Insomnia and Trouble Sleeping

Which kind of bad night is it

Think about last night. Not the average night, last night.

If you lay there for an hour with your mind running, that is trouble falling asleep, and it is mostly about light, temperature, caffeine and a brain that never got to set anything down. If you fell asleep fine and then snapped awake at two or three, that is a different pattern, and I wrote a whole page on waking at 3am because it usually points at blood sugar or stress hormones. If you wake at four thirty and cannot get back down, that one often tracks with stress and an early shifted body clock.

And if you sleep eight hours and still wake exhausted, read the doctor section at the bottom before anything else. Loud snoring, gasping, or dragging through the day after a full night are the classic signs of sleep apnea, and no bedroom upgrade fixes that.

What I actually do every night

I will tell you what my nights look like, because none of this is theory for me.

The air conditioning drops to 67°F, about 19°C, thirty minutes to an hour before I want to be in bed, on a programmable thermostat so I never have to remember. Screens go off an hour before bed and the lights switch to amber. I take a hot Epsom salt bath. I dump every thought in my head onto paper, a practice I do as part of a moon ceremony. My phone goes on airplane mode and lives outside the bedroom. The room is dark, quiet and clean, with blackout curtains, electrical tape over every little light, organic cotton bedding and an AirDoctor running for clean air and white noise at once. The Apollo goes on sleep mode.

During the day, I get twenty minutes of bright sunlight, I lift weights, I stop caffeine at 2pm, and I eat a heavy protein dinner.

Some of that has strong science behind it and some of it is my own experience. I will tell you which is which as we go, because I am not going to hand you a claim I cannot stand behind.

My mains

If you only change a few things, change these.

Temperature is the biggest lever I have found. Your body has to drop its core temperature to fall asleep and to stay in deep sleep, and a warm room fights it all night. Reviews of the research on thermal environment and sleep find heat is one of the strongest disruptors of deep sleep and dream sleep there is. Set the thermostat to cool the room to around 65 to 68°F, about 18 to 20°C, and set it to start thirty minutes to an hour before you want to be in bed, so the room is already cold when you get there. A programmable or smart thermostat does this for you every night, usually for about $100 to $250.

Light, both ends of the day. Twenty minutes of bright sunlight in the morning sets the clock that decides when you get sleepy tonight, and a meta-analysis of light therapy found it improves sleep and circadian timing, with the biggest effects on the body clock itself. Then at night, do the opposite. In a Harvard study, people who read on a light-emitting tablet before bed took longer to fall asleep, made less melatonin, shifted their body clock later and were less alert the next morning than when they read a printed book.

The Apollo Neuro on sleep mode. A wearable that sends gentle vibration your nervous system reads as safety. I run it on sleep mode every night. There is no insomnia trial of it that I would stake a number on, so this is my experience rather than a study, and it is a strong one.

Get the thoughts out of your head. In a sleep lab study, people who spent five minutes writing a to-do list before bed fell asleep significantly faster than people who wrote about what they had already finished, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep. I do this as a moon ceremony journaling practice, dumping every thought onto the page so my head does not have to hold it overnight.

Free, starting tonight

You start at the bottom. You do what you can, where you are, and you only climb if you need to.

Screens off an hour before bed. Laptop closed, TV off, phone out of reach. If you must use a screen, turn the brightness all the way down and the colour warm.

No caffeine after 2pm. In a controlled study, a dose of caffeine taken six hours before bed still measurably disrupted sleep, which is why six hours is the minimum gap sleep researchers now recommend. Caffeine lingers far longer than it feels like it does. For most people, a 2pm cutoff clears that window.

Lift weights. A 2022 network meta-analysis comparing exercise programs for sleep in older adults ranked resistance training as the most effective option for sleep quality, ahead of walking and aerobic training alone. For me, lifting is one of the biggest things I do for my body clock. Finish hard sessions a few hours before bed if they leave you wired.

A heavy protein dinner. Protein carries tryptophan, the building block your body uses to make serotonin and then melatonin, and a meta-analysis found tryptophan at a gram or more improved how long people stayed asleep. A protein-heavy dinner also keeps blood sugar from crashing at three in the morning. I have not found a trial of the heavy protein dinner itself, so that part is my experience and the logic behind it.

Make it dark. Blackout curtains, and electrical tape over every standby light, charger and smoke detector glow. In a Northwestern study, sleeping one night with a dim overhead light on raised heart rate during sleep and raised insulin resistance the next morning, compared with sleeping in darkness. A roll of electrical tape may be the cheapest sleep upgrade there is, and a blackout sleep mask covers you when you travel.

Keep electronics out of the bedroom, and the phone on airplane mode. Part of this is simple, a phone on the nightstand gets checked. Part of it is my own choice about electromagnetic fields, which I cover further down.

Quiet. A quiet room, or a steady sound that covers the random ones. More on that below.

A few dollars, tonight

A hot Epsom salt bath one to two hours before bed. A meta-analysis found a warm bath or shower one to two hours before bedtime, for as little as ten minutes, helped people fall asleep significantly faster and improved how well they slept. The heat draws blood to your skin, and as it leaves, your core temperature falls, which is the same signal a cool bedroom sends. I use Epsom salt in mine. Whether much magnesium gets through the skin is not proven, and the heat is doing the heavy lifting either way. I walk through exactly how I take mine, step by step, in my post on heat.

Amber light after dark. In a randomized trial, people who wore blue-blocking amber lenses in the evening slept significantly better and reported better mood than those in clear lenses. I get the same effect with the house instead of glasses: red light bulbs in the lamps I use after sunset and a dimmable amber night light for the hallway and bathroom, switched on an hour before bed.

About $10 to $30 a month: supplements

These are support, not the foundation. Nothing in a bottle beats a cold, dark room and a clean evening. Check with your doctor first if you are pregnant, take medication or have kidney disease.

Magnesium. In a double-blind trial in older adults with insomnia, magnesium improved how long it took to fall asleep, sleep efficiency and total sleep time compared with placebo. A glycinate form is gentle on the gut, and magnesium L-threonate is the form I use for the brain side.

Melatonin, low dose. A meta-analysis found melatonin cut about seven minutes off the time to fall asleep and added about eight minutes of sleep. Modest, and most useful for jet lag or a shifted body clock rather than as a nightly habit. Start with a low dose.

L-theanine. The calming amino acid in green tea. In a randomized trial, four weeks of it improved sleep latency and sleep disturbance scores and eased stress.

Want the basics in one click? Add magnesium, the amber night light and electrical tape to your cart.

The bedroom itself

This is where a lot of my money has gone, and where the evidence gets thinner the further down you read. I will be straight with you about which is which.

Clean air and white noise at once. I run an AirDoctor in the bedroom every night. It cleans the air, and its fan doubles as steady white noise that covers the random sounds that wake me. Be clear on the evidence: a systematic review found the research that steady noise improves sleep is very low quality, so this one is my experience. The clean air matters to me on its own.

Clean, natural bedding. Organic cotton sheets and an organic cotton pillow, washed often. Cotton breathes, which helps you stay cool, and organic means fewer finishing chemicals next to your face for eight hours. That is my reasoning rather than a sleep trial.

A weighted blanket, if you run anxious. In a randomized trial in people with insomnia and anxiety or depression, a weighted blanket improved insomnia severity with a large effect and better sleep maintenance compared with a light blanket, and the benefit held over a year.

Electromagnetic fields, my own choice. I turn the WiFi off at night where I can, keep the phone on airplane mode, sleep under an EMF bed canopy, and use dirty electricity filters in the bedroom. I will be honest with you, because I always will be. The research on everyday EMF exposure and sleep is unsettled, and I am not going to put a number on it that no study has earned. I sleep better with this setup, and that is the whole claim. A WiFi router guard is a middle step if you cannot switch the router off. Add the canopy and filters to your cart.

The mattress. The single thing you spend the most hours on. An organic mattress is the biggest purchase on this page and the last one I would make, after the free changes have had a real run.

When it is still not enough: practitioner help

CBT-I, the best studied treatment there is. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia retrains the habits and thoughts that keep insomnia going. A meta-analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine found it cut about 19 minutes off the time to fall asleep, about 26 minutes off time awake during the night, and raised sleep efficiency by about 10 percent, with the gains holding over time and no side effects. Sleep medicine guidelines put it first, ahead of sleeping pills. It is offered by therapists, sleep clinics and structured apps.

Mindfulness training. In a trial published in JAMA Internal Medicine, a six-week mindfulness program improved sleep quality and daytime tiredness more than a sleep hygiene class. I teach the practices I use, step by step, in The Anxiety Upgrade.

Acupuncture. A Cochrane review found acupuncture and acupressure were linked with more people sleeping better, but the studies were too weak to be sure. Worth trying if you already have a practitioner you trust.

None of this has to happen this week. But tonight you can drop the thermostat, turn the screens off an hour early, run a hot bath, and write every thought down before you turn out the light.

When it belongs with a doctor

I am not a doctor and I am not diagnosing anyone. See one if trouble sleeping has gone on three nights a week for three months or more, if you snore loudly, gasp or stop breathing in your sleep, if you are exhausted in the day after a full night, if you fall asleep while driving, or if poor sleep comes with low mood or thoughts of harming yourself. Sleep apnea in particular is common and often missed, and it needs a sleep study, not a better pillow. If sleeping pills have become something you cannot sleep without, coming off them is a job for you and your doctor together.

Your body is not broken

Your body is not broken. It is blocked. And for so many people lying awake, the block is not inside them at all. It is a warm room, a bright evening, an afternoon coffee, and a head still carrying the whole day when the light goes out.

Your body has been trying to sleep this whole time. Clear the way tonight, and let it.

Sleep well, my friend.