Resetting Your Sleep Routine After the Holidays

With family gatherings, travel plans, heavy meals and late-night festivities, good sleep is often one of the first things to be sacrificed during the busy holiday season. Sleep is fundamental to our physical and emotional health and prioritizing it should be at the top of your holiday to-do list.

Since sleep is a restorative function, it can be helpful to view it as updating our brain's software or cleaning up the effects of wakefulness from the previous day. Maintaining regularity in both sleep duration and timing ensures that your body can receive the most benefit from this restorative process.

Sleep duration depends on age. For children, this ranges from 10 to 16 hours per night, while for adults, it can vary from six to nine hours.

Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, even on weekends and holidays, is crucial—especially if you're prone to insomnia. Staying up late and sleeping in can disrupt your body's internal clock, making it harder to regulate sleep. If you must choose, it's better to stick to your usual wake-up time, even after a late night. This helps your body's hormonal rhythms stay on track, reducing the likelihood of difficulty falling asleep the next night. Additionally, avoid naps or daytime dozing, as these can further delay your ability to fall asleep the following evening.

Other factors that can impact your sleep quality include:

• Sleep Environment: Sleeping in new places during holiday travel can disrupt your regular sleep process. Try maintaining a short bedtime routine that you do at home and ensure your sleep environment is dark, cool, and free of distractions.
• Stress and Anxiety: The stress of the holidays can disrupt your schedule. Make sure to give yourself a buffer period before falling asleep to relax and unwind from the day.
• Diet and Caffeine: Caffeine has a stimulating effect. Try to cut off consuming caffeinated beverages by early afternoon to minimize sleep disruption. Alcohol can lead to fragmented sleep. Try to be mindful of how much you consume and avoid consuming too close to bedtime.
• Sleep Schedule: Staying up later than normal and sleeping in can negatively impact your body's natural clock. Maintain a regular bedtime and wake time to minimize overall sleep disruption.
• Heavy Meals: Eating large meals close to bedtime can affect your metabolic activity, blood flow, digestion and the hormones that regulate your internal clock.
• Physical Health: Several medical conditions can impact sleep quality. Talk to your doctor about how your symptoms might be impacting your sleep.
• Light Exposure: Staying up late to watch movies or scrolling through your phone can make it hard to fall asleep because blue light can delay your body's natural clock.
• Exercise: Physical activity can help promote better sleep, so don't skip your exercise routine just because it's cold outside.

If the holidays have disrupted your sleep schedule, there are steps you can take to get back on track:

• Get Back into a Routine: If your sleep schedule has fluctuated, do what you can to return to normal. If you were traveling between time zones or stayed up/slept in more than an hour longer than usual, consider shifting your bedtime back by 15 to 20 minutes every couple of days to ease the transition.
• Cut out the Extras: Try cutting back on or eliminating the extra caffeine, alcohol, and naps you might have enjoyed more during the holidays.
• Minimize Screen Time Before Bed: Screen time can hinder your body's natural production of sleep hormones and delay the onset of sleep. Screens can stimulate your nervous system and make it hard to fall asleep. Allow a window of screen-free time to relax and wind down time prior to going to bed.
• Wind Down Before Bed: Give yourself time to slow down at the end of the day. Create nighttime rituals that signal physical and mental relaxation.

If you're struggling with your sleep after trying these recommendations, contact your primary care provider for a referral to see a sleep psychologist.