A refreshing sleep despite corona

Sleep well, corona!

Although many things around the world have ground to a halt, some people find that their mental chatter has grown louder and busier. It is often noisy from morning to night. Thoughts run in circles – keeping you awake for longer than you like. If you manage to switch to standby and finally fall asleep, then wild dreams often mean a restless night. In these days and weeks, characterised by working from home, childcare, home-schooling, existential angst, social isolation and worry about your nearest and dearest, many people are finding it hard to relax and unwind at night. Does this sound familiar to you? Don’t worry! It is entirely normal for so unprecedented a situation to rob you of your sleep.
You can find the basics about sleep and some tips and tricks for a restful, refreshing sleep on our list of topics under the heading Sleep. Additionally, here are some more tips and tricks for your sleep hygiene:

Silencing your mental chatter
Do your thoughts give you no peace, are they always circling in your head and are they difficult to interrupt? There are various strategies that could help you to stop brooding.

  • Distraction: try to distract yourself from your thoughts or from the issue that has taken control of your head and is preventing you from falling asleep, by e.g., listening to an audiobook or podcast, reading an exciting book, watching an episode of your favourite show or visiting a museum online.
  • Write a diary: writing is another strategy that could help you to stop brooding and that might also help you to understand your feelings better. Start a diary and note down your feelings before going to sleep. Write them up, order them and then try to consciously let go of your thoughts.
  • A mental stop sign: this will need a bit of practice. As soon as the brooding begins and stops you from falling asleep, imagine a stop sign. Try to visualise the stop sign with your inner eye and picture it in as much detail as possible. This stop sign represents an “emergency brake” that will deter troublesome thoughts. When the stop sign is in front of your eyes, then you can imagine a calming scene. Travel in your thoughts to a beautiful place that represents peace and security to you. Picture this place with your inner eye as exactly as possible and imagine that you are there. Meanwhile, breathe deeply in and out, and try to relax.
  • A “brooding chair”: if you lie awake for a long time, getting out of bed is recommended. This also applies when your thoughts are running in circles, or you are brooding and searching for solutions (unsuccessfully as a rule). If that is why you are lying awake, then you should get out of bed after no more than five to ten minutes of thinking and go to another room. You can then brood in a specific chair set up for the purpose, your “brooding chair”. There you can lay out your pens, pencils and paper, because putting your thoughts and ideas into writing immediately has been proven to be more effective. Don’t leave your brooding chair until fatigue and longing for bed has well and truly set it. You can also use your brooding chair during the day if there’s anything you need to think about.
  • Talk about it, at night too: despite everything, do your thoughts give you no peace, meaning you just can’t get to sleep? Then talk about it. If it’s too late to call a friend, get help from external counsellors. You can find 24-hour emergency help services offering a sympathetic ear under Help and advice.

Control your media intake
Every day, a media tsunami swamps us with news and countless pieces of information about the coronavirus. We are fighting our way through a jungle of information, opinions, half-truths and fake news on both social and traditional media. Both the overall situation and this flood of information are new to us, and it is important to handle the quantities of news carefully. Make a point of getting your information from official channels such as the Bundesamt für Gesundheit (BAG) and avoid excessive news consumption. Deactivate notifications from online news portals. Consciously keeping yourself informed only once per day is enough. You can find out how this works under tips for dealing with the media flood.
Avoid checking news sites just before going to bed. Ignore the news alone for at least three hours before you go to bed and concentrate on other things that are nicer than the coronavirus.

Think positively
Have you had difficulty sleeping in the last few days, lying awake for half the night, every night? So it’s entirely understandable if you have often had negative thoughts about your sleep since then. Write down your negative thoughts about your sleep. Consider how you can swap them for positive thoughts and write these down too. Whenever negative thoughts about your sleep begin to pop up, think about the positive things in your list instead. You can find an example of such a list here.

Bedtime rituals
Bedtime rituals help to create a buffer between day and night. Your body can “power down” in this time, as you switch off from your hectic daily life and slowly slip into rest and relaxation mode. Pre-bedtime rituals constitute a broad spectrum. Follow your own individual needs and preferences. The rituals include things like brushing your teeth every evening, as well as reading a book. Find things that help you to unwind. If you would like to try some relaxation exercises, have a look at the suggestions under our rest and relaxation heading.

Sleep-inducing herbal teas
Herbal tea blends have been used for centuries as alternative remedies in many different areas. For a generally soporific effect, valerian, lavender, orange blossom, passionflower, lemon balm and hops are used. Teas made from valerian root, orange blossom, hawthorn flowers and lemon balm are good for sleep-onset and sleep-maintenance insomnia. Do you feel stressed, with no inner calm, and do you find it difficult to get to sleep? Then tea made of lemon balm, orange blossom or hibiscus flowers could help to soothe you. All these teas are calming, relaxing, and sleep-inducing. But make sure you don’t drink too much tea before going to bed, or you won’t be able to sleep through the night because you will need to get up to go to the toilet.

Go to bed and get up at the same times
In recent weeks, everyone’s daily routine has been turned upside down. Our usual daily rhythms of work, childcare and free time have vanished like smoke. Instead, we are trying to re-orient ourselves between working from home, home-schooling and home-workouts. Even though we maybe no longer need to commute and could sleep for a good hour longer, it is important to find a new rhythm. Going to bed and getting up at irregular times are among the commonest reasons for not feeling refreshed when you wake up. So make sure that you always sleep at a specific time of day, within a defined period for falling asleep of 90 to 120 minutes, at least 2 to 3 times per week. If you successfully fall asleep at the desired time, you can gradually extend this pattern to other days of the week, including weekends.
If falling asleep at the desired time is still difficult, it is recommended that you shorten your total time asleep by approximately 25-30%. This will mean you are awake for longer, which will create more sleep pressure, which in turn will make it more likely that you fall asleep at the time you want. For this to succeed, daytime naps during the sleeping-time restructuring period are strictly forbidden, because they deplete the sleep pressure ahead of schedule, meaning that it is no longer so effective in the evening.

Sufficient daytime physical exercise
Regular physical activity and exercise will improve your quality of sleep. So make sure you move sufficiently during this time. You can find inspiration in our article Sport and exercise at home and under the heading Exercise and sport. Make sure that your periods of activity are not too close to bedtime, as this can inhibit falling asleep. The reason: during intensive physical and sporting activity (e.g., strength or endurance sports), we secrete neurotransmitters such as adrenaline, dopamine and noradrenaline, and endorphins such as serotonin. This cocktail makes us feel good and happy, but is not, however, exactly sleep-inducing. Consequently, the body needs more time to “come down”. As a rule of thumb, you should finish physically intensive sports at least three hours before bedtime.

Avoid daytime naps
Do you have more time than usual right now, and think you can catch up on sleep for a few hours during the day, when you haven’t slept well at night? This initially sounds like a great solution, but isn’t such a good idea for the long term, as your body will become used to a daytime nap, meaning you will have difficulty getting to sleep in the long run. Therefore it is better to not even start napping during the day, unless it’s short naps of no more than 20 minutes (power naps) before 15:00. As this is not long enough to drift into deeper phases of sleep, no sleep pressure is depleted, and the power naps do not negatively affect your sleep at night. Power naps are also recommended if you sleep well and healthily, because after one you feel almost as rested as after a night’s sleep.

Moderate temperatures and fresh air in the bedroom
A room temperature of between 15 and 18 degrees Celsius is recommended for restful sleep. Fresh air in the bedroom will likewise enhance sleep quality. Get into the habit of opening your bedroom window for at least 10 minutes before you go to bed.

Avoid lavish meals in the evening
Don’t go to bed on a full or empty stomach. Give up lavish, fatty meals later in the day. This doesn’t affect some people, but some even sleep better when the evening meal was easy to digest. Additionally, make sure that you eat your last meal of the day at least two hours before going to sleep. This way, the digestion phase will not overlap with the sleep phase, which ensures more rest and relaxation.

Alcohol and nicotine in the evening
Do you drink the occasional beer or glass of wine in the evening? There are no objections to consuming alcohol in moderation. But remember that it takes approximately 2.5 hours for your body to break down the alcohol. People who go to bed intoxicated sleep more restlessly, wake up more frequently during the night and often wake up too early. It is therefore recommended that you don’t drink any alcohol after 19:30, if you want to go to bed at 22:00. It’s similar with smoking. Stimulants like nicotine negatively affect sleep quality. If you are a smoker, then it is recommended that you smoke your last cigarette three to four hours before bedtime. If you have just given up smoking and are sleeping worse since, you are not alone. If you need support to stop smoking, then you will find a lot of useful information and advice services here.

Sleep apps
Would you like to create a more accurate picture of your sleep patterns, and have you already toyed with the thought of tracking your sleep with an app? Have you already clicked your way through the enormous number of sleep apps and still didn’t know which app is really good and best suited for your needs? The Health Sciences research centre at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) has scientifically checked and assessed various different sleep apps such as the “Sleep Score”, “Peak Sleep”, “Sleep Cycle” and “Calm” apps. You can find the evaluations for all these apps here.

References:
Holzinger, B. & Kölsch, G. (2018). Schlafstörungen: Psychologische Beratung und Schlafcoaching. Berlin: Springer-Verlag GmbH.
Pohl, E. (2015). Karrierefaktor guter Schlaf - Wie sie sich zu Höchstleistungen schlummern. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.

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