Louis Zantema
5 January 2020
Louis is a GZ-Psychologist with a great passion for gaming. For him, a game training that offers therapy is the most valuable thing you can develop: especially for pain complaints, which are on the interesting intersection of body and mind. His aim is to make himself dispensable as a therapist.
This week was all about sleep. You have received tips on what you can do to sleep better and to learn more about sleep. Still, sleeping well is not so obvious. Today I'll write about a proven, effective, but drastic way to improve your sleep: sleep restriction training.
Sleep Restriction
This method is also seen as a 'reset' of your sleep system. It is a very tough 'training', which often provides good results when someone knows how to keep going! These are the steps:
- Keep a sleep diary every night. Apps that follow your sleep are unfortunately not accurate. Do you have money to spend? The Oura ring measures your sleep (96%) accurately!
- Start by limiting your time in bed, starting with 5 hours. That means you can lie in bed from midnight to 5am!
- The time in bed can be extended by 30 minutes when you actually sleep 95 to 100% of the time in bed! If you still lie awake for a long time, then you reduce the time in bed by 30 minutes!
If you are awake for more than 20 minutes after you have gone to bed, you get out of bed to do something quietly in another room (without screens!).
With this technique you build up fatigue, until your brain 'has to' sleep. In this way your brain learns how to sleep, as it were. Quite intense, but with good results!