Recipe for Good Sleep

We've spent the past two weeks exploring issues related to sleep, all with a focus on how important sleep is for all of us, especially adolescents. Many factors contribute to how much sleep we get, including what time we go to bed, how easily we fall asleep, and the quality of our sleep. This week, we're going to look at what may affect young people's ability to fall asleep and then sleep well.

The Center for Research on Girls at Laurel School has compiled a very useful resource on sleep. They offer a series of recommendations to improve sleep beginning with designating your daughter's bed and even her bedroom as a "sleep sanctuary." This means using this space just for sleeping, not for other activities. For example, tempting though it may be, she shouldn't study on her bed. This helps the brain associate the bed solely with sleep, making it easier to fall asleep.

Light, not surprisingly, plays a very important role in sleep. Equally unsurprising, the invention of artificial light, especially electricity, has wreaked havoc with our bodies' biology, our circadian rhythms that do much to control sleep patterns. Our bodies are highly attuned to light. Indeed, our light receptors work even in many blind people. However, we haven't adjusted, so when our bodies sense light, particularly short wave or "blue light" which we perceive as daylight, we suppress melatonin, the hormone that encourages sleep. "Blue light" comes from all those screens: computers, televisions, iPads and phones (though not standard kindles and nooks). Charles Czeisler, the head of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, has found that exposure to "blue light" can significantly impact our ability to fall asleep, putting us off by more than ninety minutes.[i] The Center for Research on Girls recommends turning off all electronics at least 30 minutes before bedtime. You also might consider installing blue light filters on your daughter's devices (and maybe yours too). There are apps that perform this function. Dimming bedroom lights, creating a dusk effect, also helps prompt our bodies to go to sleep.

Disconnecting from social activity enough in advance to insert a downtime buffer presents another reason to turn off devices at least a half hour before bedtime. Remember that stress negatively impacts sleep, and while disconnecting won't necessarily eliminate the stress caused by social interactions, it will put some distance from them, provide some opportunity for processing, while also eliminating a source of continued or new stress. Fear of missing out (FOMO) still exists, so your daughter should tell her friends that she is turning off her phone; better yet, she could agree with her friends for all of them to turn off their phones by a certain time each night. Ideally, your daughter should completely shut off her phone and leave it in another room when she goes to bed. If she says she needs her phone as her alarm or for music to go to sleep by, buy her an alarm clock and find another way to provide the music.

We all know that caffeine keeps us awake. Many teenagers consume caffeine – approximately 40%, according to research -- frequently for the purpose of staying awake. However, this can initiate a vicious cycle of both delayed and interrupted sleep, which leaves young people tired; to combat their sleepiness, they drink more caffeine. To promote both falling asleep and sleeping well, we should all, including teenagers, limit our caffeine intake especially later in the day.[ii]

Another unhealthy pattern teenagers fall into involves shirking on sleep during the week and then trying to make up for it by sleeping late on weekends. In fact, they often stay up even later on weekends and then sleep in, something girls are even more likely to do than boys. This approach has several downsides. First, we need more than a few extra hours of weekend sleep to catch up fully on the amount of sleep many people, including most teenagers, are short during the week. Second, changing their sleep patterns on weekends makes it even harder for teenagers to wake up on Monday morning, creating a condition similar to jet lag. Good sleep hygiene demands going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time every day, week nights and weekends.[iii] Among the benefits our daughters gain from such habits: higher GPA's and better moods.[iv]

Getting aerobic exercise also helps us, including teenagers, to fall asleep more easily and to sleep better, as well as wake up feeling more rested with better ability to concentrate during the day. Studies have also found that yoga promotes better sleep. Exercise and yoga help us manage stress, and we know that stress negatively impacts sleep, especially in adolescent girls. Mindfulness also helps with stress management and appears to have a positive effect on sleep patterns. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., the Founding Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, describes mindfulness as "the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience." From what I understand, mindfulness is similar to meditation, but less structured and at the same time more wide ranging. You can practice mindfulness, simply giving a situation your full, undivided attention, anywhere, under any circumstances. Kabat-Zinn, who has played a key role popularizing mindfulness, has developed a program called mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) which has shown success in improving sleep.[v] Upper School Director Lisa Pence has been integrating short mindfulness practice into Morning Assembly and at least one teacher has also adopted mindfulness in her classes. Such practices can be as simple as closing one's eyes and focusing on our breathing. We are also offering yoga on Wednesday afternoons for Upper School students.

Hopefully, exposure to such activities such as mindfulness and yoga will encourage students to pursue them independently as the benefits of both extend well beyond sleep. There are numerous apps that put mindfulness at one's fingertips (though, of course, if using her phone, your daughter should engage in her mindfulness exercise more than 30 minutes before bed). Nor does mindfulness require a long time commitment; five to ten minutes of focused attention or meditation is enough to make a difference.

The recipe for good sleep hygiene incorporates several ingredients. Reserve the bed for sleeping, keep consistent bedtime and waking hours, turn off electronics well before bedtime and remove from them the bedroom, avoid caffeine later in the day, get exercise, and try yoga or mindfulness. Following this prescription will almost guarantee a happier, more productive teenager; who can argue with the value of that outcome?