There has been a massive trend going on right now for Insomnia.
Many people have a hard time falling asleep. It is caused by many reasons, such as stress, poor mental health, irregular sleep schedule, inability to wind down after work, increasingly ubiquitous availability of electronic devices, etc.
In a past study done for US adults reported regularly having Insomnia or trouble sleeping and/or daytime sleepiness increased from 2002 to 2012. It estimated that Insomnia increased from 17.5% to 19.2%, excessive daytime sleepiness from 9.8% to 12.7%, and the combination of Insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness from 6.2% to 7.0%.
Furthermore, a new study ound that the COVID-19 outbreak corresponded with an increase in “insomnia” search queries via Google. Those searches were associated with the number of COVID–19–related deaths both worldwide and in the United States.
While it is unlikely that everyone who searches for information about “insomnia” has insomnia symptoms, a similar pattern was observed for sleep apnea, which also likely reflects its increasing prevalence fueled by the obesity epidemic. The increase in insomnia search queries may be partially explained by concomitant searches for sleep apnea. But, based on the trend, there’s definitely a shift during 2020 up until now due to COVID-19 for both of these terms.
Insomnia is one of the most dangerous diseases. It reduces your cognitive function, ruins your mood by making you more anxious and depressed, weaken your immune system, and increase stress level. A recent study concluded that Insomnia has been linked to conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
But let me tell you this: YOU CAN FIX IT!
Before doing so, it would be better to understand what is causing the Insomnia in the first place. It will be easier to handle the problem by knowing where it comes from.
Here are the top 5 common reasons why you can’t sleep and how to fix it:
Excessive smartphone usage and doom-scrolling
Phone usage is going crazy. We are stuck looking at it all day and night, unaware of our surroundings. Here are some facts on smartphone usage:
- 47% of parents surveyed believe their child has a smartphone addiction
- Adults spend an average of 45 minutes a day on social media alone.
- Of parents surveyed in the UK, 46% said they “feel addicted” to their mobile devices.
- The average time spent on smartphones daily is 2 hours and 51 minutes.
These facts show that the majority of people now are addicted to smartphones, which leads to doom scrolling. There are two reasons why doom scrolling is bad for you and impacts your sleep quality:
1. Social Media usage
One of the misery in the modern world is how easy it is to compare yourself to other people, whether they are your friends or random people out there. It makes our lives more miserable than ever. Constant exposure to news can be overwhelming, too. It’s so easy now to be drowned in many negative news that makes us more anxious and stressed.
It leads to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), where you don’t want to miss out on any social events, the next vacations your friends recently went to, the new house your friends just bought, and the new title your colleagues got promoted. This fear can lead to anxiety and stress as individuals may feel they are not living up to the exciting or fulfilling lives of their peers.
2. Blue Light
The longer you spend on your phone, the harder it is to fall asleep.
The reason is simply coming from the blue light that you see on the phone. It prevents us from sleeping.
How?
By blocking the natural sleep hormone called melatonin, which is supposed to tell us when to sleep. Melatonin typically rises in the evening as it gets darker, signaling to the body that it’s time to prepare for sleep. Additionally, blue light also disrupts the circadian rhythm of our sleep by signaling our brain it’s daytime.
Circadian Rhythm is internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. CR is influenced by external factors like light, which can affect the production of the sleep hormone melatonin.
Sedentary living
It is characterized by prolonged periods of sitting or low physical activity levels. It is associated with various negative health outcomes.
We don’t move anymore. A lack of regular physical activity may contribute to sleep difficulties, leading to obesity, increased risk of chronic diseases, poor cardiovascular health, atrophy, and mental health issues. Regular exercise has been shown to promote better sleep and make us healthier overall.
We don’t realize we have been spoiled by the modern world.
We don’t go out to get food; we order food through our phones.
We don’t go out to meet friends. We meet them online.
We don’t go out to watch movies. We watch through the comfort of our bed on Netflix.
We don’t go out looking for a girlfriend/boyfriend. We swipe it right using our thumbs.
Life is so easy now that everything is on the tip of our thumbs!
Caffeine
To comply with hustle culture and work, we use a drug called caffeine. We don’t even realize we get addicted to it.
Dr. Huberman talked about this in his tweet: how we use caffeine to feel normal instead of boosting cognitive ability and energy.
The problem with caffeine is it blocks a sleep hormone called adenosine, which is supposed to fill up over time.
Adenosine is a neurotransmitter that relaxes the brain and makes you feel tired. Normally, adenosine levels build up over the day, making you increasingly more tired and causing you to want to go to sleep.
Caffeine is hard to get rid of. It takes 4–5 hours hours to flush half-caffeine away from our body. It takes another 4–5 hours to get rid of the other half. It’s insane how long it will remain in the body, blocking adenosine and making it hard to fall asleep.
I wrote how 30 days of no caffeine changed my life.
Lack of sunlight exposure
Exposure to sunlight is good for circadian health. It tells our brain when to wake up and sleep, promoting a healthy sleep-wake cycle, which leads to improved sleep. Sunlight suppresses the melatonin sleep hormone, making us more alert and awake during the day.
Additionally, natural light stimulates the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that contributes to feelings of well-being and happiness. This can positively influence overall mental health and indirectly contribute to better sleep.
Lack of a sleep schedule
The reason why we can’t sleep is because we sleep whenever we want. We don’t have a routine that should tell us when to sleep. We’ve been drowning ourselves in doom scrolling, finding it hard to put our phone off before 3 am. Keeping up with the Joneses keeps us awake the whole night.
And we are still working on our work. We keep on using our laptops and continue our work on the bed.
It’s miserable! It feels like we don’t have control over ourselves, and we let everything around us dictate how we live.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Now, here’s how you can fix it:
Activate red light on your smartphone
Do you realize that one of the reasons why many people get addicted to smartphones is because of how colorful and engaging the screen is? It is equipped with colorful and cute icons that make us want to stick in our eyes to keep looking at it. It’s all built by design.
That’s why, to make us feel sleepy, we need to create an environment where looking at a smartphone is not engaging and addictive by making it look dull with no color or at least making it red.
Enter the red light.
The good thing about red light is it won’t interfere with your Melatonin, making you sleepy eventually. We knew blue light was the villain in the battle between killing and saving Melatonin. Red light is the savior of Melatonin.
It is highly recommended to activate a red light on a smartphone 1-hour before we sleep. By activating it, we kill two birds with one stone. It makes the screen look dull and not engaging while letting Melatonin rise more in the evening, helping us to sleep faster and better.
Exercise more
Ancestrally, we are wired to move and exercise.
Sweat and doing things physically hard are proven to make us sleep better. It regulates the circadian rhythm. Engaging in physical activity, especially in daylight, can help synchronize the circadian rhythms and promote a more consistent sleep-wake pattern. Additionally, exercise has many benefits, such as regulating mood, making us feel fatigued and promoting sleep and temperature regulation.
Think of exercise as a bridge connecting your day’s bustling activities to the night’s serenity.
Limit Caffeine intake
Caffeine is a drug.
To use the drugs, we need to be smart about when to use them as well as how frequently we should use them. Otherwise, we’ll end up being controlled by them.
Since caffeine is hard to eliminate in the body system, consuming caffeine 8–10 hours before you sleep is highly recommended.
For example, if you sleep at 10 pm, then the last time you can have caffeine for the day is at 2 pm. Period.
I used to have 30 days of zero caffeine intake, and I slept like a baby. Try experimenting with it to limit caffeine intake for a week or more. For people who regularly consume it, you’ll experience withdrawal symptoms like a headache. Still, I can guarantee that you will sleep way better.
See sunlight in the morning (and sunset too)
Develop a healthy habit by waking up early and going for a 30-minute walk while exposing yourself to sunlight. This simple routine can make you feel more alert and energized, setting you up for a productive day.
Think of the morning sun as a reset button for your body. Exposing yourself to its gentle rays signals to your internal clock that it’s time to wake up and start the day. This exposure helps regulate your sleep cycle and boosts your mood by triggering the production of serotonin — the happiness hormone.
Exposure to sunlight is an effortless habit that can easily be incorporated into your daily routine. You don’t need any additional equipment to get the benefits of this natural mood enhancer. So why not try it and see how it can positively impact your life?
Have a sleep schedule.
Maintaining a regular sleep schedule is crucial to ensure you feel sleepy at a specific time. It is essential to sleep and wake up according to the schedule to get the recommended 8-hour sleep.
This is because our sleep patterns are closely linked to our circadian rhythm, our body’s internal clock regulating our sleep-wake cycle based on the natural day-night cycle. By following a consistent sleep schedule, we can synchronize our internal clock with the natural day-night cycle, which enhances the efficiency of our body’s biological processes and promotes a more robust sleep-wake pattern.
Moreover, having a fixed schedule for sleep signals our body that it is time to wind down and prepare for sleep, resulting in a more restful and better quality of sleep.
Now, get these habits in place!
