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Infinnite Ideas

Your journey to the land of sleep starts here - your fi rst steps in beating insomnia.

I'll start by helping you knock your sleep regime into shape. Just a warning, however. If your sleep pattern is as erratic as that of most insomniacs, this programme will be as enjoyable as a stay in a military boot camp.

Get a routine. Go to bed and get up at the same time each day - no matter how bad your sleep has been. Your body clock needs a starting point, which is why the time you get up is so important. Also it's much easier to control when you get up - try to stay within 30 minutes of the same rising time every day.
Restrict your sleep. This may sound odd advice for someone who is already sleep deprived, but spending too much time in bed can make insomnia worse. There's no point being in bed if you're not asleep - you'll just start associating bed with being awake. If you don't go to bed until you're really tired and get up early, the theory is you'll drop off more quickly, have less interrupted sleep and more deep sleep. Sleep scientists talk about sleep efficiency, which is the percentage of time you spend in bed asleep. A good sleeper will have a high sleep efficiency - around 90%. If you have 70% or less, think about reducing the time you spend in bed so that it more closely matches the time you're asleep.
To decide when to go to bed, you need to work out how much sleep on average you're getting a night. The best way to do this is to use a sleep diary for a week. Once you've got a figure, add one hour. This should be the most time you spend in bed - and shouldn't be under five and a half hours - the average basic sleep requirement. So if you need to get up at 7a.m. and you need to sleep six hours, you shouldn't go to bed before 1a.m., no matter how tired you are.
Once your sleep efficiency has improved to about 85% for two weeks, you can increase your time in bed by 15 minutes a week by going to bed 15 minutes earlier. Still get up at the same time, though. You may find that eight hours sleep a night is not necessary. Perhaps six or seven hours of better sleep are enough to feel good and function well during the day.
Get out of bed in the night. Instead of lying awake, you could get up, go into another room and so something relaxing like listening to relaxing music, reading or relaxation exercises. When your eyelids start to droop, then return to your bed. Again, the idea is to associate bed with sleep.
Use bright light therapy. Exposure to light boxes (similar to those used by seasonal affective disorder or SAD sufferers) helps people whose body clocks are out of sync. The idea is that bright light in the evening slows down the body clock while bright light in the morning speeds it up. If you can't get to sleep and fi nd it diffi cult to stay asleep or you're a night owl who can't go to bed until the early hours of the morning, your body clock is lagging behind normal. So sitting in front of bright light in the morning for at least an hour brings the body clock forward. If, however, you wake up too early, your body clock is running faster than normal. You need bright light in the evening to slow your body clock down - just 30 minutes can cure early morning insomnia in some people.


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