Tackling coronasomnia: how to improve your sleep hygiene

The pan­dem­ic has had a seri­ous impact on our sleep. Many more peo­ple have found them­selves toss­ing and turn­ing in bed at night over the past 15 months. Even for those of us who can still drop off eas­i­ly, sleep no longer feels as rest­ful as it was. 

Insom­nia has become far more preva­lent around the world dur­ing the Covid cri­sis. In the US, for instance, Google search­es for the word increased by 58% dur­ing the first five months of 2020 as the infec­tion rate rock­et­ed, accord­ing to Sci­ence Dai­ly.

The first seri­ous study into what experts have termed coro­na­som­nia was con­duct­ed by two Cana­di­an researchers in June 2020. Charles Morin and Julie Car­ri­er found sim­i­lar­i­ties between the effects of the pan­dem­ic and those of oth­er trau­mat­ic events, such as wars and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, on people’s sleep.

“Such a major stress­ful life event is like­ly to have impaired sleep and cir­ca­di­an rhythms,” they con­clud­ed.

Once the Covid cri­sis starts to ease, sleep­ing pat­terns will prob­a­bly still take some time to return to how they were before the pan­dem­ic. This means that peo­ple will have to take steps to read­just and learn to imple­ment bet­ter sleep­ing prac­tices.

Spotting the signs of poor sleep

To under­stand how to sleep bet­ter, we first need to know the caus­es of insom­nia. Dr Abhi­nav Singh, a doc­tor on the med­ical review pan­el for the Sleep Foun­da­tion, believes that both extrin­sic and intrin­sic fac­tors have been to blame. 

Extrin­sic fac­tors include the reduc­tion in expo­sure to sun­light result­ing from the var­i­ous lock­down restric­tions that required many of us to stay at home for much of the day. This has altered people’s nat­ur­al cir­ca­di­an rhythms. A decrease in phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and even a loss of rou­tine at meal­times have also had a dis­rup­tive effect. 

Singh uses the acronym “Fedup” as a mnemon­ic for the intrin­sic caus­es. This stands for finan­cial, emo­tion­al, dis­tanc­ing, unpre­dictabil­i­ty and professional/personal. “All of these chal­lenges have led to an increase in our pro­duc­tion of stress hor­mones, which has fur­ther dis­rupt­ed the onset and main­te­nance of sleep, reduc­ing its over­all qual­i­ty,” he says.

Stephanie Romiszews­ki, a sleep phys­i­ol­o­gist and direc­tor at the Sleepy­head Clin­ic, agrees that there have been sev­er­al con­nect­ed fac­tors. 

“Key things – includ­ing fun­da­men­tal mood-boost­ers – that keep humans func­tion­ing well have been tak­en away. This has blurred the line between being awake and being asleep,” she says, adding that the stress that peo­ple have been under hasn’t just been per­son­al. “We’ve also had some­thing oth­er than our usu­al trou­bles to wor­ry about: a glob­al prob­lem that we haven’t been able to escape.”

Dr Neil Stan­ley, an inde­pen­dent sleep expert, says that the effects of poor-qual­i­ty sleep should not be ignored. These include prob­lems drop­ping off, feel­ings of fatigue on wak­ing up, extend­ed sleep dur­ing days off work, an inabil­i­ty to con­cen­trate for extend­ed peri­ods and a lin­ger­ing sense of irri­tabil­i­ty and/or rest­less­ness. 

While peo­ple can­not change many of their cir­cum­stances, they are able to opti­mise their sleep hygiene – a term coined in the 1970s to describe the behav­iour­al and envi­ron­men­tal steps that can be tak­en to tack­le mild insom­nia. 

How to sleep better

Even in times of height­ened stress, there are things that peo­ple can do to improve their chances of a rest­ful sleep, says Singh, who has devel­oped his own pro­to­col, which he calls the four-play method. This involves doing the fol­low­ing activ­i­ties for 10 min­utes apiece before bed­time: take a warm show­er, which helps “to cool the core and sup­port the release of the sleep hor­mone mela­tonin”; write a jour­nal entry, which helps to offload wor­ries; read a book; and med­i­tate. 

He says that such a rou­tine helps to con­di­tion the brain and body for sleep, espe­cial­ly when com­bined with oth­er mea­sures, includ­ing the avoid­ance of caf­feine con­sump­tion and expo­sure to blue light with­in an hour of bed­time. Keep­ing the bed­room as dark as pos­si­ble is also rec­om­mend­ed.

Romiszews­ki believes that fol­low­ing “obses­sive rit­u­al­is­tic strate­gies” can actu­al­ly do more harm than good, although she adds that “peo­ple have to do some con­sis­tent goal­post-set­ting that is influ­en­tial to their body”. 

“Ris­ing at the same time each day and get­ting plen­ty of exer­cise and expo­sure to nat­ur­al light and will pos­i­tive­ly affect a sleep prob­lem far more sig­nif­i­cant­ly than, say, cut­ting out caf­feine would,” she says. “But give your­self per­mis­sion to go to bed a lit­tle lat­er if you aren’t sleep­ing. The only way to induce sleep is by spend­ing more time awake. Incur­ring mild sleep depri­va­tion will boost the qual­i­ty of your next sleep.”

Experts do agree that dis­cov­er­ing what­ev­er approach works best for you, rather than fol­low­ing pre­scrip­tive actions such as the avoid­ance of cer­tain foods, is the most straight­for­ward way to get a bet­ter night’s sleep. We’re all dif­fer­ent – a few of us oper­ate best on six hours of sleep, while an evening bath might wake some peo­ple up rather than wind them down. Tri­al and error is the best way for­ward: keep a jour­nal to track the qual­i­ty of your sleep and which of your actions seem to make it bet­ter. If cer­tain mea­sures clear­ly aren’t help­ing, don’t per­sist with them.

The role of technology

While con­ven­tion­al wis­dom states that cut­ting out tech­nol­o­gy before bed­time aids sleep, there are many mobile apps that promise to pro­mote bet­ter rest.

“To a cer­tain degree, sleep apps are fine,” Singh says. “They tell me that the indi­vid­ual using them is start­ing to take their sleep more seri­ous­ly and wants to know more. That’s great. If they help to change the person’s behav­iour and expand their sleep oppor­tu­ni­ty to a healthy eight-plus hours, I’m all for them.”

But he adds that mod­er­a­tion is key, as obsess­ing over sta­tis­tics isn’t healthy. Romiszews­ki agrees. “Ask your­self what you’re achiev­ing by mon­i­tor­ing your sleep. If you’re using an app, ensure that you have a goal in place, along with strate­gies for achiev­ing it. Don’t track for the sake of track­ing.”

Many of us will still strug­gle to get enough high-qual­i­ty sleep even after the pan­dem­ic ends. And, some­times, good sleep hygiene will not be enough to solve the prob­lem. Singh says that a good rule of thumb is that some­one might need the help of a spe­cial­ist if they are: strug­gling to sleep more than three times a week for more than three months; expe­ri­enc­ing “sub­op­ti­mal day­time per­for­mance, fatigue, increased irri­tabil­i­ty, anx­i­ety and mood dis­tur­bances”; and/or rely­ing on over-the-counter med­ica­tion or alco­hol to sleep. 

Romiszews­ki agrees. “If your prob­lem has been going on for longer than three months, it’s time to enlist some evi­dence-based sci­en­tif­ic sup­port from an expert with the right qual­i­fi­ca­tions and, most cru­cial­ly, good clin­i­cal expe­ri­ence,” she says. 

This is impor­tant, because good sleep is inte­gral to our well­be­ing. “Sleep is one-third of your life. Com­pro­mis­ing on it has sig­nif­i­cant con­se­quences for the remain­ing two-thirds,” Romiszews­ki says. “Sac­ri­fic­ing sleep is like tak­ing out a high-inter­est loan with steep repay­ments in the form of poor health and per­for­mance.”