5 Actions To Help You Fall Asleep More Quickly

You’d think that after a long day—running errands, catching up with friends, helping with grandkids—you’d fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow. But for many people, it’s not that simple. Sleep patterns change with age, and that often means more tossing and turning, waking up in the middle of the night, or struggling to wind down in the first place. Even when you feel worn out, your body doesn’t always cooperate.

The reasons vary—hormonal changes, health issues, medications, or even just less structure in daily routines. But the good news is that improving your sleep doesn’t have to mean reaching for medication right away. With a few small adjustments, you might be surprised at how much better you rest. Here are five straightforward strategies that can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer.

First, let's look at several reasons why sleep patterns change. 

Circadian Rhythm Changes

Our body’s internal clock becomes less sharp over time, so our usual sleep-wake patterns become disrupted, causing us to be sleepier during the day and less so at night. One reason for the disruption is that with age, we produce less melatonin, a hormone crucial to healthy sleep.

These rhythm changes, especially, reduce our deep sleep, which is essential for the body to undergo effective tissue repair and growth, regulate blood sugar levels, and produce white blood cells needed to strengthen the immune system. Deep sleep also supports memory function, learning and problem-solving, and emotional stability.

Illness and Chronic Conditions

Illness can disrupt sleep due to pain, anxiety, or other discomforts. Conditions like dementia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, or other disorders can also cause significant problems.

Medications

With all the aches and pains of growing older, those 50 and over tend to take more medications. About 90% of older adults take at least one prescription medication, and 43% take five or more. Sleep can be affected by drug side effects and interactions between medications. Easily overlooked are over-the-counter medications that can interact with other drugs and impact sleep.

Lifestyle

A person's daily schedule can also affect sleep. For example, a sedentary lifestyle can disrupt sleep-wake patterns, as exercise supports healthy circadian rhythms. Additionally, maintaining an irregular sleep schedule can lead to difficulties with falling and staying asleep. Finally, caffeine and alcohol consumption can negatively affect sleep quality.

With all these potential barriers to sleep, how can you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer without medication?

1. Keep a Regular Sleep Schedule

Many of us may not recognize the poor sleep habits we develop over time. For example, an erratic sleep schedule can disrupt the body’s circadian rhythm. We might fall into this habit unwittingly, but acknowledging that this behavior causes significant sleep problems may motivate us to change.

Try forming a good sleep habit by setting a fixed schedule for going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends. This will allow your body to establish positive rhythms. It might be tempting to skip sleep in favor of work, study, socializing, or exercising, but prioritizing sleep is crucial.

Start by making gradual adjustments so your new sleep habits are more likely to stick. For instance, if your goal is to fall asleep by 10 pm, you should first try to fall asleep by 11 pm. The next day, plan to sleep at 10:45 pm, and the day after that, 10:30 pm. Continue this process until you reach your desired sleep goal.

2. Limit Caffeine and Alcohol Consumption

Caffeine makes us more alert by temporarily halting the chemicals that promote sleep. While some caffeine can be helpful occasionally, using it often can significantly affect our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep at night.

Limiting intake to earlier in the day gives the body more time to process caffeine in the system before bedtime. However, you may want to consider eliminating caffeine completely because aside from impacting sleep, it can also contribute to other ailments, such as stomach ulcers and gastritis.

Alcohol can also cause sleep disturbances. This runs counter to the assumption that, as a depressant, alcohol should make us sleepier. While we might fall asleep faster in some cases, alcohol interferes with the regular sleep cycles, reducing the duration and quality of sleep, especially the most vital REM and deep sleep stages. After the body processes alcohol during sleep, the prevalence of nighttime awakenings and difficulty returning to sleep increases.

To promote sleep and other health benefits, experts advise consuming no alcohol at all or, if indulging moderately, avoid drinking for at least three hours before bedtime. It is uniformly recommended to refrain from binge drinking.

3. Turn Off the Screen

Our daily lives are permeated by television, computer, cellphone, and tablet screens. These devices emit a blue light that keeps us awake, even long after we've turned them off and shut our eyes. The theory is that blue light keeps sleep-inducing chemicals like melatonin from signaling the brain to fall asleep.

As a result, people who spend a significant amount of time in front of screens tend to have more sleep issues. Studies have shown that cutting off screen time an hour or more before bedtime helps achieve higher quality rest. Suggestions for alternative pre-bedtime activities are reading a book, listening to soothing music, or taking a warm bath.

4. Eliminate Light and Distracting Sounds

It might sound obvious, but a dark, quiet environment is crucial to falling and staying asleep. While some have little trouble falling asleep with the lights on, in the middle of a noisy room, or with the television blaring, this is not the case with most people. The majority need darkness and silence to rest their minds and bodies.

Our brains and bodies are hard-wired to sleep when the sun is down. Darkness signals the body that it's time to rest, and too much light exposure can alter the circadian rhythm.

As for sound, we don't need complete silence. In fact, some people have difficulty relaxing in rooms with supposedly zero noise. Most “silent” environments have occasional, unexpected noises that can prevent us from relaxing sufficiently. A common solution for too much light and sound is to use an eye mask and foam earplugs.

5. Play Ambient Sound

So, not only do many of us not need complete silence to fall asleep, but some find that adding sound helps. This usually means ambient sounds ranging from indistinct “white noise” to nature sounds like waterfalls, waves, and, oddly enough, thunderstorms. What characterizes these sounds is that they are consistent and mask distracting sounds to promote relaxation as a precursor to sleep onset.

Other aural tactics to support sleep are music and guided meditation. One study found that adults listening to soothing music at bedtime experienced “better perceived sleep quality, longer sleep duration, greater sleep efficiency, shorter sleep latency, less sleep disturbance, and less daytime dysfunction.” Guided meditation and other relaxation techniques, like deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation, have also been shown in studies to improve sleep quality and reduce next-day fatigue.

Medical Interventions

If none of the above steps work for you, perhaps it's time to see a medical professional. Advances in medicine have helped many people with chronic sleep problems find relief. A classic example is sleep apnea, where improvements in diagnoses and treatments have vastly improved the quality of life for many sufferers.

Let us know in the comments below. What's your favorite tip for falling asleep?