How to Get Great Sleep

A good, informative, useful report on How to Get Great Sleep from Psychology Today. Some key points:

Experts generally apply the “30-30 rule”: It’s insomnia if it takes you 30 minutes or more to fall asleep or if you’re awake for 30 or more minutes during the night — at least three times a week. No matter how little you sleep, it isn’t insomnia unless your nighttime habits drag you down during the day.

Believe it or not, “You don’t want to sleep like a baby,” says Michael L. Perlis, associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at New York’s University of Rochester and director of the behavioral sleep medicine service there. “You want to sleep like an adolescent.” Babies wake often; they are not yet able to consolidate sleep into one stretch. Adolescents sleep like there’s no tomorrow.

Now you’re even more tired and worried about the consequences of not sleeping than you were the day before — while you’re at your greatest vulnerability to irrational thought. Is this, you worry, the beginning of decrepitude?

Pretty soon, this self-defeating cycle takes on a life of its own. Under the influence of anxiety, your brain learns very quickly, without your knowledge or consent, to associate the bedroom with wakefulness. You lie down to rest and your brain goes on high alert. “It has been shown that people who have difficulty falling asleep are supersensitive to bedroom-related stimuli,” explains Perlis. “They become physiologically aroused in the bedroom environment” — their nervous system switches on just when they want it to calm down.

It’s the psychophysiologic equivalent of the perfect storm….