Roxanne Prichard: When sleep eludes you

We’ve all experienced those nights at one time or another, when sleep just won’t come. Lying awake worrying about things we often have no control over that can doubtless best wait until the light of day.  

Dr Roxanne Prichard is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the Center for College Sleep, University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.  

Prichard – who is also a member of the Sleep Research Society - tells Sunday Morning about the science that will help calm our mind and body. 

Can’t sleep? Do something boring 

If you stay in bed when you cannot seem to sleep, your brain starts to associate it with frustration rather than a relaxing place, Dr Prichard says. 

“Usually the advice is about 20 minutes, if you can't fall back to sleep within then to get up and do something sort of boring, like I match socks or organise bills, until you start to feel that kind of sleep pressure return.” 

Pay attention to the signs you’re ready to go back to bed, she says. 

"That feels like a heaviness in the eyelids, feeling cold, feeling like it's hard to concentrate.” 

Most importantly, you should not turn to the news or get worked up right before going to bed or when you can’t sleep, she says. 

“We just want to kind of quietly bore ourselves.” 

Sleeping for 8 hours straight is a myth 

Dr Prichard says many people wake throughout the night or do what's called biphasic sleep, where they sleep for a couple of hours, get up for a bit then go back to sleep.  

“It's only when we put so much pressure on ourselves to be able to sleep right now in this chunk, that sometimes we find it hard to do, to sort of have performance anxiety over sleep, as it were. 

“There's nothing wrong with waking up a little bit, getting a drink of water, maybe doing some stretches, relaxing, meditating, whatever it is, that kind of gets you feeling calm and sleepy again and going back to sleep.” 

Find your cognitive tool 

A cognitive behavioural therapist or an expert who practices cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia patients can help you figure out what your ‘cognitive tool’ is, she says. 

“I like to do sensory meditations when I'm having trouble falling back to sleep, where I try to think of places I've vacationed before, and I try to think of five things I've seen there, five things I've smelled there, five things I've tasted there.  

“I kind of go through the list of places. But I usually don't make it very far through this list before I'm asleep again, so that's what works for me.  

“Some people find prayer or meditation very helpful here.” 

Midnight brain is prime for disaster scenarios... 

The brain gets less blood flow during the night, meaning the part that problem-solves isn’t at its best, Dr Prichard says. 

But the limbic system, the part that can come up with disaster scenarios, has extra fuel because that’s the time usually when our brain is doing ‘threat rehearsal’, she says. 

“So I’ve learned never to try to do some deep problem-solving in the middle of the night, because I'm much more likely to do something called catastrophising, which is just think of the next worst outcome that can come from any given scenario.  

“So yeah, that's not the time to be thinking about zombie apocalypses or anything else.” 

Don't take pills, learn skills 

Dr Prichard acknowledges sleeping pills may be needed for people going through a difficult time but says it’s not a long-term solution. 

“They can be helpful in short term, but there's none that are really geared up for long term use. It's better to sort of figure out within your body what does it need for you to get to sleep.” 

Is napping a good idea? 

There’s a lot of literature that debates whether it’s good or bad. 

If you’re exhausted and need a nap, go for it, Dr Prichard suggests, but you want to make sure it doesn’t take away from your nighttime sleep. 

“I like napping. If I'm napping, it means I'm sick or I'm pregnant or I'm jet-lagged, so to me it's a sign that my body needs extra rest because something physiological is going on.  

“A lot of the young adults that I work with in college need naps because they are working hard. They have ... late night shifts, getting up early for sports practice, so they need naps to kind of fit in and bolster for the sleep that they can't get during the night.” 

How to reset your sleep cycle 

Many of the proteins created by our body’s cells respond to our sleep-wake cycle, otherwise known as the circadian rhythm, which is dependent on light exposure, she says. 

To reset that cycle, it’s important to know when to be exposed to what kind of light. 

It’s been widely said by experts to avoid so-called ‘blue light’, like that emitted by our screens, at night and harness it during the day.  

Dr Prichard also clarifies that the original blue light - the light of the sun in the sky – is good for the latter. 

“I really think getting that kind of natural skylight first thing in the morning is very helpful for you in kind of resetting and making a strong circadian rhythm.  

“Also, I think it's important to reduce that light exposure after sunset, so putting on blue light blocking, I have an app so I don't get blue light for my phone or my screens after sunset. Or you can wear the blue light blocking glasses that can help too.” 

That also means keeping your room as dark as possible – research shows artificial light at night contributes to alertness and delays sleep, she says. 

But red light does not stimulate the cells in the same way blue light does, she says. 

Talk to a pro – you may have an underlying problem 

"I would say talk to a health professional if you feel like there's something getting in the way of your sleep,” Dr Prichard says. 

“A lot of people have undiagnosed sleep disorders like sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome or even narcolepsy, where they have a sleep disorder and have just lived with the symptoms and don't know that it's a disorder.” 

There's also strong genetic components to how we sleep, she says.