11 Tips to Help You Fall Asleep When Nothing Else Works
If you’re having trouble falling asleep, you’re not alone. Everything from a big meal to a big race—and even thinking about how you can’t fall asleep—can keep you up at night. Unfortunately for us, a lack of sleep can mess with performance, but there are ways to combat restless nights and even use them to your advantage.
“Once you get rid of the fear about not being able to fall asleep, it can be transformative,” says Chris Winter, M.D., president of Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine. Here, Winter shares his best tips for how to sleep better and why it’s okay if you can’t sleep.
1. Don’t assume more sleep is always better.
You may think that getting more sleep the night before a race or big ride will help you perform better, but adjusting your routine may result in you laying awake in bed, feeling more worried than if you just went to bed at the normal time. “People think ‘I’ve got a race coming up and usually get nine hours of sleep, but I’ll get 11 to help me do better,’ and this is not necessarily true,” Winter says. If nerves keep you up, he even suggests staying up later than normal so when you do go to bed, you are more sleepy.
2. Listen to your body.
Winter says it’s important to figure out if you’re exhibiting signs of being excessively sleepy during the day, or just suffering from prerace jitters that night. For example, do you sleep great most nights, but once in awhile, it takes you until 2 or 3 a.m. to get to sleep? That’s probably just an off night. If your sleep struggles are occurring regularly, three or more nights a week, and you’re taking naps or nodding off at work, this could mean a bigger issue.
“A lot of people who may think they have insomnia may actually be spending too much time in bed,” Winter says. “When really, it could be your body saying I don’t want 11 hours, eight would be awesome.”
3. Start tracking your sleep.
Rather than aim for a certain number of hours of sleep, keep count of how many hours you are currently getting and how that makes you feel. If you immediately fall asleep and get seven hours but feel groggy during the day, that may not have been enough. On the flip side, if you try to get seven hours of sleep, but it takes you an hour and a half to get to sleep, you may not need to spend as much time in bed, and might want to try going to sleep later.
“Evaluate the amount of time you spend in bed and if you think it is appropriate,” Winter says. “The ideal seven to eight hours that we consider to be an average, healthy amount of sleep doesn’t mean every individual needs that.”
4. Adjust the lights.
Still struggling? Manipulate the light—it’s hard to stay awake in a dark room. (Winter even has some of his athletes use only the light of a headlamp after dinner to control the light.) Blackout shades or curtains can also aid in creating a dark space. Winter also suggests cutting off screen time two hours before bed to prevent the blue light from messing with your body’s ability to sense it’s nighttime.
5. Turn down the heat.
Another room hack is to make sure the temperature is cool and comfortable—you sleep better in cooler temps. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the ideal temperature for sleeping is between 60–67 degrees. When your body temperature lowers it helps initiate your body’s sleep process.
6. Make good fueling choices.
Be sure to eat a meal that you know won’t upset your stomach. Eating a heavy meal, or skipping out on proper refueling, can leave you restless at night.
If you’re really having trouble falling asleep, Winter says this is a great time to pull out the tea kettle and make yourself a hot cup of Get Some Zzz’s tea, which has calming ingredients such as chamomile and passionflower.
7. Use the buddy system.
If you’re worried about not waking up for an early race or ride, Winter suggests getting a wakeup call from a friend or the front desk if you’re in a hotel, and always putting your alarm on the other side of the room, which forces you to get out of bed to turn it off.
8. Quiet your mind.
Getting into a meditative state can help you relax and get deeper sleep. A tip Winter suggests is imagining yourself in a diving bell (a chamber used to transport divers), being lowered deeper and deeper into the ocean to help nudge your mind into a deep sleep. Winter says he uses this technique, especially when he is traveling and can only get three or four hours of sleep, and is convinced it helps him make the most out of the short time he can rest. If you struggle with meditation, try Winter’s favorite, the Muse device, which guides meditation by translating mental activity into sounds from nature and tracks your sessions so you can get better at staying in a meditative state or an app like Headspace, which includes audio-guided meditations and a new feature called Sleepscapes designed to help you sleep.
9. Try taking sleep away.
Winter says the first thing he does when someone comes into his office and says they can’t sleep is he takes sleep away from them. For example, if someone who is having trouble sleeping typically goes to bed at 9 p.m. and gets up at 6:30 a.m., Winter has them adjust their sleep schedule—no sleep before midnight and no sleep after 6:30 a.m.
You may learn you are trying to give your body too much sleep. He likens it to figuring out how much pizza to buy so that you eat enough to get full without being wasteful. If that doesn’t help, it may mean something like a partner disrupting your sleep, your environment, or something more serious like grinding teeth, seizures, or even sleep apnea.
10. Consider the season.
Exercise and activity levels play a major role in how much sleep you need. Particularly for people who are athletically inclined, sleep needs can vary with the season, Winter says. If you’re in the middle of cycling season, you may need nine hours of sleep, but during the winter, or when you’re not exerting yourself as much, that number can go down.
[Find 52 weeks of tips and motivation, with space to fill in your mileage and favorite routes, with the Bicycling Training Journal.]
11. Try visualization.
If you’re trying to fall asleep the night before a race or big ride, and just can’t, try to shift your thinking. Instead of worrying about how tired you’ll be the next day, use this time in bed to mentally prepare for the event. “Lying in bed with your eyes closed imagining a perfect race is doing about 80 percent of what sleep does, so it’s not wasted time,” Winter says. “If you’ve been sleeping every night okay and had one bad night, you’ll be good.”
He tells his athletes their job is not to sleep, but to get in bed and picture the race and course. For example, he tells triathletes to mentally go through transitions and think about hydration. “Use that time constructively, don’t use that time to stress why it is you’re not asleep,” Winter says. The bottom line: One crappy night of sleep isn’t going to mean you have a bad race or training session.
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