CAN’T SLEEP? YOU MAY BE TOO TIRED. HOW TO SETTLE YOUR BRAIN AND BEAT INSOMNIA

Adults, like babies, can become overtired. Experts explain why it makes sleeping hard and how to break the cycle. Counting sheep won't work

It typically happens to babies and young children: they become "overtired" and cannot sleep, often because they have been awake too long.

But adults can become overtired too, robbing them of longed-for sleep that can set a vicious cycle in motion.

Two experts explain what overtiredness is and how to break the cycle.

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Overtiredness is feeling exhausted while your brain is overstimulated and in a state of hyperarousal, Matt Jones, professor of neuroscience at the University of Bristol in England, says in an interview with BBC Science Focus magazine.

This state inhibits important processes such as the build-up of "sleep pressure" during waking hours - that is, an increase in the concentration of various neurochemicals and hormones in the brain, such as adenosine, that allow your body to sleep, he explains.

The brain can become more excitable over the course of an extended period of wakefulness, causing your thoughts to race and resisting sleep pressure.

What's more, getting too little sleep increases the likelihood of your brain becoming overstimulated by troubling thoughts the following night.

We need to acknowledge that sleep is an automated process. It won't happen if you try and make it happen
Dr Alex Scott, psychology lecturer at Keele University

"Rested brains are good at ignoring things that happen all the time but have no real consequence," Jones is quoted as saying. "But if you suffer from insomnia, you're less able to let go - consciously or unconsciously - of irrelevant information. That accumulates a massive burden on the brain."

Dr Alex Scott, lecturer in psychology at Keele University in England, offers three strategies to break the vicious cycle of overtiredness and insomnia.

The first is not trying to will yourself to sleep - for example by counting sheep - because the harder you try, the harder it will be to drift off.

"We need to acknowledge that sleep is an automated process," the BBC quotes him as saying. "It won't happen if you try and make it happen."

The second strategy is to keep a worry journal. Strange though it may sound, regularly writing down your worries before you go to bed can help people who have trouble sleeping get more shut-eye, according to Scott.

How? It can help you realise that your worries are really trivial, he says. For those that are not, writing down a brief action plan on how to deal with them will help you to put them aside for the moment, Scott says.

While this will not solve them, writing them down will "force you to process your emotional responses around the things that are keeping you awake", he says.

And if they keep running through your head anyway and you cannot fall asleep, get up, go to another, quiet room, and write some more.

"One of the worst things you can do is stay in bed tossing and turning."

Scott's third strategy is to set a bedtime timer, preferably an hour before bed, to give yourself time to unwind. What works best to relax depends on the individual, he says, be it reading, writing in your worry journal, or something else.

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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.

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2025-02-02T23:35:56Z