Concepts such as “sleepmaxxing” or articles on the “7 easy ways to perfect your sleep” seem to be all over the media. As a sleep physician, it excites me that sleep is such a hot topic! But it is also important to realize that the solutions to poor sleep, anxiety, health, wellness or all of life’s trials & tribulations maybe can’t be distilled down to a few simple steps.
What is Sleepmaxxing?
Sleepmaxxing is the practice of prioritizing and optimizing sleep to achieve optimal health and well-being. It involves a variety of techniques, products, and routines aimed at enhancing sleep quality, duration, and efficiency. Key elements of it include:
- Prioritizing sleep - Sleepmaxxing emphasizes the importance of sleep as a foundation for physical and mental well-being, going beyond just getting the recommended 7-9 hours.
- Optimizing sleep environment – This includes controlling room temperature, limiting blue light exposure, and ensuring a quiet and dark sleeping environment.
- Utilizing sleep hacks and accessories - These can include mouth taping, weighted blankets, white noise machines, and sleep trackers.
- Establishing consistent sleep schedules and bedtime routines - This helps regulate the body's circadian rhythm and promotes easier sleep onset and maintenance.
- Monitoring sleep metrics - Some individuals use sleep trackers to monitor their sleep stages, duration, and efficiency, and then adjust their routines or products accordingly.
It is important to remember that we don’t live to sleep, but rather we sleep so that we can live. It is important to make sleep a priority. An estimated 30-45% of adults in the United States are not getting enough sleep. So, it is important to put our energy into making the right changes to improving sleep.
If our daytime choices revolve around “optimizing” or “perfecting” sleep, it likely means we are making a sacrifice in a different area of our life. Will putting all our energy and focus into trying to “sleepmaxx” lead us to get the most out of life? Or could that time, money, and focus be better spent somewhere else? Will we add value to our lives through the time spent tracking our sleep wearable data or trying to find the supplement or gizmo to sleepmaxx? Or would we find more value in spending that time going for an extra walk with our dog or enjoying a little more quality time with someone we love?
We know that sleep can have an impact on nearly every aspect of our heath. We also know the opposite is also true, nearly everything we do during the day can have an impact on how well we sleep at night. It is important to understand that there is no holy grail, no hidden sleep on/off switch, no secret that your doctors are hiding from you which if found would solve all your sleep problems. There are some aspects of our sleep which we have no control over no matter how hard we try. It is totally normal to have some good nights of sleep and some bad nights of sleep. The key is trying to figure out how to minimize the bad and maximize the good (not compared to your friend, or partner, or parents or children). Everyone’s sleep needs are unique to them and comparison can often be the thief of joy.
This is not to say that there is nothing we can do to improve the quality of our sleep. Sometimes our focus needs to be less on the outcome and more on the process. There are many steps we can take to put ourselves in the best possible position to get quality sleep, but that’s where our “active intervention” ends.
I encourage my patients to focus on 5 general areas to improve their sleep:
1) Quality sleep – There are many factors that influence our sleep’s quality. It can be helpful to seek professional help to be evaluated for sleep quality with a sleep test. If you are snoring or if there is another physiologic factor that is disrupting your sleep, intervention and therapy can help. Snoring and mouth breathing are symptoms of a disease called Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). The sleepmaxxing tip of using mouth tape may reduce symptoms of snoring, choking, or gasping. But if the choking and gasping are your body’s responses to low oxygen levels or trouble breathing, covering the symptom up with tape can be dangerous and possibly life threatening. I do not recommend using interventions like mouth tape without first being evaluated by a physician to be sure the practice will be safe.
2) Consistency - Our bodies like routines. Just like we feel hungry every day around lunchtime even if we are not looking at the clock, it is important to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day, so our bodies know when to expect to fall asleep. This can make getting to sleep easier and more routine. Sleeping in late on the weekends and then turning around and waking up early for work on Monday is like flying to New York and back every single weekend. It can have a big impact on how we feel. I recommend going to bed and trying to wake up with no more than 1 hour variance between days. I know this can mean making sacrifices. But it is something we have control over!
3) Quantity of sleep – For most adults, it is important to give yourself at least 7-9 hours of opportunity to sleep at night. Your body is likely getting enough sleep if you can fall asleep within 30-45 minutes and are waking up at the same time every morning without an alarm clock. If you are hitting the snooze or are spending less than 7-9 hours of time in bed at night, you may need to make some changes to your schedule. If you are taking longer to fall asleep each night, you may want to talk to your physician and find other strategies you can use to make it easier to fall asleep at night.
4) Sleep Efficiency – More time in bed is not always the answer. If you find yourself spending 12 hours in bed each day, and are only sleeping for 6 of those hours, your body is forming non-sleep associations with the bed. You may be teaching your subconscious that the bed is a place for thinking, worrying, watching TV, or scrolling on your phone. When you eventually decide to fall asleep, you may find it harder to transition to sleep. We recommend using the bed for nothing but sleep!
5) Sleep Hygiene – The part that tends to get the most attention but can play less of a role than we think. It is good to try to optimize your sleep hygiene. It is important to decrease caffeine and alcohol consumption, avoid screens and evening light exposure, ensure your room is cool, dark and quiet. These things alone likely will not be a magic cure. Increasing physical activity during the day, limiting daytime naps, and setting aside 1-2 hours to decompress and unwind from a stressful day can be the best way to put yourself in the best position to fall asleep.
Trying to improve our sleep starts with the behaviors and choices we have control over. It can be hard to find the time to make sleep a priority (given the demands of family, work, and society at large). There are things that we can do optimize sleep. But if our actions, our sleep tracking, our “sleepmaxxing” or trying to control something that ultimately, we have no control over leads to more anxiety, stress or frustration, we need to take a step back and find ways to get out of our own way to allow good sleep to come to us. And there is no easy, universal, one size fits all simple trick that will help accomplish this!
