Go back to sleep, be less tired… After staying up often during the Christmas and New Year holidays, many French people aspire to rest more at the beginning of 2025.
22% want to have a more regular sleep schedule, according to a survey conducted by Ipsos for the French Federation of Physical Education and Voluntary Gymnastics (FFEPGV). But how to maintain this good resolution over time? A sleep specialist will give you advice if you too want to sleep better in the coming months.
1. Consider sleep as “time saved”
The first step toward success is “becoming aware of the importance of sleep,” says Jonathan Taieb, a sleep doctor. The latter must be seen as a “time saving” and not as a “waste of time”, because sleeping well means “taking care of your physical and mental health”, explains the doctor.
In fact, “poor quality/quantity of sleep increases the risk of irritability, depressive symptoms, but also weight gain, hypertension or infection,” according to the Inserm websitea public medical research institute.
2. Determine your needs
The goal should be to meet your sleep needs, which are different depending on people and ages. According to Jonathan Taieb, most of us need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep per night. To determine your own needs, the doctor recommends, during the holidays, checking how many hours of sleep you feel in good shape.
Once this threshold has been determined, the director of the Paris Medical Sleep Institute recommends adopting “a regular sleep rhythm, with equal bedtime and wake-up times.” He highlights that “it is easier to impose a time to get up than to go to bed” and sees this as a “possible starting point.”
3. Don’t take too long to wake up on weekends
What about the weekend, which is more conducive to outings for those who don’t work? The ideal is to observe a difference of less than an hour from the time of sunrise during the week, according to Jonathan Taieb. Otherwise, you risk “social jet lag”: you may have trouble falling asleep on Sunday night because you woke up too late in the morning, which will cause you to lack sleep on Monday.
4. Adopt a “bedtime ritual”
To fall asleep more easily, the doctor considers it “interesting to carry out an authentic ritual at bedtime”, with non-stimulating activities. “It can be reading or any relaxing activity,” he describes.
Be careful with screens before going to bed, whose blue light alters the secretion of melatoninthe sleep hormone, and which, through the interactions that occur there, stimulates the brain. Alcohol is also a “false friend” of sleep, because it fragments it, warns Jonathan Taieb.
This article was originally published in January 2024.
Source: BFM TV
