Fall back to sleep after waking up at night with doctor's simple trick

Fall back to sleep after waking up at night with doctor's simple trick According to a sleep expert, a common response to disrupted sleep could be doing more harm than good – and she's revealed several tips to help you drift off instead A sleep expert has revealed the dos and don'ts she believes can help you get a better night's kip. While many adults aim for the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep each night, it's not always possible for a variety of reasons. Many people experience disrupted sleep and struggle to drift back off, but according to Dr Lindsay Browning, there are several techniques that can help. Speaking on the Dig It podcast, she said getting out of bed and occupying your mind can be more effective than lying awake trying to force yourself to sleep. She explained: "Often when people wake up in the night, they'll just think, 'Oh no, I have to stay here because I have to sleep and it's so important that I sleep and I have an important day tomorrow so I'll have to just try harder to sleep'. "But, the more you're staying in bed and trying to force sleep, the more annoyed you're getting that you're not sleeping". Instead, Lindsay suggests activities such as reading a book, doing a jigsaw, painting a picture or having a decaffeinated tea to help "reset" the brain. "And then when you come back to bed again, you kind of [think], 'Okay, I can go back to sleep again' but of course before you've got to that point in bed, if you wake up, you can always try some relaxation exercises," she explained. She recommended "slow deep breathing" and "cognitive shuffling", which she explained involves thinking of a letter and then listing as many words as possible that begin with it. The expert advises repeating this exercise with different letters until you "exhaust" them. "These words, they are not a coherent worry," she explained. "They're not you thinking [of stressful situations], they're just random words." Following the technique, she added, can help you "calm down and drift back into the next sleep cycle". If that doesn't work, Lindsay advised getting out of bed and doing something that occupies your brain for a short period before returning to bed. Another common habit the expert suggests avoiding is checking the time when you wake up during the night. Doing so, she said, means you are "triggering yourself" and making yourself "more anxious". "What I would say is, please do not... nobody should have a clock that they can see from their bed," she shared. "If you're awake enough to realise you're awake, we don't need to know what the time is. "Knowing the time is only going to lead to us doing mental calculations about how much sleep we've had and how much time until morning and [it'll] make us frustrated. "So don't have a time because that will help you, hopefully, to go back to sleep again."