a significant driver of sleep regularity.

Sleep quality and sleep timing are also both important for suicide. Specifically, being awake in the middle of the night is associated with a higher risk of attempted and successful suicide than being awake during the day.

                         Watches and other gadgets that can track our sleep have become a common sight in bedrooms. (Tânia Mousinho/Unsplash)

There are ways to optimise sleep quantity, quality, and regularity.

First, make sleep a priority. Far too often, we trade away sleep in favour of work or social activities. This undermines all three aspects of sleep health.

Treat sleep as the pillar of health that it is — on equal footing with a good diet and regular exercise. Ok, ok. Maybe you are not so great at those other two, either.

Second, pick an ideal bedtime and wake time. Make your sleep window at least eight hours, so you can sleep at least seven hours.

Are you a morning person, an evening person, or somewhere in between? When we are most likely to feel sleepy and alert are, in part, biologically driven by our circadian rhythms. Try to honour your natural rhythm when selecting your sleep schedule.

Of course, our daily responsibilities can limit flexibility in our sleep schedules, but try to find a balance that respects your natural rhythms. To maximise regularity, it is important to keep the same schedule seven days a week.

If you have to compromise, focus more on a regular wake-up time than bedtime. Waking up at the same time everyday helps to reset your circadian rhythms, which in turn, helps you maintain a regular sleep schedule.

Third, make your bedroom sleep-friendly. This includes many of the sleep hygiene recommendations you have probably heard about: dark room, comfortable temperature, free of sleep distractions like television and electronic devices; use a bedtime routine; do nothing in bed but sleep.

Fourth, give yourself plenty of bright light in the morning, especially in the first few hours after waking up. Light is the biggest signal to our brain that we should be awake and the strongest regulator of our circadian rhythm.

In addition to light, physical activity, eating, and social activities help regulate our rhythms. In fact, Social Rhythm Therapy is an evidence-based treatment for mood disorders focusing on regularising the timing of sleep and these other behaviours to help stabilise mood. So, a focus on regularising your sleep schedule and circadian rhythms can also potentially help your mood.

Finally, try not to stress about your sleep. No one sleeps perfectly and everyone wakes up a few times during the night.

Ironically, trying to sleep actually makes it harder to sleep. One of the biggest factors interfering with many people’s sleep is stress about not sleeping well. Instead, realise if you do not sleep well tonight, you are more likely to sleep better tomorrow night.

The question now is how tech can help you improve your sleep.

The good news is consumer sleep technology can generally determine your sleep quantity, quality, and timing quite well.

Most of these devices use movement, and many also use heart rate, to determine if you are awake or asleep. From there, they can calculate sleep duration (by counting up all the minutes you were asleep), sleep quality (by dividing the amount of sleep by the time you were in bed trying to sleep), and sleep timing (by reporting the clock time of the first and last minute of sleep or by user input).

You can use this information to determine if you are meeting the basic guidelines described above. If you make changes to your sleep habits, you can track how that changes sleep quantity, quality, and timing.

Be aware, though, not all information gadgets provide is equally useful. Many of them provide proprietary ‘sleep scores’. These are generally black boxes, so we have no idea how they actually relate to sleep health. Most sleep experts recommend ignoring those scores.

Also, many gadgets claim to measure sleep stages (often labelled light, deep, and Rapid Eye Movement, or REM, sleep).

However, independent evaluations uniformly show they perform poorly at identifying specific sleep stages, often mislabelling large percentages of any given sleep stage. This is actually not terribly surprising.

The gold-standard measure of sleep relies on measuring brain electrical activity. Movement and heart rate cannot be expected to measure sleep the same way as measuring brain activity.

So, relying on sleep stage information from these types of gadgets to evaluate your sleep quality might lead to unreliable conclusions.

However, that might not matter if you stick to the big three: sleep quantity, quality, and timing.

https://codeblue.galencentre.org/2024/02/13/what-you-need-to-know-about-your-sleep-gadgets/

Ancient herb could help you sleep better and reduce your anxiety - and it costs just 10p

From mirror.co.uk

A supplement made from an ancient herb could help you get a better night's sleep and reduce feelings of anxiety due to its calming effects - for as little as 10p per pill 

Getting a good night's sleep is vital to our health - and an ancient herb could help you drift off.

If you have trouble sleeping, you've probably done your fair share of research into products and supplements that claim to be able to help you get the slumber your body needs. But there's one lesser-known ancient herb that could be the key to improving your sleep - and it could also help reduce feelings of anxiety.

Ashwagandha is a shrub plant that is widely used as a supplement nowadays and has been claimed to have an array of important health benefits, including giving people better athletic performance and improved sleep. It has also been said to help with conditions including anxiety and infertility, although stronger studies are needed in these areas.

The herb, also known as withania somnifera, plays a crucial role in Ayurveda, the traditional system of medicine in India. It is renowned for its calming properties due to it being rich in withanolides, a natural compound believed to create a therapeutic effect on the body, Gloucestershire Live reports.

You can buy ashwagandha supplements for as little as 10p per pill from MyProtein or 27p each at Boots, but what exactly are the health benefits of the ancient herb and how does science back up the claims?

                                                Ashwagandha is said to have stress-reducing properties (Image: Getty Images)

The main health benefit that prompts people to take ashwagandha is its ability to reduce stress levels. The herb is classified as an adaptogen, meaning it can help the body cope with stress. In studies, ashwagandha has been shown to reduce the body's stress hormone, cortisol, thereby helping to relieve symptoms of anxiety in some people.

Several clinical studies and trials support the use of ashwagandha for anxiety relief, including one 60-day study of 64 people with chronic stress levels. In the test, it was revealed that those who took ashwagandha extract reported a 69% average reduction in anxiety and insomnia, compared to just 11% in the placebo group.

But it's not just stress levels that ashwagandha can help with. It has also been reported to improve cognitive functions including memory, task performance and attention by protecting against oxidative stress in the brain, as well as significantly improving the maximum oxygen output of athletes to increase athletic performance.

Its stress-relieving properties can also help people get a better night's sleep, particularly if they are kept awake by insomnia, and there is even some evidence to suggest it could increase testosterone levels and libido and could have some potential benefits for male fertility.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/health/ancient-herb-could-help-you-32098557

Have sleep problems? 5 fruits that can can keep your insomnia in check!

From economictimes.indiatimes.com

Synopsis

Craving for some night-time snack? Ditch the chips, soft drinks and frozen hamburgers and feast on a banana or two! Aside from keeping calories in check, keeping midnight snacking healthy can help you sleep better!

Suffering from bouts of insomnia? You are not alone.

According to a 2015 survey conducted by electronic goods giant Phillips in 2015, nearly 93 per cent of Indians tend to be sleep-deprived!

Several factors such as demanding jobs, chronic stress, poor diet, undiagnosed mental health problems can lie at the bottom of your sleeping problems.

However, here’s the good news: The right night time snack can help you sleep better! So if you are one of those who crave some food in the middle of the night, make sure to munch on one of these snacks, to get some quality shut-eye time!

Bananas

Not only are these tropical fruits extremely satisfying to eat (and delicious!), but they are also a great source of melatonin, a sleep hormone! The yellow fruit also possesses a high amount of tryptophan, which our body converts into serotonin or the ‘feel good’ hormone.

Tart Cherries

Having difficulty falling asleep? Munch on some tart cherries, or sip on some tart cherry juice! These cherries are rich in the sleep hormone melatonin, which is known to be the miracle hormone for insomniacs.

Pineapples

Not only do they taste absolutely heavenly, but they can help you sleep better! pineapples contain melatonin, vitamin C, magnesium, and fibre, which can improve the quality of sleep.

Kiwi

Daily consumption of this fruit can be a solution to your sleeping problems! This juicy fruit is rich in vitamin C and melatonin.

Papaya

A papaya a day can keep sleep problems at bay! This sumptuous tropical fruit has an ample amount of folate, vitamin C & E as well as potassium. All of these nutrients are known to boost sleep quality!

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/have-sleep-problems-5-fruits-that-can-can-keep-your-insomnia-in-check/articleshow/107491483.cms?from=mdr

Even Mild Cases of COVID Can Leave Lingering Insomnia

From medicinenet.com

Even mild cases of COVID can trigger insomnia in most people, a new study reports.

About three out of four people with mild COVID (76%) reported experiencing insomnia following their illness.

Further, nearly one in four (23%) said they'd experienced severe insomnia, according to results published Feb. 5 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.

“If you experience insomnia after COVID-19, don't think that is normal,” said lead researcher Huong Hoang, head of the surgical nursing unit at Phenikaa University in Vietnam.

For the study, Hoang and colleagues surveyed more than 1,000 adults who'd been diagnosed with COVID but did not require hospitalization. The surveys were conducted between June and September 2022.

Half of the participants said they woke more often in the night. A third said they found it harder to fall asleep, had worse sleep and slept for less time.

The severity of COVID infection did not seem linked with the severity of insomnia, researchers noted. Although COVID patients without symptoms scored lower on an insomnia index, the difference was not statistically significant.

There were two groups of patients who did appear more likely to have insomnia following COVID -- people with a pre-existing chronic condition and people who scored highly for symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Both of those groups had a higher rate of insomnia than the rest of the COVID patients, researchers said.

However, the link between those two groups and insomnia can run in either direction, researchers noted. Insomnia can cause worse mental and physical health, but it also can be exacerbated by poor mental and physical health.

“Since this is a cross-sectional study, the relationship of anxiety and depression with insomnia cannot be fully investigated,” Hoang said in a journal news release.

Hoang offered some advice to COVID patients experiencing sleep problems. 

“If insomnia does not bother you much, you can take some simple actions, such as: taking a warm shower before bedtime, shutting your phone down at least one hour before going to bed, doing 30 minutes of exercise per day, and avoiding caffeine after 4 p.m.,” Hoang said.

"In case insomnia really troubles you, you can try some over-the-counter sleep aids,” Hoang added. “If they don't help, go to see a sleep therapist.”

https://www.medicinenet.com/covid_can_leave_lingering_insomnia/news.htm

Who killed my sleep?

From timesofindia.indiatimes.com

By Dr. Ajit Varwandkar 

“Smartphones cause insomnia and even somnambulism in many people” – when I read this caption in a newspaper, I decided to research the importance of sleep on human performance and productivity. The findings of my brief research, which I am sharing through this column, were astounding. 

Did you someday wake up in the morning and feel groggy! Even if you slept for seven long hours, you still felt more sleepy and tired! If yes – there could be many reasons for this experience. However, one of the prominent reasons behind experiencing such lethargy in the morning in today’s world is your ‘smartphone’! Yes, you read it right – the real villain is that handy but infections sweet, smart tool you are holding in your hand right now. More specifically, the light emitted from these phones’ screens harms the human brain, especially in the context of ‘sleep generation’.

We humans sleep in different sleep cycles, which constitute our circadian rhythm. The two prominent sleep cycles are called NREM and REM sleep cycles. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, and NREM means Non-Rapid Eye Movement. Both these cycles are about ninety minutes each. Both these cycles have their own share of contributing towards relaxing our mind and body completely.

I was amused to understand that these sleep cycles do paralyse our body when we are at night. That’s why we do not walk an inch and still feel we have travelled places in our dreams! Dreams are a creation of REM sleep and a mechanism through which all our accumulated and processed emotions are released. Had this “emotional release mechanism” not been made by God, we would have got up every morning with the burden of yesterday’s stresses!

Did you know that, on average, people consume as much as 36 GB of information daily? It was also interesting to read that dreams play a crucial role in transforming all such inputs into knowledge. That is why we career counsellors suggest students get a good eight hours of sleep at night. This is the time our brain requires to assimilate all the lessons learned / data acquired and convert them into wisdom and life skills. 

God created ‘nights’ because nights attract sleep! There is a hormone secreted in the human body which causes sleep to happen. The name of this hormone is Melatonin, which is generated only in the dark. 

Coming back to the evil of smartphones. The light oozed by these phones leads to the suppression of Melatonin, and thus, sleep gets lost. Accordingly, the first blame for destroying a good night’s sleep must go to Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb. In the modern world context, the smartphone is the bigger devil. 

The sleep damage chain works like this:

• Smart screens release light all the while
• The blue light suppresses Melatonin
• This disrupts the REM and NREM sleep cycles
• The accumulated pressures of yesterday do not get flushed out through dreams and other REM sleep functions
• We get up feeling sluggish and tired in the morning
• Our day begins on a slow note, and the productivity reduces

When the above cycle repeats for days together, it causes a devastating impact on human abilities. I hope the insights shared above shall make people aware of two essential things:

1. The importance of a good night’s sleep
2. The harmful effects of using phones before we sleep.

Note: I am not a sleep scientist and have quoted technical data on human mind behaviour based on online research. I put on record specific credit to Mr Matthew Walker for the content and ideas quoted from his book ‘Why We Sleep’!

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/the-next-step/who-killed-my-sleep/

Opinion: I stopped trying to sleep — and found a different self in the night

From washingtonpost.com

Annabel Abbs-Streets is a writer based in London and Sussex. Her latest book is “Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self.”

I’m closing my bedroom curtains when something catches my eye. I open the window and crane upward. A crescent moon hangs like a slice of ice among a diaspora of stars. I should try again to sleep. But the stars are too bright, too beautiful, flickering too wildly.

Suddenly, I long to be outside, and I do something I have never done. I shunt a mattress out of the window to a narrow ledge of metal roof and make myself a bed — sheet, pillow, duvet. I crawl into it, unsure whether the roof will hold or the English rain will hold off. I lie back and look up.

My world shifts on its axis.

Nights spent outside are just some of the many nocturnal journeys I’ve since taken. But they were the first to transform my relationship with sleeplessness. Of all the gifts of my insomnia — and there were many — the night sky was one of the most poignant and profound.

It showed me that all those wide-awake hours didn’t have to be ruminative and anxious, that my sleepless self was not an enemy to be battled, sedated and despaired of. Instead, she could be my ally, a friendly teacher with wisdom to impart and experiences to share.

                                              An English village church by full moon. (Annabel Abbs)

My penchant for open air nights might be unusual; my inability to sleep is not. In 2020, nearly 1 in 5 adults in the United States had trouble falling or staying asleep most nights. Up to half of U.S. adults experience insomnia from time to time. At the last count, 8 percent were taking prescription sleep medication and 11 percent were regularly forking out for sleep aids.

But while huge amounts of time and money have been spent exploring the sleeping and the sleep-deprived brain, virtually nothing has been invested in understanding the brain in its awake-at-night state.

My sleep began to fragment in my early 30s. Pregnant with my first child and working in a demanding corporate job, I pushed on, assuming the wakefulness would eventually pass. It didn’t. After five years of night-feeds, sick toddlers and early morning conference calls, I quit the corporate job. Surely I would sleep now?

I didn’t. For another two decades I tried pills, oils, bedding, endless “sleep hygiene routines” and the rest of what the $101 billion sleep industry has to offer. Eventually, wearily, I whiled away my nights listening to audiobooks and podcasts. Meanwhile, I panicked about imminent death, impending obesity, heart disease and dementia, and the criminal tendencies that, according to some experts, I’d accrue.

Three years ago, I snapped. A series of family deaths within a six-week period left me awake for hours every night. Audiobooks no longer soothed me.

As it happened, I was already researching women of the pre-sleeping-pill past. Many had welcomed the wee hours as a space for solitude, reflection and study. I called these women my “night spinners.”

Their accounts prompted me to dig around in the corners of my own insomniac brain. Instead of seeking distraction from my churning thoughts, I tried to describe and name them. I sensed a subtly different sort of mind, less inclined to judge, more receptive, imaginative and fearful, with the ears of an elephant and the nostrils of a bloodhound. I called her my Night Self.

When light drains from the sky, our bodies respond. Hormones rise and fall, dead skin cells are shed, we metabolize alcohol more slowly, our appetite shrinks, our blood pressure drops, our temperature falls, and much more besides. Come the evening hour, the darkness, wrote Virginia Woolf, “we are no longer quite ourselves.”

As my own night journeys went on, and as my knowledge grew of the sleepless habits of past women, a handful of illuminating studies fell into my inbox. These hinted that insomnia and darkness were infinitely more nuanced than headlines suggested. Most serendipitous was a pioneering study on the “Mind after Midnight.” A group of American sleep researchers found evidence that chimed with my own experiences and historical gleanings. The brain, it appears, resets for nocturne. Some regions go into partial hibernation, others bloom.

No one yet understands how or why, but at night many of us think, feel, behave in ways we might not during daylight. I, for one, am a little more reckless, with a yen for wistfulness and whimsy. This is how I found myself outside on that fateful starry night.

I continued to head out when weather permitted. And — released from the anxious grip of the sleep industry and my own fears — I went further. I followed in the footsteps of the legions of women who once snatched time from the night to write, paint, pray, photograph or simply to observe moths, bats, glowworms.

I discovered dozens of living women, too, who have made peace with their restive nights — who walk cities and forests alone, who swim on full moons or who make art, courtesy of their creative night brains.

A view along London’s River Thames is made visible by reflecting lights, which makes rivers ideal night-walking locations. (Annabel Abbs)

Which is to say, I discovered women who flower in darkness, who thrive on all that we’ve been taught to fear and avoid. I was grateful to the researchers diligently shedding light on the therapeutic nature of darkness. But when my sleep eventually returned, it was my night spinners that I thanked. It has been my privilege to join them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/01/sleep-insomnia-brain-night-self/