Health

Say goodbye to sleepless nights

Follow five simple tips to put worry and concerns to one side and enjoy a sound night’s sleep.

Irish native who switched from the music industry to the world of sport moving from Universal Music to AS in 2017. A keen runner, soccer player and now discovering the world's fastest growing sport of padel. A fútbol fanatic covering LaLiga, MLS, Liga MX and other offbeat stories from the global game. Can always be found rooting for the underdog.

Update: Mar 21st, 2025 06:09 EDT

We’ve all been there before, twisting and turning and simply unable to get off at night and despite all the free sleep advice out there, getting a good night’s rest is still a struggle for many of us.

The CDC estimates that about 70 million Americans still suffer from chronic sleep problems.

Dr Naomi Shaw, a sleep expert at Mount Sinai Hospital (NYC) offered five key tips on how to get a better night’s sleep.

Avoid over-monitoring sleep patterns

Shaw claims that, as a sleep researcher, she never monitors her sleep patterns on a wearable device, claiming that she can judge the quality of my sleep based on how she feels. She adds, “the data on wearables is quite controversial. There’s definitely some evidence that may be tracking it for people who are not predisposed to having insomnia can be a good thing, but if you are already someone who’s worried about your sleep, tracking it and quantifying it and following it on a daily basis is probably actually going to create more problems for you than help”.

Avoid very early morning workouts

“If a person goes to bed at 11pm, and then wakes up at 5am to work out, they are only getting six hours sleep and obviously cutting back on the required amount of sleep, and you’re actually exercising when you’re biologically asleep, right? So your brain and your circadian rhythm is asleep, and now you’re making your body do the most extreme, which is workout.

There’s evidence that suggests that you actually are more prone to injury, muscle injury, and also you just don’t get the benefit of exercise that you would if you actually slept, you know, seven to eight hours".

Get at least seven hours sleep per night

“40% of Americans actually sleep less than seven hours. It’s really a big problem. So when you don’t get enough sleep, your body, your brain doesn’t get a chance to do the things that it typically does during sleep, your brain is actually turning into a housekeeping role, and is actually clearing toxins that you’ve accumulated throughout the day, which you wouldn’t be able to do if you don’t get enough sleep. And then, of course, memory consolidation occurs in sleep, and a bulk of your testosterone, for men, is released during sleep. So cutting back on sleep, probably not a good thing.

It’s tricky trying to make up for lost sleep

“So you can make up acute sleep loss within the next day. So if you stayed up for an exam, you can make up the next day. It’s sort of the chronic sleep loss and chronic sleep deprivation. I don’t think you can really pay back all of that sleep debt. But more importantly, it takes years of this chronic sleep deprivation to take its toll. So if you’re in your 20s and 30s and working out and cutting back on sleep, you know you’re probably not going to feel it. But what happens when you’re 50 and your BMI is now elevated and you haven’t changed anything else, except that sleep, which is so vital for, you know, obvious metabolic function.”

Avoid the snooze button

“It’s better that you set an alarm and you wake up and not continue to hit the snooze, because you’re probably going to feel miserable more tired than what you expected by getting that extra 10 to 15 minutes. And because if you continue to go into these smaller sleep fragments, there’s actually sleep inertia that can actually make you more sleepy when you try to wake up. I’m guilty of snoozing so just, I know what’s right. Of course we don’t always do the right thing, but it’s important that we keep that in mind”.