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Study Skills : Sleep
Sleep : sub-module 1 of 3 of Health & Wellness
Sleep is one of our basic human needs, and yet many of us struggle with it. Whether you’re hoping to get more sleep or better sleep, this module will help you to finally get some rest!
Why Sleep Matters
Benefits of Sleep
Getting enough quality sleep is essential for your physical health, mental well-being, and academic performance, offering benefits that range from improved concentration to a stronger immune system.
Watch this video to understand the benefits of sleep.
Sleep feels pretty awesome, but even better, it allows your body perform essential maintenance and offers many physical and psychological benefits:
- A stronger immune system
- Hormone regulation
- Improved mood
- Better concentration
- Problem-solving ability
- Better decision-making skills
- Memory formation and consolidation
- Increased productivity
Your Sleep Needs
Quantity:
Reality check: most adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night.
When you start skimping on sleep, it can have a negative impact on your physical and mental health. Prioritize sleep the same way you make time to go to the gym, spend time with friends, eat, and do all the other things that help you to feel your best.
Quality:
Sleep quality is just as important as quantity. You might be suffering from poor sleep quality if you’re getting 7-9 hours of sleep per night, but still find yourself:
- Unable to fall asleep within 30 minutes of going to bed
- Forcing yourself out of bed in the morning
- Struggling to stay awake during the day
- Having trouble remembering things or staying focused
- Feeling irritable or depressed
If this sounds like you, check out the rest of this module for tips on how to improve your sleep habits!
Sleep Cycles
Good, restful sleep is made up of four stages, which occur in cycles of roughly 90 to 110 minutes.
Stage 1
You are somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. It’s during this stage that you might experience a “hypnic jerk”: that feeling of falling that jolts you awake.
Stage 2
You become less conscious of your surroundings as you enter light sleep. Your body temperature decreases and your heart rate slows.
Stage 3
Your breathing becomes very slow, your blood pressure drops, and your muscles relax as you enter deep sleep. You become difficult to wake up, and are likely to sleep through any disturbances. During this stage, your body grows bone and muscle, releases hormones, and works on your immune system.
REM Sleep
Your heart rate and breathing speed up, your limb muscles become temporarily paralyzed, and your eyes move back and forth. Your brain becomes extremely active, and you may experience vivid dreams. The REM stage becomes longer as the night goes on, with the first stage lasting only about ten minutes, and the final one lasting up to an hour.
Humans tend to spend about 75% of their sleep time in the first three stages of sleep, and 25% in REM sleep. Frequent nightly wakeups are not only frustrating, but keep you from progressing normally through a sleep cycle. This means you don’t get the full benefits of sleep, even if you’ve been lying in bed for 8 hours.
If you have trouble staying asleep at night, check out the section on Sleep Habits for tips on how to improve the quality of your sleep.
Sleep Habits
Establishing healthy sleep habits, including creating a restful environment, maintaining consistent routines, watching what you eat and drink, and staying physically active, can significantly improve the quality of your sleep and overall well-being.
Sleep Environment: Where You Sleep
Setting the scene: Creating a good sleep environment Video Transcript - RTFLighting
Light can interfere with your body’s production of the sleep hormone melatonin, so try to limit the artificial light in your bedroom. Street lights, digital clocks, or even or the blinking light of a charging laptop can keep you awake, so block them off with curtains or masking tape, or use a sleep mask. Keep a nightlight in the bathroom, so that a late-night bathroom trip doesn’t completely wake you up.
Some of the sneakier sources of sleep-stealing light are our electronics. Ideally, you should set an “electronic curfew” and stop using your devices an hour before bedtime. If you absolutely must use your phone before bed, try changing your display settings so that the screen automatically dims at a set time each night.
Temperature
Sleeping in a slightly cool room can encourage sleep, so set your thermostat to somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees Celsius. This is a wide range, so tinker with the temperature of your room until you find something that feels comfortable.
Bed
Your brain should clearly associate your bed with sleep. When you use your bed for other activities, like watching TV, texting, or studying, your brain starts to associate your bed with being awake. This can lead to more restless nights, so remember: beds are for sleeping!
Food & Drink
Meals
A small snack in the evening can keep you from waking up hungry in the middle of the night, but don’t eat too much. Sleep causes your digestive system to slow down, and a big meal right before bed may make you feel uncomfortable and disrupt your sleep.
It’s also worth considering what you’re eating. According to the National Sleep Foundation - opens in a new window, foods like white pasta and sugary baked goods can impair your sleep. They recommend foods like almonds, tart cherries, and bananas that can help you fall asleep and wake up less often.
Caffeine
You’re probably not drinking coffee right before bed, but did you know that the effects of daytime caffeine consumption can last well into the evening? Coffee has a half-life of about 6 hours, which means that when you consume caffeine, it takes about 6 hours to eliminate just half of that caffeine from your body. For example, if you drink a large coffee with 280mg of caffeine at noon, you will still have 140mg, about the equivalent of a small cup of coffee, in your system at 6 p.m. Depending on your bedtime, try to cap your caffeine intake in the early afternoon.
It’s also important to remember that coffee might not be the only source of caffeine in your diet. Chocolate, tea, and soft drinks may also contain caffeine.
Alcohol
If you’re experiencing disturbed sleep, consider avoiding alcohol in the hours before bed. While alcohol may help you get to sleep, it doesn’t help you stay asleep. Alcohol has a rebound effect: it puts you to sleep, but may wake you up 4 or 5 hours later, once it leaves your system.
Consistency in Your Sleep Schedule
A consistent sleep schedule works with your body’s natural clock, training you to feel tired and wake up at roughly the same time each day. Getting onto a sleep schedule can be challenging, so here are a few tips:
- Ease into your new sleep schedule by going to bed 15 to 30 minutes earlier each night until you reach a reasonable bedtime.
- Set an alarm on your phone to remind you when it’s time to wind down for bed.
- Go outside within a few hours of waking. Daytime exposure to natural light can help to reset your internal clock and make you sleep better.
As you adjust to and maintain your sleep schedule, you should also be aware of two major consistency culprits: social jet lag and napping!
Social Jet Lag
Social jet lag refers to the phenomenon of staying up late and sleeping in on weekends, but getting up early during the week. These late nights can seriously affect your sleep and your overall health -- in fact, social jet lag has been linked to fatigue, heart problems and depression.
That being said, schedule-breakers like parties and late-night study sessions are going to happen. If you absolutely must sleep in on weekends, try to limit it to an hour or two of extra Zzz’s.
Napping
After a poor night’s sleep, you may feel a strong desire to take a nap. The key here is to nap smart. An ideal nap is:
- No more than 10-30 minutes long
Any longer than this, and you may wake up groggy, or disrupt your next night’s sleep. - Taken in the early afternoon
Most people’s energy levels will naturally dip between 1:00 and 3:00 PM, and a quick snooze at this point is unlikely to keep you awake all night.
Getting Exercise
Yet another reason that exercise is good for you: it can promote healthy sleep. Even a small change can make a difference: just 10-20 minutes of regular, daily aerobic exercise (like walking, running, cycling or dancing) can improve the quality and quantity of your sleep. Try to get outside for your exercise -- this way, you work the dual sleep benefits of both exercise and exposure to sunlight.
Sleep Tips
- Give yourself enough time to sleep (7-9 hours). You need 7-9 hours of sleep each night, so make time for it, just like you make time for eating, exercising, and socializing.
- Track your sleep to see if you’re getting enough. Keep a sleep diary, or use an app like Sleep Cycle - opens in a new window, to get a sense of how much sleep you’re actually getting.
- Pay attention to your sleep quality, not just the hours you get."Good sleep” isn’t just about logging a set number of hours -- it’s about the quality of your rest, too. Beware of telltale symptoms like fatigue, irritability, and attention problems.
Activity & Additional Resources
Test Your Knowledge
Explore Additional Resources
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TED Ed: The Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep - opens in a new windowA short video explaining the benefits of sleep, especially for memory.
Sleep Strategies
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
If you’re lying in bed, struggling to fall asleep, your body may become very tense. Progressive muscle relaxation can help you to sleep by relieving this tension. Plus, it keeps your mind busy, distracting you from any stressful thoughts.
This video and steps below will explain some progressive muscle relaxation exercises.
To try out the progressive muscle relaxation technique, follow these steps:
- Start at One End Begin with either your head or your feet.
- Tense the Muscles Focus on one area and squeeze the muscles tightly for a few seconds.
- Release the Tension Let go and feel the muscles relax.
- Move Through Your Body Repeat the process with each muscle group until your whole body feels relaxed.
The Belly Breathing Technique
If you’re feeling anxious as you try to sleep, breathing can help. Just the act of focusing on your breath can help you to relax your mind, and deep breathing can stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system, which calms you down.
While there are a number of breathing techniques to relax you, one strategy is called belly breathing. To do belly breathing:
- Inhale to a count of 4
- Hold for a count of 4
- Exhale for a count of 4
- Hold for a count of 4
This video will guide you through a few minutes of belly breathing.
Distract Yourself with the Cognitive Shuffle
Invented by cognitive scientist Dr. Luc Beaudoin, this strategy keeps your mind too busy to think about the things that might stress you out, but not so busy that you’re kept wide awake. In fact, this low level of mental activity can lull you into sleep.
To do the cognitive shuffle:
- Pick a wordThis word should be emotionally neutral and should not repeat any letters -- for example, “scarf.”
- Start with the first letter of the wordVisualize as many objects as you can that start with that letter. So if you’re starting with S, think of a stapler, a shih tzu dog, a Sasquatch...
- When you run out of itemsMove onto the next letter of the word.
Get Out of Bed for a While
While it’s tempting to stare at the clock and calculate how many hours are left until your alarm goes off, this stress can make you even less likely to fall asleep. So if you’re still awake after lying in bed for 20 minutes, get up.
Go into another room, keep the lights low, and do something to relax yourself. For example:
- Read (just be sure to use a physical book rather than an ebook, as the light from electronics can wake you up)
- Work on a puzzle (crossword, Sudoku, jigsaw)
- Listen to a podcast
- Listen to soothing music
- Meditate
Avoid looking at the clock, and just enjoy what you’re doing. When you start to feel sleepy, go back to bed and try to fall asleep. If you’re still awake after 10 minutes, consider getting out of bed again.
Sleep Toolkit
Below, you’ll find some helpful tools to get the best sleep you can.
If you’re being kept awake or woken up by unwanted noise, consider using earplugs. Earplugs are generally very inexpensive and can be found at most drugstores. They come in foam, silicone, and wax styles.
If you don’t like to sleep in complete silence, a white noise app might be a good fit for you. While irregular sounds like your TV or a car alarm can startle you awake, white noise provides constant, soothing sounds to lull you into sleep.
We recommend Rain Rain Sleep Sounds - opens in a new window. This app is currently free for iOS and Android devices. Rain Rain allows you to:
- Listen to sounds ranging from rain to crackling fire to purring cats
- Create favourite mixes of different sounds
- Adjust the volume level of different sounds in your mixes
If you’re struggling to eliminate pesky, sleep-stealing light from your bedroom, consider a sleep mask. Sleep masks come in different materials, including cotton, satin, and memory foam, so find something that feels comfortable to you.
A sleep diary can help you to track the quality and quantity of your sleep, as well as allow you to make connections between your sleep and your daily habits.
Use the Sleep Diary template - opens in a new window to track your sleep.