Sleep Myth! What Makes Our Insomnia Worse?
Are you worried about waking up in the middle of sleep?
Do you want to get more deep sleep?
Are you bothered by too many dreams?
Does your sleep trackers help you sleep better, or make you more anxious about your sleep?
When is the "right" time to go to bed? Will our sleep stay the same as we age?
Are sleeping pills a good option to help with sleep?
In the “Deep into Sleep“ podcast, Dr. Yishan Xu has a nice conversation with Dr. Fiona Barwick, the director of the Cognitive Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center.
Want to know what makes our sleep anxiety rocking up high, and stop us from enjoying a high quality of sleep? Let’s find out how our mind makes insomnia strong!
Myth 1: More deep sleep is better.
Our deep sleep only takes about 10-20% of our total sleep time, this is normal and healthy.
Too much deep sleep may actually be indicators of other sleep or health problems.
Sleep trackers are not accurate mostly and may cause more sleep problems for ppl having difficulties with sleep.
“Sleep trackers turn sleep into performance.” It pushes ppl to put unuseful efforts into sleep. Sleep is NOT a performance!
Myth 2: Good sleep means I don’t wake up and I don’t dream.
Average adults wake up around 10 to 12 times each night, we may or may not remember them, and it is normal. “Waking up is a normal part of adult sleep.“
We spend about 20% of our night in REM sleep and that is when we dream, and then the rest 80% is NREM sleep stages.
Some of us remember our dreams, some don’t, both are normal.
All sleep stages are necessary for a healthy night of sleep. The REM stage is important for us to regulate our emotions.
Worry and sleep are incompatible. The more worried about sleep we are, the worse our sleep gets. Remember, sleep is a self-correcting system and it can regulate itself biologically.
Myth 3: I should feel great when I wake up in the morning.
Sleep inertia is a transition state when we transit from sleep to awakeness, and it has nothing to do with our sleep quality.
Blue light awakes us, and social media messages, emails, increase our stress levels. All of these will stop us from falling asleep smoothly.
Check the time in the middle of the night is NOT helpful! Stop looking at the time!
Consider to take off the trackers at night if there are sleep difficulties.
Myth 4: I should go to bed EARLY.
The time to go to bed, actually differs between individuals, just like height and weight differs among us.
There are at least three different Chronotypes, and around 50% of these are decided by our genes:
Lark (early morning person)
Humming Bird (in the middle)
Night Owl (evening person)
Sleep closer to your biological clock is helpful with improving sleep quality.
Couples, communicate with each other about the variety of your chronotypes and respect that.
Myth 5: Using a pill will help me sleep.
It is not only NOT helping, but also hurting.
Sleeping pills sedate us and deprive us of our healthy normal sleep stages.
Evolutionarily, no pills are more powerful than our biology! And that is why CBT for Insomnia (CBTi) is the golden standard treatment of insomnia.
Remember, short-term gain, long-term pain.
Myth 6: Sleep will stay the same as we age.
When we get older, our sleep actually changes.
One tip to keep a good healthy sleep quality: accept that sleep changes, and work with it.
If you want to improve your sleep quality, matching your sleep opportunity to your sleep ability, even if that means reducing your time on bed.
Resources:
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Dr. Yishan Xu’s CBT-I insomnia courses in Chinese and English.
Psychological Evaluation Services (Diagnoses of IQ, ADHD, ASD, etc.)
Dr. Yishan’s Podcast and YouTube