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Journalism of Courage
Sleep is one of the most essential yet elusive parts of our lives. For many, restless nights and tossing and turning have become all too common. But what if simple habits could transform your sleep quality?
Dr Matthew Walker, a renowned professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Why We Sleep, shared six practical tips to improve your sleep during an in-depth interview on YouTube’s The Diary of a CEO.
Backed by cutting-edge research, these sleep strategies are designed to help anyone struggling with shut-eye.
One of the most counterintuitive but effective tips Dr Walker emphasises is to leave your bed if you’ve been awake for more than half an hour. “You should get out of your bed and go to a different room and do something like read a book or listen to a podcast,” he advises, adding a crucial warning not to eat or stare at screens because “it trains your brain to wake up to do that.”
Dr Walker explains the science behind this: “Your brain is an incredibly associative device, and very quickly it will start to learn that this thing called your bed is this place where I’m always awake.” Breaking this association is vital because it “trains the brain to think that my bed is the place where I’m always going to be wide awake.” Only by returning to bed when truly sleepy can you relearn that your bed is for sleep.
Supporting this, Dr Yatin Sagvekar, Consultant Neurologist at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Navi Mumbai notes, “Getting out of bed if unable to sleep helps break the association between bed and wakefulness or frustration, gradually retraining the brain to link the bed only with sleep.”
If the idea of leaving your bed in the middle of the night seems daunting, Dr Walker recommends meditation as a powerful alternative. “I am a hard-known scientist… but I couldn’t get away from the strength of the data,” he admits. “It was immensely powerful regarding sleep and its benefits on insomnia and sleep.”
He shares his personal experience: “I meditate for 10 minutes before bed every single night and I’ve been doing that for about four years.” When waking up in the night, he tries to walk himself through meditation, calming his mind and body.
Dr Sagvekar explains the benefit clearly: “Meditating calms the mind by reducing anxiety, stress, and overthinking, lowering nervous activity and allowing the body to enter a calm state which helps sleep.”
Consistency is king when it comes to sleep hygiene. “Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time no matter whether it’s a weekday or weekend,” Dr Walker stresses. “Your brain expects regularity. It thrives best in the conditions of regularity.”
By sticking to a steady schedule, your body’s internal clock — the circadian rhythm — stays in sync, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up naturally.
In today’s lit-up world, darkness is a disappearing luxury, but it remains critical for quality sleep. Dr Walker’s simple experiment: “Try dimming down half or three-quarters of the lights in your home in the last hour before bed.” He warns against total darkness that’s unsafe but says, “You will be surprised at how sleepy that darkness will make you feel.”
Why does this work? Because darkness stimulates melatonin, the hormone that helps us fall and stay asleep. Dr Sagvekar adds, “Darkness triggers the brain’s pineal gland to produce melatonin… even low light exposure can suppress melatonin.”
Ambient temperature can be a silent sleep killer. Dr Walker advises aiming for about 18 to 18.5 degrees Celsius (roughly 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit). “You need to drop your core body temperature and your brain temperature by about one degree Celsius to fall asleep and stay asleep,” he explains.
A cooler room helps initiate this temperature drop naturally. Dr Sagvekar notes, “An ideal sleep environment is cool, around 18°C—this helps the body lower its core temperature, supporting melatonin release and natural sleep onset.”
Finally, Dr Walker cautions against alcohol as a sleep aid. “Alcohol is a sedative so it knocks you out, but it fragments your sleep,” he warns. “Your sleep is littered with all these small awakenings… it makes for miserable lousy quality sleep.”
Even worse, alcohol suppresses REM sleep, the crucial dreaming phase linked to memory, learning, and emotional processing. “Alcohol is very good at blocking your REM sleep… so alcohol’s not your friend.”
