Can’t Get Enough Sleep? Change Your Inner Clock

Getting too little sleep not only lowers your ability to cope with the stresses daily life throws at you, it causes a host of other problems like:

• slowed reaction times;
• an increase in accidents;
• a decrease in the ability to concentrate and to think through cognitive tasks;
• a drop in creativity and insight;
• an increased likelihood of getting sick;
• weight gain, including obesity; and
• in adults, possible higher blood pressure, more heart attacks, and diabetes.

The one I’ve saved for last  may or may not be a surprise to you – too little sleep will bring grades down.

How much is enough? Experts recommend at least 9.25 hours of sleep per night for adolescents. Of course, you will need to figure out what you need since everyone has their own individual sleep pattern.

It probably doesn’t help to tell teens this. There are all sorts of reasons they can’t get enough sleep, from having too much homework to holding down a job to having a social life and/or having an internet connection. The most common complaint I hear, though, is that they just can’t fall asleep early enough to be well-rested when the alarm goes off in the morning.

There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with laziness, poor organization, or any other type of “character flaw.” Thirteen- to nineteen-year-olds have a biological tendency towards going to sleep later and waking up later. Much later. Especially on weekends when waking up at noon can be the norm. That can work on weekends, but what do you do if you have to get up for a 7:30 am class the rest of the week?

There actually are a few things you can do. Probably the most effective would be to convince your school to start an hour or more later. Good luck with that.

If you can’t change your class schedule so it starts later, the most important thing to do is to change your sleep schedule – in other words, go to bed earlier so you can wake up earlier.

That sounds good, but unfortunately it rarely works that way. Kids can get under the covers by 10 pm and toss and turn until after midnight. Then they’re still tired when they wake up in the morning. So simply going to bed earlier isn’t the answer.

Instead, you have to adjust your body’s inner clock, and to do that you have to start by changing your wake up routine. When that alarm goes off, get out of bed. I know, it’s painful. You want just 5 minutes more. Pleeeeeeeease. Too bad. If you don’t get up now, nothing will change and you’ll keep going through the same groggy mornings day after day. So get up already.

However, getting out of bed at an earlier time won’t change your body’s inner clock all by itself. The trick is to get a lot of bright light in your eyes first thing in the morning. Turn on all the lights. Open the curtains. Go outside.

Actually, going outside as soon as you get up is probably the most, or perhaps the only, effective way to shift your inner clock. Pull on some sweats and go for a quick walk as soon as the alarm goes off. Do this every day for a couple of weeks. Yes, do it on the weekends, too, or you’ll just confuse your body and get no benefits. At some point during these two weeks, you should start noticing that it is getting easier to wake up. Now your inner clock is shifting. Don’t stop! Keep getting up at the same time.

Of course, you need to go to bed earlier at night to get the extra sleep you need. (Remember why you started getting up earlier in the first place?) But now that your body is not rebelling so much at getting up in the morning, it should be easier to get to sleep earlier at night.

If you are still having trouble falling asleep at night, there are a number of things you can try. But this entry is already too long. Look for one or two future blogs on getting to sleep at night.

Nancy Linnerooth, Stress Coach

206.459.1589