Ideas - Sleep

Each chapter of this book is designed to provide you with an inspirational idea that you can read quickly and put into practice straight away.

Throughout youll find three features that will help you get right to the heart of the idea:

• Heres an idea for you Take it on board and give it a go right here, right now. Get an idea of how well youre doing so far.
• Defining idea Words of wisdom from masters and mistresses of the art, plus some interesting hangers-on.
• How did it go? If at first you do succeed, try to hide your amazement. If, on the other hand, you dont, then this is where youll find a Q and A that highlights common problems and how to get over them.

• Sleep 2: 10 more great tips for a perfect nights sleep
• Sleep 3: Another 10 great tips for a perfect nights sleep
• Sleep 4: Yet another 10 great tips for a perfect nights sleep
• Sleep 5: Even more great tips for a perfect nights sleep

You dont really question sleep until youre not getting enough. And its only when symptoms spiral out of control that you think about doing anything. Suddenly youre falling asleep during conversations, youre unable to concentrate on anything longer than a TV ad break, you cant be bothered to socialise any more and its the fourth time this week youve put the tea bag in cold water. Even then, it often takes a comment from someone Gosh youve been looking tired lately, Youre not as lively as you used to be or If you dont do something about your snoring, Im going to leave you before you actually decide to take action.

Ive seen many parents reduced to shadows of their former selves after extended periods of sleep deprivation. Those in top decision-making jobs become unable to decide what to have for breakfast, reduced to tears if they find the cornflakes packet empty. Fiercely bright men and women armed with first class degrees unable to recall their own middle names. For the most part however, parents get through this bleak period and find their brains, memory and dignity (well, brains and memory anyway) intact.

By far the biggest cause of insomnia, however, is stress. Study after study shows that weve got too much on our plate nowadays. Were working longer hours and theres more demanded of us at work. The constant threat of redundancy that most of us are under means that were not even being rewarded for all our efforts. Then theres money you cant even begin to think about how youre going to pay your 4000 credit card bill. Its not surprising panicky thoughts are keeping you up at night.

Chances are youre always on the go. Its very difficult to switch off from the world because there are no quiet times any more. You can pretty much do anything you want at any time of the day or night from buying frozen peas to organising a bank loan. Then theres the overwhelming amount of choice which makes every decision you make increasingly difficult from choosing a breakfast cereal to deciding which of the 268 shades of white to paint your downstairs toilet. At this rate, its a wonder any of us get any sleep at all.

Many people I spoke to when writing this book had suffered insomnia for years, but had never done anything about it. They simply didnt know where to start and were unconvinced that anything could work. The fact is, there are some pretty straightforward strategies to help you get the sleep you deserve. Just understanding what happens to your body while you sleep will help you work out the mechanisms behind your sleep problems whether its insomnia, nightmares, restless legs syndrome or sleep apnoea. And finding out about your body clock means you wont waste time trying out things that wont ever work. If youre a night owl, for instance, theres no point going to bed at 10p.m. youll be staring at the ceiling for 5 hours, churning over your thoughts. By the time youre ready to drop off, youll have convinced yourself that youre going to get the sack, die horribly on your cycle ride to work, be abandoned by your partner or be told that the mole youve been thinking about is definitely cancerous.

The key to solving your sleep problem is finding the cause be it stress, bad diet, a noisy bedroom environment and being persistent. That means not giving up if the first thing you try doesnt work. If you need to relax, and yoga doesnt do it for you, try another relaxation technique. Maybe music or mental tricks will suit you better. Look at your diet and lifestyle too particularly if youre regularly having late night takeaways. The wrong foods, for instance, can lead to snoring, nightmares and disrupted and disturbed sleep and can make restless legs syndrome worse. And exercise helps by tackling stress and making you feel good about yourself as well as regulating your body clock and helping trigger all those sleep hormones at the right time. Ive come up with a huge selection of tried-and-tested solutions so I guarantee you wont run out of things to do from changing your bedtime routine and visualisation tricks to decluttering your bedroom and performing wake-me-up morning stretches.

Try everything that takes your fancy, write down how well it worked, keep referring back to your notes and soon you should have a list of all those changes youve made that do the trick. It may take one week or it may take a few months. But dont give up. Before you know it, youll be sleeping soundly every night, waking up in a great mood and managing to stay full awake during every conversation you have in the day.

We spend a third of our lives asleep so what actually happens to our bodies when were tucked up under the duvet?