Sleep Hygiene
Text-To-Speech
In this next section, we are going to try to identify the areas in your current sleep routine that may be maintaining your insomnia (i.e. perpetuating factors) and introduce a regular sleep routine with healthy habits. The goal is to re-train your body to fall asleep more easily and sleep more soundly. You’ve probably heard of dental hygiene, which includes habits like brushing and flossing that maintain the health of your teeth and gums. Similarly, we use the term “good sleep hygiene,” for practices that help maintain the quality and quantity of your sleep.
Humans are creatures of habits. Sometimes, we do things repeatedly without even knowing it. We are like a machine on autopilot! And sometimes, we do things without realising the full impact they may have on our sleep health too. It may be a habit that begins as a solution to an earlier problem, but then the solution may end up having the opposite of the desired effect.
Therefore, maintaining good sleep hygiene can help eliminate factors that disrupt sleep and promote factors that benefit sleep.
Below is an image of a bedroom. Navigate through the room by identifying and clicking on what you think might be good sleep hygiene hazards. There are 7 “hazards” to spot. Each one is accompanied by an explanation. Review these explanations and evaluate how well you practise good sleep hygiene. If you identify areas where you currently do things differently, we will try to suggest some changes you can make this week, to see if following these practices leads to an improvement to your sleep.