What is Sleep Hygiene?

The vital role of sleep in protecting your health and wellbeing is highly evidenced and therefore it is essential to strive to maximise your sleep quality and consistently obtain the optimal duration. Sleep hygiene plays a key role in achieving this. Sleep hygiene refers to a set of behaviours and routines that can help to promote restful and uninterrupted sleep. Achieving good sleep hygiene centers around developing consistent habits and a positive sleep environment.

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How can you improve your sleep hygiene?

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Reduce Time on Electronic Devices Before Bed

Electronic devices such as phones, laptops and TV’s can be highly engaging and when used before bed can directly displace time sleeping as people are often encouraged to “finish one more episode” or have “10 more minutes”. However, beyond this electronic device use before bed has been shown to have hidden detrimental impact on sleep, making it harder to fall asleep and harming sleep quality. 

One mechanism of this is exposure to blue light. Studies show that blue light emitted from electronic devices can suppress melatonin production. Melatonin is a powerful hormone that is involved in regulating your sleep-wake cycle and is vital to helping induce sleep. Therefore, by using blue light emitting electronic devices before bed you can massively reduce your ability to fall asleep. Studies have repeatedly found evidence that blue light can not only reduce sleep duration, but can also be harmful to sleep quality and decrease sleep efficacy.

Furthering this, actively engaging with electronic devices is strongly linked to increased cognitive and emotional stimulation. If this increased cognitive activity and strong emotional experiences occur before you go to bed it can have detrimental repercussions for your sleep, preventing relaxation, hindering your ability to fall asleep and disrupting your sleep quality.

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Limit Your Caffeine Consumption

Research has shown caffeine consumption prior to sleep can dramatically decrease sleep quality and duration, with one systematic review showing a 45 minute sleep time reduction. Therefore, you should try to avoid consuming caffeine in the run up to sleep to allow your body time to recover from the stimulating effects of caffeine and enter a restful state.

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Avoid Late Night Eating

Another way to support your sleep hygiene is to avoid late night eating and eating in the run up to sleep as such behaviour is linked to increased core temperature and metabolic activity that can disrupt sleep. Studies support that late meal time is associated with poorer sleep quality. You should aim to eat dinner 2-4 hours before bed, ideally between 5:00-7:00pm, and avoid late night snacking in order to best support our sleep.

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Keep to a sleep schedule

Developing a strict sleep schedule can help ease the transition into sleep. Try to keep a regular sleep routine where you carry out the same behaviours prior to bed and go to bed at the same time everyday. It is best to maintain this sleep schedule throughout the whole week, rather than allowing yourself to break the routine at weekends.

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Conclusion

Restorative sleep is essential to maintaining good long term health and it is therefore necessary to implement good sleep hygiene practices into your everyday life. Simple lifestyle changes such as those described in this blog can have impressive benefits for your sleep quality and duration.

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Sources

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36870101/ 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11293727/ 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8906383/ 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36051910/ 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21164152/