With so much to do, and so little time to accomplish it, sleep can feel like a waste of a precious resource. Wouldn’t it be great if we could train our bodies to need less sleep? “There are far more people who would like to need less sleep than who actually need less sleep,” says Dr Daniel Buysse, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Getting a full night’s sleep not only feels good, but it also improves your mental performance and boosts your overall health. The amount of sleep a person needs each night depends on their age and physical activity. Most adults need more than 7 hours per night for optimal wellbeing. Children and teenagers need even more to support their development.
Many people wonder if it is possible to “hack” their sleep so that they spend fewer hours in bed but still wake up feeling rested and productive. The short answer is yes and no — but mostly no. You may be able to do it for a few days, but eventually, the lack of rest will catch up with you. When you slash your sleep hours, your body notices—even if you do not. In one famous sleep study, people cut down their sleep to just six hours a night.
Their cognitive performance and reaction times dropped as much as they did in people who went two full nights without sleep, and their bodies did not adapt to the new sleep schedule, even though the short sleepers were mostly unaware of their poor performance.
The more nights you limit your sleep, the more “sleep debt” you will rack up. As with financial debt, the more sleep debt you have, the harder it is to pay it off. There is no magic way to increase your energy while cutting your sleep. However, the following techniques may help you get through short-term periods of sleep deprivation.
Step 1 - Practice Relaxing Activities
Read a book - Research suggests that just 6 minutes of reading a day can reduce stress levels by a whopping 68%. Try reading a book in bed so you can set the book aside and close your eyes as soon as you start to really feel sleepy.
Take a pre-bedtime bath - For those of you with sore muscles after a long day, taking a hot bath before you go to sleep can help increase blood flow and promote healing — much like an ice bath can do. An ice bath at night, though, would likely have the opposite effect on your alertness than what you are going for. There is something about being in a freezing cold body of water that really jostles you awake.
Step 2 - Step Away from Electronic Screens
The blue light that emits from the screens of electronic devices is strong enough to throw our circadian rhythm out of whack, which is essentially our body’s natural alarm clock that lets us know when it is time to wake up, and time to go to bed. Light heavily influences this rhythm, and you want to make sure your body naturally begins to wind down around bedtime.
Step 3 - Get Comfy in A Dark and Quiet Environment
Light limits the amount of melatonin your body produces, which is one of the signals that tell your body it is time to enter sleep mode. Your bedroom should also be at an ideal sleep temperature, something that is not too hot or too cold. Experts say a good range is somewhere between 64-72° Fahrenheit. You should also factor in the climate you live in, the pajamas you wear, and how warm your mattress sleeps. Your mattress is an important part of this whole 8 hours of sleep in 4 hours, too. If you do not have a suitable mattress that feels comfortable and accommodating, it’s going to be really difficult to get restful sleep on any night.
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