Name: How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep Without Sleeping Pills
Uploaded: 2023-08-07T21:52:02.000Z
Duration: 6 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

"How to Get a Good Night's Sleep Without Sleeping Pills"

Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

In the Harvard Nurses' Health Study, women who got 5 or fewer hours

of sleep a night gained about 6 pounds more

over the subsequent 16 years than those getting 7 a night.

Even if that was all due to the difference in sleep,

that's still only 6 pounds for 10,000+ more hours of sleep.

If even a tiny fraction of that time was spent on diet and exercise,

you know, biking to the nearest farm stand,

more weight could have been lost in 16 weeks than in those 16 years.

and getting at least seven hours is healthier for you anyway.

This biggest reason to lose sleep over losing sleep

Driving drowsy increases your risk of killing yourself and others.

People might think twice about getting behind the wheel

after staying awake for 48 hours straight,

but even just two weeks of sleeping 6 hours a night

as much as pulling two all-nighters in a row.

Those prescribed even less than 18 pills a year

the class of sleeping pills that includes Ambien,

appear to have triple the risk of dying prematurely.

that could mean a six-figure death toll every year.

Ambien's manufacturer questioned the study,

but that's just one of dozens of studies that found

between sleeping pills and premature death.

When the principal investigator at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center

was criticized for reporting alarmingly high death risks

he replied: "We can't hide risks, even if they might frighten patients

What's more, non-pharmacological methods have been found

to work as good or better than the drugs.

The recommended first-line treatment for insomnia

is what's called "cognitive behavioral therapy, "

and education surrounding optimal sleep hygiene.

Here are the four rules of sleep conditioning.

(2) Only use the bed for sleep (and sex).

(3) If you can't fall asleep within about 15-20 minutes,

get up, leave the bedroom, and don't come back

And finally (4), get up at the same time every morning,

And although avoiding napping is often added,

contrary to expectations, the majority of research

does not show that daytime naps interfere with nighttime sleep.

If there were four rules of sleep hygiene I'd pick out,

The best time to exercise to improve sleep

appears to be 4 to 8 hours before bedtime,

though it appears to be a myth that exercising right before bed

(2) Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol before bedtime.

We used to think as long as you don't drink caffeine

in the evening, it wouldn't affect sleep,

but four cups of coffee worth even six hours before bedtime

can reduce total sleep time by more than an hour.

Even just two cups in the morning at 7 a.m. can change

what your brainwaves look like on EEG that night,

though it's not clear if this has any clinical relevance

beyond delaying the onset of sleep by an average of 10 minutes.

Late afternoon alcohol consumption (6 hours before bedtime)

may also impair sleep, even after it's cleared out of your system.

And nicotine, whether from gum, pill, patch, or cigarette, can also

though so too can active nicotine withdrawal.

Food-wise, low fiber intakes and high saturated fat and sugar intake

is associated with lighter, less restorative sleep.

This may be one of the reasons insomnia has been reported

as a side-effect of low carb, ketogenic diets.

a single megadose of vitamin D was found to improve

sleep duration and quality in men and women

ages 20 through 50 with sleeping disorders.

And I've already talked about melatonin-rich foods

(3) Make the bedroom quiet, dark, cool, and comfortable.

Nocturnal noise can adversely impact sleep

even if we're not consciously aware of it.

Within a few days, you can become habituated to noises

such that they don't wake you up, but EEG studies and subjective

sleep surveys show the quality of your sleep can still be affected.

Thankfully, ear plugs and sound masking, like white noise machines,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep Without Sleeping Pills

cognitive

majority

recommend

routine