To all the women out there whose eyes pop open in the middle of the night, we feel your pain—and your stress, creaky floors, crying kids, too-hot bedrooms, and everything else behind these rude awakenings. Like a rooster screeching in your ear hours before his actual call time, these disrupters are causing some major health issues. But we’re here to say: oh no you cock-a-doodle-don’t.
Once upon a time… the rich and powerful boasted of how little sleep they needed: Oprah grew a media empire on a reported five and a half hours a night; Bill Gates is said to have slept under his desk while launching Microsoft. But something shifted around 2012, when the CDC wrapped up a 10-year study concluding that our national sleep debt was a serious public health concern. Where doctors saw disaster, businesses saw opportunity. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs jumped into the then-$32 billion (now over $58 billion) market, shilling everything from high-tech sleep gadgets to homeopathic sleep aids, all aimed at restless souls with cash to spare.
Which brings us to 2017, where bragging about excessive sleep is the thing. Heidi Klum boasts 10 hours a night; Ellen DeGeneres, eight and a half. While Goop exalts “clean sleeping,” this spring The New York Times went so far as to christen sleep a status symbol, calling it a “measure of success” based on studies linking sleep quality with earning power. And speaking of money: Elites are vacationing at $3,000 sleep retreats, paying to nap at sleep salons (just $1 a minute!), and spending more on their mattresses than their mortgages. For a basic biological need that should be free for everyone, sleep sure doesn’t come cheap anymore.
Yet while the 1 percent are dozing on designer sheets, the rest of us are just trying to scrape together enough Zs to function. In fact, a full 88 percent of women are regularly not sleeping through the night, per a survey of 1,500 women ages 18 to 55 conducted by Women’s Health, the American Sleep Association, and Thrive Global, a wellness company founded by Arianna Huffington. Nearly a third say they never get a solid, uninterrupted night of shut-eye. That’s right: never.
This is a massive problem, since sleep may be the single best way to heal our bodies and minds (for women in particular; our brains are wired to need more sleep than men). Studies associate poor sleep with everything from lowered metabolism to Alzheimer’s. And all those wake-ups women are having reduce the amount of time we spend in slow-wave sleep, the deepest stage of non-REM, which is increasingly linked to brain health, memory, and learning, and “is essential and irreplaceable for physical and mental well-being,” says Neil Kline, D.O., an internist and spokesperson for the American Sleep Association. (More essential, even, than logging more hours.) Fragmented sleep can make it harder to reach and maintain the slow-wave stage, meaning you’ll likely reap fewer benefits from the hours you do get. And because slow-wave encourages “sleep consolidation”—the ability to snooze for long stretches without waking—broken slumber is a problem that can repeat itself night after night.
So why is clean sleep so hard for women to achieve? For starters, we’re more likely to handle p.m. caregiving of kids and to be woken up by stress. Sleep apnea in women is on the rise and underdiagnosed. And this is key: Because women tend to cater to their partner’s sleep preferences and subjugate their own, we accept nighttime wake-ups instead of addressing them, says Marc Leavey, M.D., a sleep specialist at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. “I see women dismiss their sleep needs over and over to keep peace in the bedroom,” he says. Our exhaustion then seeps inward, ramping anxiety and exacerbating other mental health issues. “Women need to remember they’ll be more effective for those they love if they prioritize their own well-being,” says Huffington, author of The Sleep Revolution. “It’s like they say on planes: In the event of an emergency, secure your own oxygen mask first before helping others.”
So We read dozens of studies, interviewed top sleep experts, and tested scads of products to bring you the happy ending you deserve: a plan for putting the worst sleep disrupters to bed for good. Restorative rest is no longer just a fairy tale… or a dream. No matter which disrupter is your biggest foe, this intel will help you say good night—and mean it.
MORNING, SUNSHINE
If your better-rest game starts at 7 p.m., you’re about 12 hours too late. Researchers are making a convincing case that what you do in the a.m. is key to a healthy circadian rhythm—which, at night, results in a faster drift-off and longer stretches of sleep with fewer interruptions. Follow this sun-up routine for quality Zs come sundown.
RISE
Waking up within 30 minutes of the same time each day (weekends included) is even more important than bedding down at the same time each night—it helps program your internal clock to shut off more easily come darkness, meaning you snooze more soundly. To ensure she keeps her body clock on track, WH health director Tracy Middleton relies on Philips Wake-Up Light ($50, amazon.com). “It’s a game changer, especially in the winter when it’s still dark at 6 a.m., when I get up,” she says. “The device gradually starts emitting light about half an hour before I set my alarm to go off. I’m usually awake before it reaches full ‘sunrise’ and the alarm pings.”
SHINE
Natural rays are one of the most effective ways to jump-start your body clock and prepare for better sleep that night, say studies. So throw curtains open when you wake. And since light therapy works even better paired with caffeine, drink that coffee in the sun; if you’re cooped up indoors all winter, brighten your favorite morning nook with a light box, like Verilux HappyLight Natural Spectrum Lamp (from $50, amazon.com).
REFRESH
Via sweating and simply breathing, you lose water All. Night. Long. (All night! Excuse us. Mini Lionel Richie break.) Gulping 16 ounces of H2O first thing activates the brain and engages your circadian rhythm.
MOVE
Get up and get your heart pumping: Per a new study, women who exercised for 45 minutes five mornings a week slept 70 percent better. (Torch fat, get fit, and look and feel great with Women’s Health’s All in 18 DVD!)
NAP-TIME RULES
Sadly, we can’t all work at Ben & Jerry’s, the land of free ice cream and company-sanctioned naps. For the rest of us, weekend siestas are lovely—unless they’re done wrong, at which point they poop all over your p.m. slumber. So…
1) Don’t nap past 3 p.m. After that, your circadian clock shifts into evening mode, so late-day Zs cut into nighttime rest.
2) Nap only for half an hour. This length of time boosts alertness and dials down stress. More than this, and you’ll risk grog, insomnia, and wake-ups later on.
3) Keep yourself on schedule. To ensure you don’t doze for too long, sip a caffeinated bev just before resting. The caffeine will kick in around 30 minutes later, exactly when you want to rise. Nap accomplished.
YOUR APNEA RISK
You’re young. You’re fit. Which is why your doctor may not even think to test you for obstructive sleep apnea if you complain of unexplained exhaustion, morning headaches, and weight gain. The disorder—characterized by blocked night breathing and microawakenings as often as 100 times per hour—is typically found in overweight men over 40 who snore heavily. But as many as 9 percent of women may have OSA, and left untreated, it can trigger headaches, heart disease, stroke, depression, even attention deficit disorder.
Think you might have it? You’ll be tested at a sleep lab, where a technician will monitor your brain activity, body movements, heart rate, and breathing. Or ask your doctor about ordering a home sleep-study kit so you can test for apnea in your own bedroom.
If it turns out you do have apnea, some cases are treated with tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy surgery; others, with an oral appliance for overnight wear that nudges your jaw and tongue slightly forward to prevent the blocking of your airway. But many need to sleep with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask, hooked to a bedside machine, that keeps your airways open.
