Sleep restriction therapy

Sleep restriction therapy is a very unique sleep quality boosting method that has been brought to the medical light over the past few years, but as far as I know hasn’t made it to most people out there.

Sleep restriction therapy was originally a therapy designed to help patients with insomnia, and involves taking advantage of your body’s circadian rhythms and its internal necessity to sleep to “biohack” your body into getting better sleep.

While guiding yourself through sleep restriction therapy there are a few key points that make this treatment effective. First of all, you must track your sleep each night, this is not simply the time you went to sleep and the time you got out of bed but rather how long you actually slept, what kind of sleep you got, and most importantly, how much time you spent awake during your sleeping hours.

And this is how I originally came across SRT; I had noticed a pattern while tracking my sleep: regardless of how long I dedicated to sleeping, I wouldn’t sleep for more than six and a half hours. I was waking up incredibly tired, felt the need to take naps nearly every day, and didn’t get much if any, deep sleep each night.

These naps, along with extended periods of trying to sleep, made me not only feel in a constant tired state but also, made my days feel incredibly full and lacking of free time.

Once you have found this number that is your average sleep per night, you restrict your nightly sleep to just this amount (notably, Stanford Medicine made an important note to not sleep for less than 5.5 hours). For example, with my six and a half hours of sleep, I wouldn’t allow myself to get into bed until 10:30 P.M. and force myself out of bed at 5:00 A.M.

Unsurprisingly, my first night was very rough, I got around 5 hours of sleep and woke up feeling like I had been hit over the head with a shovel.

But, over the course of the week, I noticed a few things,

I was beginning to fall asleep much faster, as my body was learning to have to go to sleep quickly to maximize sleep.

I was waking up feeling much better. This is largely due to an increase in deep sleep and a lack of nighttime waking due to your body, again, maximizing its sleep due to restriction.

I didn’t even feel the need to take naps during the day, saving me time and the drowsiness that I get with daytime sleeping.

And lastly, I felt like I had so much time each day that I almost didn’t know what to do with it. I found time in the mornings to begin to get a little additional work done, journal, or read a book, leading to what felt like a much more productive morning and day.

Most remarkably, in just 5 days, I was in bed for six and a half hours and slept for 6 hours and 27 minutes. I only spent 3 minutes awake, and they were the 3 minutes before I got out of bed in the morning. Marking the most efficient sleep that I had gotten in the past 3 months —after just 5 days.

So, you may be wondering, what’s next? Well, the next step with this therapy is to gradually increase your sleep to get back to a healthy amount. I would recommend keeping your WAKING TIME the same, and gradually moving your bedtime earlier.

The paper that I read from Stanford Medicine, states that you should only adjust your sleeping hours every week using this system:

If your sleep efficiency is over 85%, you should increase your sleep time by 15 minutes. If your sleep efficiency is under 80%, you should restrict your sleep further. If it is somewhere in between, it’s okay to remain at your current sleep schedule for another week for additional measurements.

I encourage everyone to try this, but you must try with the understanding that, especially at the beginning, it’s going to be incredibly difficult. You’re going to wake up tired for a couple of days, you’re going to want to stay in bed for a little longer, and you’re going to want to get extra sleep during the day.

If you stay the course, however, it may just have profound effects on both your physical and mental health.

Have a great Friday!

Peaks and Valleys