Sleep Easy by Bernice Tuffery

Author:Bernice Tuffery [Tuffery, Bernice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2020-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Schedule your total time in bed

It’s time to review and adjust how much time you are spending in bed. Obviously you need to be in bed long enough to allow yourself some core sleep, but you don’t want to spend more time in bed than is helpful. If you are in bed much longer than you are asleep, your sleep-efficiency figures will be low. Low sleep-efficiency scores generally mean more time staring at the ceiling, tossing and turning, or fretting about the day ahead. By reducing your time in bed, your figures are likely to start improving.

People who sleep well (those skitey-pants) tend to have sleep-efficiency scores hovering up around 90 per cent, which is why their sleep feels stellar and they crow on about it. The average sleep efficiency of people with sleep difficulties is around 65 per cent.1 While that is the average for troubled sleepers, in reality they tend to experience a crazy compendium of good nights and hell nights, so there are usually some nights when sleep-efficiency scores are higher and some when they hit rock bottom. At an average of 65 per cent, those with sleep difficulties spend about a third of the night awake. (And we know all too well how loathsome that feels!)

People with persistent sleep difficulties have a tendency to gradually spend longer and longer in bed, trying to catch up on their sleep. They may go to bed earlier and earlier, or stay in bed later on mornings when they can (like on the weekend), or they may start napping whenever they get the chance to slope off to the bedroom during the day or nod off in a comfy chair. Whichever route they take, the end result is often spending much longer in bed than what the body needs for healthy sleep.

Sleep science describes this as a strategy of extending time in bed, and it perpetuates insomnia. When I first learned this, I felt a bit indignant. For someone experiencing sleep debt, spending more time in bed makes perfect sense. You are trying to get more sleep, so it’s logical to try to maximise your opportunity to sleep. However, the problem with extending my time in bed (with increasingly early bedtimes) was that my sleep became shallower and more fragmented.

To understand how this works, imagine the body needs 7 hours of high-grade sleep to perform optimally. If your sleep was water, you’d need 7 litres. You can choose the size of container for your water: too small; just right; too big; or a disappointing waste of time. If you put your 7 litres of water in a tiny bucket, it overflows and you miss out on sleep. If you put it in the right-size bucket, you’ll have a full, deep, satisfying sleep. If you pour that same 7 litres of water into a wide basin, your sleep will be shallow. And, if you pour your 7 litres into a paddling pool, the water will be so shallow that there’ll be dry patches—no fun for anyone.

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