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This article will focus on ways to overcome a broken sleep schedule and tips on how to get sleep schedule back on track. A broken sleep schedule can be detrimental to one’s health. There are numerous reasons backed by scientific evidence of these negative effects. Things have changed dramatically from how things used to be and how people used to live compared to today’s society. Technological advancements, shifts in working patterns, work-hard culture, stimulants, and many more things have been introduced and their usages are being updated in such a way that it’s affecting people’s sleep schedules.
Be Mindful of Caffeine Intake
First, be mindful of the hours you consume caffeine. In fact, quitting the intake of caffeine would be the best option. This can come from coffee, tea, energy drinks, chocolate, and so on. Caffeine is a drug and its properties will keep your mind highly attentive, awake, and energetic.
Let’s take a medium Dunkin Donuts brewed coffee for example, so I can illustrate how long it will stay in your system. This medium coffee contains approximately 200 mg of caffeine. Caffeine has a half life of about 5 to 7 hours. That means after 6 hours or so, you’ll have 100 mg of caffeine in your body, and after 12 hours you’ll have 50 mg left, and so on. This online calculator shows exactly how long it will take for the body to rid itself of the caffeine.
If you are someone who drinks coffee periodically throughout the day, then it will affect the levels of sleepiness you feel. If you had a drink at 3 P.M then by 9 P.M, you still have half of that caffeine in your system and the last thing you’ll want to do is sleep.
Since caffeine is considered a drug, it’s not easy to quit entirely. One solution to this is to take a systematic approach. First make a commitment that you will quit and not be dependable on this drug. Begin by reducing the number of cups you drink to one drink per day before afternoon. The other cups you drink such as the midday coffee should be replaced with herbal tea or some other beverage of your choosing. After one month or so, completely cut out your coffee or other caffeine usage and fully replace it with your non-caffeine beverage, like herbal tea or my personal favorite chamomile tea. Nobody should depend on something to feel awake, energetic, alive and productive. At that point, it’s a drug addiction, by definition. With perseverance, you can do it, don’t give up.
Try to look at the root issues of why you’ve become reliant on caffeine. Long work hours, poor sleeping habits, addiction, convenience, gives you an excuse to mix it with something sweet, and so forth.
Avoid Screen Time Right Before Bed
The second thing to do to fix your sleeping schedule is to cut out technology usage at least half an hour before your bedtime. The apps that you are viewing on your devices have been engineered purposefully so you continue to use them. They are made to be addictive. This is because there is an increase of a neurotransmitter called dopamine every time you do something stimulating like scrolling or watching a funny cat video.
The dopamine “hits” you are getting contain a pain and pleasure balance. Without going in-depth, the reason you feel the need to continue the behavior is because this part of your mind also emits pain at the same time or immediately after this dopamine release so you continue to scroll or use the app. Once you use it, this pain goes away and the pernicious cycle repeats.
If you are using TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc right before sleep or in bed, then your mind will crave it more and more, until it’s 4 A.M, and realize you have to be up in 2 hours, and reluctantly go to sleep.
Here are my suggestions on how to control your technology usage at night. Set a strict deadline one hour before your sleep time to only use your phone for absolute necessities such as an important phone call or text. Be mindful when you do this because your mind might go on autopilot mode and quickly click on the Snapchat notification after your call or text and this can potentially lead down a path of mindless phone usage.
It’s important to keep your phone or device out of your sight, preferably in another room so it doesn’t trigger a desire to use it. Rather than relying on your willpower every time you see the device, you can simply remove it from your environment.
The most important part is to replace this hour with something you enjoy and doesn’t involve technology usage. Some examples can include reading, stretching, spending time with your family, working on a hobby such as wood working, but this is completely up to your personal preference. Let this be a cool down period.
One other reason that technology shouldn’t be used late into the night is because of cells in your eyes, called melanopsin. These cells have a special feature which detects light. Melanopsin also interacts with the part of the brain that regulates sleep. When these cells sense light, it will relay this information to your brain so you can wake up. At this point melatonin, a hormone needed to feel sleepy, will be removed from your system or cease to produce. (Panda, 2018). Since you are now unable to sleep you might continue using your electronic device out of habit, addiction, or frustration.
This is a vicious cycle that makes it very hard to fix our sleep schedule. Using our phones at night causes us to stay up late into the night, which causes us to get very little sleep, and due to a habit of using these devices at night, this loop will start again at using electronics after dark. Breaking out of it is vital to sleep and cognitive health.
Note: Do your best not to use your bed for anything besides sleeping or other bed related activities. The reason for this is so your mind associates laying in bed with sleeping. Getting under your covers will be a cue or trigger for your mind to do its thing to start to feel sleepy and fall asleep.
Exercise Will Improve Sleep
Finally, the last thing you can do is to exercise. There is evidence that shows that there is a relationship between insufficient sleep and disordered sleep. Thus, exercise is a viable non-pharmacologic treatment for sleep disorders such as insomnia, restlessness, broken sleep schedules, and so on (Kline, 2014).
I have found that the earlier I exercise in the day, the more sleepy and rested I feel when in bed. Some great options for exercise include weight training, running or jogging, high interval intensity training, jump roping or anything else that gets you heart pumping.
Not everybody has the luxury of time to workout due to work schedules or a hectic lifestyle. In this case, there are several options. Set a workout plan for your off days, such as the weekends. Another option is to literally get a jump rope and do 2 minutes of non-stop jump roping for 3 sets. If that’s too much, work up to 2 minutes. This will take 10 minutes. Doing a little will make a difference and over the span of a whole year will accumulate.
Conclusion
Overall, sleep is crucial in order for us to live to our fullest potential. This is the important reason we should do our best to maintain a good sleep schedule which means proper duration of sleep and consistent timings of waking and sleeping. It’s very easy for sleep schedules to break due to many different factors such as shift work, technology, lack of discipline, stimulants, and such. Therefore, some of the ways to fix it include lowering caffeine intake, reducing technology usage before bed, and lastly, exercising. There are many other solutions on how to get sleep schedule back on track, but working on these things will fix the bulk of your issues.
References
Kline C. E. (2014). The bidirectional relationship between exercise and sleep: Implications for exercise adherence and sleep improvement. American journal of lifestyle medicine, 8(6), 375–379. https://doi.org/10.1177/1559827614544437
Panda, S. (2018). The Circadian Code: lose weight, supercharge your energy, and transform your health from morning to midnight. New York : Rodale, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group.