How’s your sleep? Well, if you’re like 30% of adults here in the U.S., you may suffer from symptoms of insomnia. Thirty percent! That a lot of folks who are awake when they should be sleeping.
The importance of sleep cannot be underestimated. While I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, you need sleep for everything from brain health to immune system response. The risk of chronic disease like heart disease and type 2 diabetes goes up when sleep quality goes down.
I’ve written about sleep before and I’ve even taught classes that include how to get better sleep, but it’s confession time. My sleep is anything but optimal. I’ve done all those things I’ve championed – regular sleep routine, blue light filters, generally good sleep hygiene – and still those all important ZZZZs continue to elude me. It’s time to pull out the big guns and have a plan in place in case that fails too.
So, when I was visiting my new primary care physician the other day, I mentioned my relationship with sleep. After discussing what I’m doing now, she suggested I check out one of the new Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) apps that are apparently all the rage right now.
After poking around online, I chose one called Stellar (stellarsleep.com). It was developed at and is funded by Harvard University, and so it appeals to the science nerd in me. It came with high ratings, excellent reviews, and I liked that they said it can work even if you’ve struggled with sleep for decades.
Whether it works or not is yet to be determined. The causes of insomnia usually revolve around excessive worry, anxiety, depression or just a plain racing mind. I’m very grateful I don’t suffer from the first three, so the closest I come to any of these is a racing mind. The funny thing is, while I occasionally think about a project I’m working on or my shopping list, I often have random thoughts like songs or a funny thing that happened when I was a kid.
The Stellar app does not spend a lot of time on sleep hygiene. Instead, sleep hygiene is a part of a well-rounded program, along with four other categories:
- Racing thoughts – Learn science-backed strategies on how to deal with laying in bed and thinking about future events, unfinished to do lists or even not sleeping.
- Stimulus control – In this section they teach you how to reset how your mind thinks about sleep. The idea here is that the positive mental associations you have been bed and sleep are probably broken, even if you don’t realize it.
- Congitive restructuring or reframing – This is where you change your thoughts about sleep, for instance how unproductive you think you’ll be tomorrow after a bad night’s sleep. How many times have I done that?
- Change that lasts – Build a strong foundation to sustain good sleep over the long run. Learn strategies to quickly deal with insomnia when it shows up.
I’m only a few days in to this experience, and the first week is just to establish a baseline so that the app can develop a plan that is tailored to your needs. Stay tuned. I’ll continue to keep you posted on my progress in case you suffer from poor sleep and are seeking a solution as well.
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