Sleep Restriction: it’s The Anwser for better sleep

Sleep Restriction kind of sounds like a painful joke. Like who would deprive themselves of laying comfortable in bed for hours? Well I did and let me tell you it totally changed my life! I tried it 2.5 years ago and it impacted my life for the better. In this article I tell you all about Sleep Restriction, how it works, my own experience and why you should try it out!

Sleep Restriction

After seeing a YouTube video of a Dutch sleep scientist about Sleep Restriction we were shocked. Could this possibly be THE ANWSER to our sleep problems? Insomnia kept us up all night and we had trouble falling asleep. Dad and I had both been sleep extremely bad for years when we saw this video popping up. We watched and agreed to try it out ourselves. My Dad asked me when was a good time to start, I said “Tomorrow”, and my Dad knew in that moment he would never in his life sleep in again.

Dad and I had tried many, many things to improve our dramatic sleep. We bought melatonin and other supplements, did meditations, practiced mindfullness, got grounding mats, walked amongst trees and an never-ending list of other things but none of these really worked. Or the symptoms decreased for a bit but then increased over time again.

Sleep Withholding

It changed when we started implementing the routine of Sleep Deprevation. In rapid time we saw results: we finally had no problems falling asleep, an amazing boost of our energy levels, could sleep without waking up, then also waking up and having more energy and a couple of other benefits.

When we started to sleep better we could see the other things that weren’t going well with our health. I also changed my eating habits, being more in tune with my body. Before, my health was not well. I was destroying my body due to stress, sleeping problems, poor mental health, no proper coping mechanism and poor eating habits. Then Sleep Withholding positively changed my life

Sleep Deprevation goes hand-in-hand with changing your mindset, improving your eating pattern and your activity level if you really want to see the best and fastest results. But Sleep Restriction is the one that made the biggest impact!

• 
  PILATES FOR BEGINNERS AT HOME
• 
  MIND WELLNESS WEDNESDAY WISHLIST
• 
  HEALTHY DATE FILLED COOKIES
• 
  CELERIAC FRIES
• 
  Wellness Wednesday Wishlist
• 
  Healing Chicken Soup

What is Sleep Restriction

With Sleep Restriction you eliminate the time spend in bed .When you withhold hours of the sleep quantity it results in improving the sleep quality. By doing so you increase the need to sleep. This leds you to deeper sleep at night. Sleep Restriction Therapy is developed by Arthur Spielman to limit night awakenings. You can read more about this here in an arcticle of Stanford Medicine.

Steps for Sleep Withholding

The first step is finding out how much hours of sleep you get. And setting this as the baseline for the restriction. Maybe start tracking so you can take the average. Let’s take for example a person goes to bed at 10:30 p.m. and gets up at 07:30 a.m. but only sleep 6 hours. What this person will do is: spending only 6 hours a day in bed. For example from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m or 10:30 p.m. to 04:30 a.m. . The person will do this for about 1-2 weeks.

Now this sounds extreme to some but after the first weeks you will see results. It gets easier to fall asleep, or let me say: once I hit the pillow I was out, and the insomnia decreased. You may also see changes in your energy levels.

When you start to see improvement in the quality of sleep it is time to extend the time. Most people cannot keep on functioning properly with the time they start out with. So this is where step 2 will take place. Step 2 is increasing the time spend in bed by adding 15 or 30 minutes. This only if the time awake stays at it’s minimum.

Extention of the time in bed is based on the time slept comparative to the time spent in bed. We call this sleep efficiency and when it is 85% or more then the time gets increased. The time gets more restricted whenever the sleep efficiency is below 80%. It remains unchanged when in between.

My Experience

What we found out is that it all comes back to the sleepcycli. One sleepcycle is 1.5 hours. When you know this it makes doing the math a little easier. We decided to follow the example of the video: going to bed at 12 a.m. and waking up at 6 a.m. .

Because we spontaneously decided to do this we had not much time to think this through. Or to back out of it. At around 11 p.m. we saw the video and we decided, ”Okay tomorrow we will wake up at 6 a.m.”.

After the first night I was not significantly more tired than what I normally was. But then day 2 and 3 came and I had a very hard time staying up until 12 a.m. . We did it anyway and because we did it together we could not back out of it. Doing this alone would make it even harder than what it was. We were in it for the long run, we tried so much and nothing worked. Thus we kept going, waking up at 6 o’clock and going to bed at 12.

I noticed that I could function pretty well with 6 hours of sleep. And that is why I keept following this routine for several more weeks. My dad quickly experienced he needed more sleep so he extended his time. I recommend to truely listen to your body because everybody’s needs are different!

The concept of Sleep Restriction is very simple but not easy. You really have to be commited if you want results.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does Sleep Restriction take to work?

It takes about 2-8 week to see results, it also takes discipline and dedication to truly make it work!

Is Sleep Restriction safe?

Sleep Restriction is among the safe and reliable sleep treatments for insomnia and other sleeping problems. This due the fact that you only change the sleeping schedule. Iit is easy to apply in one’s daily life

Conclusion Sleep Restriction

In conclusion we can say that Sleep Deprevation is a simple tool to improve your sleep quality. If you suffer from insomnia or falling asleep this can be the anwser for better nightrest. By withholding the quantity of sleep hours you will improve the sleep quality you fastly. It may be hard at first but when you are dedicated and persistent you can make this work and the results are amazing. Try it yourself if you want to uplevel your life!

---

• PILATES FOR BEGINNERS AT HOME
  The guide on how to start and what the essentials…
• MIND WELLNESS WEDNESDAY WISHLIST
  Wellness Wednesday Wishlist but make it MIND related. We’re talking all things meditations, books and more!
• HEALTHY DATE FILLED COOKIES
  These Healthy Date Filled Cookies are gluten-free, simple and chocolatey….