For years, 41-year-old Massimo Alpian struggled with how to go to sleep fast and get through the night without waking up. Something as minimal as the small tap of a shade on the window from a breeze would make him flustered, keeping him awake for 3 or more hours before drifting into a sleep that felt anything but restful.
“I often felt helpless, like I was on a never ending spiral,” Alpian tells GQ. “The lack of sleep led to greater anxiety which led to higher levels of stress. It felt like a cycle that would never end that grew bigger than me or anything I could do to stop it.”
Alpian had enough, and his sleep deprivation led him to speak with multiple physicians and ultimately change some things about his bedroom environment. With a white noise machine and blackout shutters, and he created an entirely different experience. Long gone were the days of taking hours to finally get to rest. “It took a lot of patience, education, patience, as well as self-reflection, but I found my way,” he says.
Few things are more important to your overall health and well-being than good sleep. Which makes sense, considering the average human spends roughly one-third of their life horizontal. But good sleep is interpretive. For maximum sleep benefits, some believe it’s getting the CDC’s recommended sleep amount of 7 to 9 hours per night. But really, it’s much more than that. The jumping off point for a solid night of shuteye? How fast it takes for you to crash.
“One of the biggest myths is that a healthy sleeper will fall asleep quickly,” says Dr. Rebecca Robbins, assistant professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate scientist in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “In a perfect world, we’d have a miracle drug or something that could kind of knock us out into healthy, natural sleep and wake up and feel refreshed, but the truth is it does actually take time.”
Even a well-rested person can take 15 or 20 minutes to fall asleep, says Dr. Robbins. More than that, and it may be time to analyze what other behaviors or factors could be impacting your shut-eye. If you’re constantly fighting with yourself over getting—and staying—asleep, then we’ve got 11 tips perfect for you:
1. Make a Pre-Bedtime Ritual
To sleep better, you want to structure that time before bed with things that you love. “I use the word ‘ritual’ really purposely because it has this connotation of something that you do every night, rinse and repeat. And you really want to think about that before sleep. What are the three things that soothe you?”
Maybe it’s a warm shower, a couple pages in a book, turning your phone to airplane mode. Or perhaps you do a meditation and then go to bed. You have the opportunity to curate your ideal pre-snooze routine, and fill it with things that you can do anytime, anywhere—even on the move if you’re traveling for work or pleasure.
2. Engage Your Senses
What aromas do you like? Those scents can help you calm your nervous system and set the tone for slowing things down for the evening. Maybe it’s lighting a candle or using a certain hand cream or facial moisturizer. “Maybe it’s a little lavender or another essential oil that you rub on your temples or the nap of your neck, these little tiny rituals go a really long way, because then our brain and body start to understand that what comes next is sleep,” says Dr. Robbins.
3. Have a Consistent Sleep Schedule.
Just like you log on to your work computer every day at a certain time, aim to have that same diligence when it comes to how to go to sleep fast. When we keep a consistent schedule, the brain understands when you’re supposed to be tired, and in turn that’s when melatonin—the hormone that your brain produces in response to darkness and helps with the timing of your circadian rhythms—secretes. To make this deadline a habit, Dr. Robbins recommends working backwards.
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