Expert warns 'sleep hygiene' solutions including sleepy tea makes things worse for poor sleepers

Sly Saint

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Pillow sprays, 'sleepy tea' and mindfulness are sold as the answers to sleeping better at night.

But poor sleepers should beware, as these 'sleep hygiene' solutions are likely to make their problem worse, an expert has warned.

People who fixate too much on their bedroom routine, with tricks like chamomile tea, a pillow spray, bath before bed, blackout curtains and yoga, may become too 'vigilant' about sleep, according to insomnia expert Kathryn Pinkham, a former psychological practitioner within the NHS.

It might be better to try a technique of 'retraining' the body clock by spending less time awake in bed, and going to bed later, to increase the body's 'appetite' for sleep.

Speaking at the event Postcards from Midlife Live in London, Ms Pinkham said: 'Most people who come to me have tried everything - that will be their words - they've bought everything, they've changed everything, they've read everything, and they're still not sleeping well.

'If you think about the formula for where sleep problems come from, actually the more that you do to try and make it better, the worse it's going to become, because you're just trying too hard.

'Sleep hygiene is things like giving up caffeine, blackout blinds, giving up alcohol.

'None of that stuff is bad advice, but it isn't a cure for poor sleep.'

She added: 'You have this long wind-down routine where 'I have to have a bath, I've got to do my hour of yoga, I've got to have a sleepy tea, and I'm going to listen to my mindfulness.

'Actually all you're doing there is creating a really long routine (up) to not sleeping.'
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Expert warns 'sleep hygiene' solutions including sleepy tea makes things worse for poor sleepers (msn.com)
 
I haven't read the article, but what i have experienced is that anything, anything that i do to try & improve sleep, is radically counter productive.

I do a meditation for sleep, that works only as a fabulous afternoon relaxation exercise, it doesnt put me to sleep but its lovely. If however, i use it before bed it will wake me up instantly. Instantly i hear the word 'sleep'.

The only way i can get to sleep is to not care at all about whether i do or not, not try or do anything to get to sleep. And that includes ALL the sleep hygiene advice given by psychologists to PwME.

If i doze in the afternoon i am almost guaranteed to sleep well. If i go to bed/wake at same time every day, i feel like crap & then i cant sleep. I love lavender smell but if i use it before bed it wakes me up.

I have to trick myself that it doesnt matter if i sleep, that i'm not trying to sleep just 'resting my eyes for a little while'. The minute i even have the thought 'i need/want to go to sleep because i really need to sleep/have to get up early/something important tomorrow/am crashing.. yada yada', then thats it, i become more awake than i been all day, and sleep will not come.......

until i have sat up, put the little night light on, read a bit/watched an episode of friends or something (even if i bad i have to force myself to try & do these things, even if its torture & the text i tryig to read is jibberish to me cos i so bad).... because then the 'resting my eyes' trick thing becomes real & i drop to sleep

So i reckon she's right, at leats for me
 
With ME, usually the best approach to sleep is be like a cat and sleep whenever you feel like it. Most of us have no jobs and rarely leave the house, so it's often practical. I have non-24, so my sleep cycle is about 25-26 instead of 24 hours long, and I sleep 10-12 hours a day. While my sleep looks like a mess to an outside observer, I don't have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or feeling awake during the day.
 
It might be better to try a technique of 'retraining' the body clock by spending less time awake in bed, and going to bed later, to increase the body's 'appetite' for sleep.
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I have a non-24 hour sleep cycle.

I hate going to bed when I'm not tired. I got sent to bed by my parents when I wasn't tired for about 10 years, from the age of about 8 - 18. Imagine being 16 / 17 / 18 and still being sent to bed at 9pm! I wasn't allowed to have a light on, and nor was I allowed to read. It was torture. I would lie in bed, absolutely miserable, for hours and hours almost every night. I would often still be awake at 3am - 4am in the morning. Then I might finally fall asleep. And then I would be woken up at 7am, and it drove my parents nuts that I couldn't wake up, and it drove me nuts being forced to lie in bed with nothing to do for 6 or 7 hours a night. I was so bored I thought I would go mad. My parents had no idea that I had only had about 3 hours sleep when they woke me up. Complaining that I hadn't had enough sleep would just get me sent to bed even earlier the next night.

Another factor that didn't help was that I shared a bed with my much younger sister who had a normal sleep/wake pattern and was a very light sleeper.

Now that I've been in control of my own destiny for several decades I have at long last managed to reduce the time I spend lying in bed and not getting to sleep. My waking and sleeping times still shift later and later, fairly quickly, getting later and later every morning/night.
 
I've suffered from life altering sleep disturbance since 2001, the usual sleep hygiene advice was as insulting as it was ineffective. I couldn't wake up at the same time everyday and their solution was to tell me to wake up at the same time everyday. As for baths they cause me to feel more awake.

What I really needed was a quiet place to sleep because of my progressive Autism (which caused deteriative sound intolerance) and I also developed a non 24 hour sleep cycle. I was never awarded appropriate accommodation in time and as a result my condition got permanently worse, as well as developing a severe mental health condition.
 
RedFox said:
With ME, usually the best approach to sleep is be like a cat and sleep whenever you feel like it.
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Nope, doesn't work for me. The only time I can fall asleep other than nighttime, is when I'm seriously ill (viral infection or whatever). Then, if I do fall asleep in the daytime, I feel really horrible afterwards: groggy, disoriented, etc. I don't follow a strict bedtime, but it's once per day.
 
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