Six Science Backed-Ways To Help You Fall Asleep Faster

I struggle with sleep maintenance insomnia, which means that I have no problem falling asleep: it’s staying asleep that I struggle with.

But roughly 15% of adults find it hard to nod off to begin with. That can lead to chronic sleep deprivation, which is linked to worse blood pressure, an increased risk of heart attack, and even a higher chance of getting into a car crash.

Here, we’ve listed some science-backed ways to speed up your journey to the land of nod:

I love a late-night scroll as much as any of us, but there’s a reason the NHS says we could consider putting our screens away before bed.

Even having an unused phone near participants’ pillow seemed to increase their sleep latency, or how long it took them to doze off, in one study, while those who looked at their phone 30 minutes or less before hitting the hay also had a tougher time sleeping.

It sounds paradoxical, and that’s because, well, it is. A phenomenon called “paradoxical intention,” which involves willing yourself awake at night, can actually help you to fall asleep because it removes some of the pressure that can keep your mind busy.

A meta-analysis found this approach led to “great reductions in sleep-related performance anxiety”.

Designed to help soldiers fall asleep in minutes, the approach involves lying still on your back and slowly relaxing each muscle, breathing deeply as you do so.

“Move from the top of your body to the bottom when relaxing your muscles, picturing yourself sinking into your bed,” the University of Minnesota Medical School shared. Visualise something calming, if you can.

Progressive muscle relaxation was found to lead to faster sleep onset, while slow, deep breathing and “imagery distraction” (picturing nice thoughts) can also help you fall asleep sooner.

There is a “best temperature” for sleep; around 18-20°C will do it for most of us.

Much hotter than that, and our sleep latency, sleep satisfaction, and hours slept all shrink.

And if you feel really cold before you fall asleep, you might be more likely to get up in the night.

Exercising four to eight hours before bed can improve the amount of time it takes to fall asleep and lower our odds of waking back up in the middle of the night, too.

But, a narrative review published in Nature cautioned, that timeframe matters: “Exercising more than 8 hours before or less than 4 hours before bedtime, however, may have negative effects”.

The NHS stressed the importance of sticking to a regular sleep routine if you wanted to fall asleep faster.

Some research has found that sleep consistency is a better indicator of mortality risk than sleep duration; a wind-down routine, like reading before bed, can help to improve your sleep quality.

“We have a terrible habit of wanting to go-go-go all day long then expect to fall asleep immediately when it is convenient for us – it simply doesn’t work that way,” psychologist Dr Leah Kaylor previously told HuffPost UK.

But an hour-long “wind-down” period might help.