Sleep & health guide

How many adults sleep too little

A large share of adults fall short. In CDC's 2020 survey data, 33.2% of US adults reported sleeping under 7 hours a night, after adjusting for age. CDC's sleep statistics show that share stayed about the same from 2013 to 2022. In 2022, it ranged from 30% of adults in Vermont to 46% in Hawaii, and it reached 39% among adults ages 45 to 64.

Seven hours is the floor set by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society, so 1 in 3 adults is under the minimum, not just under an ideal.

Why adults lose sleep

The reasons overlap, and most of them are ordinary:

• Technology and screens. Evening light from devices can suppress melatonin and keep you alert when you should be winding down. In a controlled study, people reading a light-emitting e-book took longer to fall asleep and were less alert the next morning than when reading a printed book. We go deeper in The Impact of Technology on Sleep and How to Disconnect Before Bed.
• Work demands. Long hours and evening email push sleep aside. In CDC data from 2022, 48% of adults working more than 60 hours a week slept under 7 hours, against 29% of those working 40 hours or less.
• Social pressure. Being busy gets admired, and sleeping less can look like discipline. Your body doesn't care how it looks.
• Stress and anxiety. A racing mind makes it hard to relax and fall asleep, and poor sleep then makes stress harder to handle.
• Poor sleep habits. Many bedrooms are too bright, too warm or too noisy, and sleep gets broken up without you noticing.
• Too much caffeine. Using it to fight tiredness can start a cycle: you drink more to stay awake, sleep worse that night and need more the next day.

Signs of sleep deprivation

If you've been short on sleep for a long time, you may have stopped noticing what rested feels like. The Sleep Foundation and the research below point to these common signs:

• Daytime sleepiness. You feel drowsy in the afternoon or struggle to stay awake during boring tasks.
• Thinking problems. You have trouble concentrating, think more slowly, forget things or lose focus.
• Mood changes. You notice irritability, anxiety, heightened stress or strong reactions to small things.
• Physical symptoms. You're more sensitive to pain, or you get tension headaches.
• Dependence on stimulants. You need several cups of coffee or energy drinks to function.
• Hitting snooze repeatedly. Needing an alarm and several snoozes can be a sign you aren't getting enough sleep, though snoozing itself may not be the problem.
• Weekend catch-up. Sleeping much longer on weekends suggests your weekday total isn't enough.

Sleep stages & cycles

NREM stage 1 (light sleep). This is the transition from waking to sleep, and it lasts just a few minutes. Your muscles relax, your heart rate slows and your brain waves begin to slow.

NREM stage 2 (light sleep). This stage makes up about half of your sleep time. Your body temperature drops, your heart rate slows further and your brain produces short bursts of activity called sleep spindles, which are thought to help with memory and learning.

NREM stage 3 (deep sleep). Also called slow-wave sleep, this is the hardest stage to wake from. It's when growth hormone is preferentially released, which supports tissue repair. It's also the stage most tied to physical recovery.

REM sleep (rapid eye movement). Your brain becomes more active while most of your muscles go temporarily slack, and your eyes dart back and forth. This is when most vivid dreaming happens, and it's linked to emotional processing and memory.

One cycle through these stages takes about 90 minutes, so a 7 to 9 hour night holds about 4 to 6 cycles. The mix changes as the night goes on, with more deep sleep early and more REM toward morning. That's why cutting the end of your night short takes a bigger bite out of REM sleep.

Circadian rhythm

Your circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour internal clock that helps set when you feel alert and when you feel sleepy. It's run by a tiny brain region called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), and light is its main input.

Morning light tells your brain that it's time to be awake. Melatonin stays low, and cortisol and body temperature rise. As evening light fades, melatonin rises and you start to feel drowsy.

This clock also influences body temperature, hormone release, eating habits and digestion. When your schedule fights it, as with shift work, jet lag or irregular hours, sleep quality tends to suffer, and health problems become more common.

Sleep pressure & adenosine

Alongside your clock, your body builds sleep pressure all day, partly through a chemical called adenosine. The longer you're awake, the more it builds, and the stronger your drive to sleep. Sleep clears it, which is part of why you wake up refreshed.

Caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors. It reduces the feeling of sleepiness without removing the pressure, so the tiredness can come back when the caffeine wears off.

Sleep needs by age

The National Sleep Foundation publishes ranges by age, and they're the ones most people quote. Individual needs vary with genetics, activity, health and sleep quality, so treat these as a range.

National Sleep Foundation sleep recommendations by age.

CDC's guidance is close: 7 or more hours for ages 18 to 60, 7 to 9 for ages 61 to 64 and 7 to 8 for 65 and older. Note that more isn't always better. Very long sleep is linked to worse outcomes too, though it may be a sign of illness rather than the cause.

How to assess your own sleep needs

The most practical test is how you feel. Do you wake up refreshed without an alarm? Do you have energy through the day without a lot of caffeine? Can you stay alert during boring tasks? Are you recovering well from exercise? If you can say yes to all of these, you're probably getting enough. If not, try adding 30 minutes for 2 weeks and see what changes.

Sleep quality vs. quantity

Hours in bed aren't the same as hours of sleep. You can spend 9 hours in bed and still sleep poorly because of frequent waking, a sleep disorder, alcohol or a bad environment. Someone who gets 7 hours of solid sleep may feel better than someone who spent 9 restless hours in bed. Timing matters too: in a study of 60,977 UK adults, people with the most regular sleep schedules had a 20% to 48% lower risk of death than the least regular, and regularity predicted risk better than duration did. That's an association, but it's a good reason to keep your schedule steady.

Sleep & heart disease

Your blood pressure normally dips during sleep. Shorten the night and your heart and blood vessels get less of that break, and sleep loss shifts your nervous system toward a more stressed state. Sleep is also listed among important considerations for preventing cardiovascular disease.

A meta-analysis of 474,684 people found short sleep was tied to a 48% higher risk of developing or dying from coronary heart disease and a 15% higher risk of stroke, though not of total cardiovascular disease. Long sleep was also tied to higher risk in that analysis, so this isn't a case for sleeping as long as you can.

Sleep, insulin & diabetes

Sleep loss makes your body less sensitive to insulin, the hormone that moves blood sugar into your cells. In a study of 9 healthy adults, one night of about 4 hours of sleep cut the rate of glucose uptake from 40.7 to 32.5 units during testing. That's about 20% lower, after a single short night.

A week of it does similar damage. In the 1999 Lancet study, 11 young men limited to 4 hours in bed for 6 nights had lower glucose tolerance than when they were fully rested. Across 41 randomized trials, sleep restriction reduced insulin sensitivity, and a review in Nature Reviews Endocrinology ties poor and short sleep to glucose problems and obesity risk.

The long-term data line up. In a meta-analysis of sleep and type 2 diabetes, sleeping 5 to 6 hours or less went with a 28% higher risk, trouble falling asleep with 57% and trouble staying asleep with 84%. Long sleep went with a 48% higher risk. For people who already have diabetes, a narrative review of trials found that better sleep habits improved glucose control.

Sleep & immune function

Your immune system and sleep affect each other. Sleep supports immune signaling, including the cytokines that help fight infection and inflammation, and being sick makes you sleepy. So the usual advice to rest when you're ill has a real basis, even if it's not fully mapped out.

The best human evidence comes from studies that gave people a cold on purpose. In a study of 153 healthy adults, those sleeping under 7 hours were 2.94 times more likely to develop a cold after exposure to the virus than those sleeping 8 hours or more. A 2015 study of 164 adults measured sleep with wrist trackers rather than asking, and it found that sleeping under 5 hours raised the odds about 4.5 times compared with more than 7 hours.

A newer report shows how fast things can shift. Research in The Journal of Immunology found that one 24-hour stretch without sleep moved a type of immune cell called monocytes toward a pattern seen in people with obesity. That part of the study involved just 5 lean adults, so read it as an early signal rather than a settled finding.

Sleep & vaccine response

Sleep also seems to matter around vaccination. In a study of 125 midlife adults getting the hepatitis B series, people who slept less had a weaker antibody response and were less likely to be clinically protected 6 months after the last dose. A small 2002 study looked at the flu shot in people restricted to short sleep and also raised concern. It's a reasonable excuse to go to bed early the week of a shot.

Inflammation & pain

Chronic sleep loss is linked to a chronic inflammatory state, including higher markers such as C-reactive protein, interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha. That type of low-grade inflammation is linked to heart disease, diabetes, some cancers and autoimmune conditions, though researchers are still sorting out cause and effect. Our Ultimate Guide to Dietary Fiber covers the nutrition side of inflammation.

Sleep loss also turns up pain. In a brain imaging study, sleep deprivation lowered people's pain thresholds and amplified the response in the brain's sensory regions. Outside the lab, small night-to-night changes in sleep quality tracked with day-to-day pain. A review of sleep and chronic pain looks at how the two feed each other.

Memory & thinking

One of sleep's best-known jobs is memory. Your brain takes in new information during the day and appears to replay and strengthen it during sleep, with different stages helping different types of memory. Declarative memory (facts and events) leans on deep NREM sleep. Procedural memory (skills) leans on both NREM and REM sleep. Emotional memories seem to be processed during REM sleep.

Sleep before learning matters too. In a Nature Neuroscience study, one night without sleep produced a clear drop in activity in the hippocampus during learning, and people retained less later.

Other thinking skills suffer as well. Attention falls quickly, processing speed slows and executive function (planning, problem solving and decisions) gets worse. Reaction time can slow to a degree comparable to alcohol. In a study of 39 workers, after 17 to 19 hours awake, performance on some tests matched or fell below that of a 0.05% blood alcohol level.

Sleep, brain waste & dementia risk

You've probably heard that your brain washes itself during deep sleep. That idea comes from mouse research on the glymphatic system, and it's still being debated. A 2024 mouse study found brain clearance was reduced, not increased, during sleep. In people, a study of 20 healthy adults found that one night of sleep deprivation raised beta-amyloid, the protein that builds up in Alzheimer's disease, in parts of the brain.

The long-term link is firmer than the mechanism. A study of 7,959 UK adults over 25 years found that sleeping 6 hours or less at ages 50 and 60 was tied to a 22% and 37% higher dementia risk, compared with 7 hours. People who stayed short sleepers from 50 to 70 had a 30% higher risk. Early dementia can also disturb sleep, so this doesn't prove cause.

Emotional regulation & mental health

Sleep and mental health run both ways: poor sleep can contribute to mental health problems, and those conditions can disturb sleep. It's a cycle, and you can often enter it from the sleep side. A meta-analysis of 65 trials with 8,608 people found that improving sleep led to a medium-sized improvement in depression and anxiety, and bigger sleep gains went with bigger mental health gains.

Part of the explanation may be in the brain's wiring. Imaging work found that after sleep deprivation, the amygdala, which handles emotional reactions, becomes more reactive and is less connected to the prefrontal cortex, which helps keep emotions in check. That fits with what most of us notice when we're tired: small things feel big, and judgment slips. If low mood or anxiety has settled in, talk with a healthcare provider.

Accidents & mortality

Fatigue affects reaction time, judgment and awareness, and it shows up on the road. According to CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, people sleeping 6 to 7 hours a night are twice as likely to be in a sleep-related crash as those sleeping 8 hours or more, and those sleeping under 5 hours have four to five times the risk. Almost 5% of drivers in 12 states said they'd fallen asleep at the wheel in the past month.

It shows up at work too. A review of 27 studies with 268,332 people found that workers with sleep problems had a 1.62 times higher risk of being injured on the job.

Then there's the most sobering number. A meta-analysis of about 1.4 million people found short sleep was tied to a 12% higher risk of death from any cause. Long sleep was tied to a 30% higher risk. These studies can't fully separate sleep from underlying illness, but no one has found a health upside to chronic short sleep.

Leptin & ghrelin

These are the two hormones you'll see quoted most, and their numbers deserve a closer look.

Leptin signals that you've had enough to eat. Ghrelin stimulates appetite. In a 2004 study of 12 healthy young men, 2 days of restricted sleep lowered leptin by 18% and raised ghrelin by 28%. Hunger rose 24%, and appetite for calorie-dense, high-carb foods rose 33% to 45%.

That's the source of the headline numbers, and it's a small study. A bigger one found smaller gaps. Among 1,024 adults in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, sleeping 5 hours rather than 8 predicted 15.5% lower leptin and 14.9% higher ghrelin. Same direction, about half the ghrelin effect, in a real-world sample.

So you can expect to feel hungrier after a bad night, and you won't fix that with willpower alone. Protein and fiber can help with fullness, and it helps if the decision is already made. Our High Protein Meal Plan adds 2 extra ounces of meat per meal, for about 10 g more protein than our regular recipes, so dinner is in the freezer on the days you're running on too little sleep.

Sleep, cortisol & body fat

Sleep loss can raise cortisol, a stress hormone, at the time of day it should be falling. In a 1997 study of young men, cortisol levels the evening after partial or total sleep deprivation were 37% and 45% higher than the evening before. Evening cortisol was also raised in the Lancet study above.

Whether a short-term rise like that adds up to fat gain isn't well established, so be skeptical of any post that says cortisol alone "makes you store belly fat." A cleaner concern is lean mass. In one trial, a single night without sleep raised cortisol by 21%, lowered testosterone by 24% and cut muscle protein synthesis by 18%. That's a problem for anyone trying to lose weight while maintaining lean muscle mass.

Insulin resistance & food cravings

We covered the insulin side above: your cells respond less to insulin, so your body has to work harder to manage blood sugar. Sleep deprivation also seems to change how your brain responds to food.

If you crave sweets and snack food after a bad night, it isn't just in your head. In a brain imaging study, sleep deprivation reduced activity in brain regions that weigh food choices, increased activity in the amygdala and raised the desire for high-calorie foods.

Fat loss vs. muscle loss

This is one of the more useful findings, and it's often overstated. In a 2010 trial, 10 overweight adults dieted for 14 days twice, once with 8.5 hours in bed and once with 5.5.

Weight lost over 14 days on the same calorie-cut diet (Nedeltcheva 2010).

Total weight loss was nearly the same, about 3 kg, but the short-sleep version lost 55% less fat and 60% more lean mass. Note that even the well-rested dieters lost about half lean mass, not mostly fat as you'll sometimes read. It's a tiny, short study, but the direction is hard to ignore, and lean mass helps you maintain your weight later.

If you're working to drop fat without losing muscle, our 14-day weight loss plan covers protein targets that help protect lean tissue in a deficit.

Sleep & visceral fat

Visceral fat sits around your internal organs. It's more metabolically active than the fat under your skin, and it's tied to higher risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Sleep seems to affect it, though the data are limited. In a 2022 inpatient trial, 12 healthy adults spent 14 days with either 4 or 9 hours of sleep opportunity and free access to food. On short sleep, they ate more and gained more weight, and abdominal fat rose, including visceral fat, even though total body fat didn't differ between conditions.

A 5-year study of African American and Hispanic American adults found that people under 40 who slept 5 hours or less gained more visceral fat than those sleeping 6 to 7 hours. Sleeping 8 hours or more was also tied to more gain, and there was no link at all after age 40. So the evidence is real, but it's narrower than a blanket claim.

Physical activity & energy use

When you're tired, you tend to move less, skip planned workouts or put in less effort. That includes the small movements you make through the day, known as non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which add up. Still, the bigger factor seems to be intake, not burn. In the 2022 trial above, energy expenditure didn't change with short sleep, while calories eaten went up.

The encouraging part is that the effect appears to work in reverse. In a 2022 randomized trial of adults with overweight who usually slept under 6.5 hours, simple sleep counseling added about 1.2 hours of sleep a night. Among the 80 people analyzed, the sleep group ate about 270 fewer calories a day than the control group, without being told to eat less, and lost weight compared with it. It's one of the better arguments for treating sleep as part of a weight loss plan.

Muscle recovery & growth

Growth hormone is released mainly during deep sleep, and that's one reason sleep gets so much credit for recovery. Muscle repair needs more than hormones, though, and sleep loss hits more than one piece of the process. In the one-night trial above, muscle protein synthesis fell by 18%. So if you're training hard and not seeing results, check sleep along with protein and programming.

In a study of 10 young men, a week of about 5 hours of sleep also lowered daytime testosterone. The research has focused more on men, so we can't say as much about women. For more on the recovery side of training, see our Ultimate Guide to Stretching for Recovery, which also covers what stretching does and doesn't do.

Sleep & athletic performance decline

Studies link sleep loss with worse reaction time, decision speed, accuracy, endurance, power, coordination and motivation, along with a higher sense of effort. It doesn't hit every measure equally. A systematic review on strength found that a full night without sleep had little effect on strength, while consecutive nights of short sleep could lower force on multi-joint lifts but not on single-joint moves. Motivation may explain part of the drop.

Extending sleep can help. In the often-cited Stanford study, 11 men's varsity basketball players aimed for at least 10 hours in bed for 5 to 7 weeks, and they slept about 111 more minutes a night. Their sprint time improved from 16.2 to 15.5 seconds, free throws rose 9% and 3-point shooting rose 9.2%. Reaction time improved too. It's a small study with no control group, but those are big gains from going to bed.

Sleep & injury risk

Tired people move less precisely, react more slowly and make worse decisions, so injuries are a reasonable concern. In a survey of 112 adolescent athletes, those sleeping under 8 hours a night were 1.7 times more likely to have had an injury. The confidence interval runs from 1.0 to 3.0, and this is a small school sample, so the direction is more useful than the number.

Sleep & overtraining

Overtraining happens when training volume and intensity outrun your body's ability to recover. Symptoms can include persistent fatigue, falling performance, mood changes, more injuries and getting sick more often. Too little sleep leaves you with less recovery to work with, so it can be easier to slide into that state. If your training is going backward and you've been sleeping poorly, fix the sleep before you add more volume.

Insomnia

Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder. It means trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or waking too early and being unable to get back to sleep. Acute insomnia lasts days to weeks, usually after stress, travel or a life change. Chronic insomnia happens at least 3 nights a week for 3 months or more.

Common causes include stress, anxiety, depression, poor sleep habits, medications, medical conditions and circadian disruption. The first-line treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I. A meta-analysis found it cut the time to fall asleep by about 19 minutes and time awake at night by about 26 minutes, with benefits that seemed to last and no reported harms. Total sleep time barely moved, at about 8 minutes, so the gain is mostly in how easily you sleep. Sleep habits and, in some cases, medication may also be part of treatment.

Sleep apnea

With sleep apnea, breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep. In the most common type, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the throat muscles relax and block the airway. Symptoms include loud snoring, stopped breathing that a bed partner notices, gasping or choking, heavy daytime sleepiness, morning headaches, trouble concentrating and irritability.

It's more common in people who are overweight, but anyone can have it. Untreated, it raises the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, and it's a safety issue: a meta-analysis found workers with OSA had about twice the odds of a work accident. Treatment usually involves CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), an oral appliance, weight loss or, in some cases, surgery.

Restless legs syndrome

Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is an irresistible urge to move your legs, usually with uncomfortable sensations. It gets worse at night, and it can make falling or staying asleep very hard. Possible causes include iron deficiency, kidney problems, nerve damage and certain medications. Treatment may include iron if you're low, medication and lifestyle changes, so get checked instead of guessing at supplements.

Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder that affects the brain's control of sleep and wake cycles. People with it have heavy daytime sleepiness and may fall asleep suddenly during activities. Other symptoms can include sudden muscle weakness (cataplexy), sleep paralysis and hallucinations when falling asleep or waking up. It needs medical care, usually medication along with lifestyle changes.

Circadian rhythm disorders

These happen when your internal clock is out of sync with your schedule:

• Delayed sleep phase disorder: you feel alert late at night and struggle to wake up in the morning.
• Advanced sleep phase disorder: you get sleepy very early in the evening and wake very early in the morning.
• Shift work disorder: you have trouble sleeping during the day or staying alert at night because of night shifts.
• Jet lag: a temporary disruption after crossing multiple time zones.

When to see a doctor about sleep

Most sleep problems respond to better habits and a steady schedule. But some signs point to a disorder that needs medical evaluation. Talk with a healthcare provider if you have any of these:

• Long-running trouble falling or staying asleep, lasting more than a month, especially if better habits haven't helped.
• Heavy daytime sleepiness even with enough time in bed, which can mean apnea or another disorder is breaking up your sleep.
• Loud snoring, gasping or choking, or breathing pauses a bed partner notices.
• Unusual movements or experiences during sleep, including acting out dreams, sleepwalking or hallucinations when falling asleep or waking.
• Trouble staying awake during the day or while driving, or morning headaches that fade once you've been up for a while.
• Leg discomfort that keeps you from falling asleep, especially with an urge to move them.
• Sleep problems that affect your daily life, work, relationships or mental health.

Your doctor may refer you to a sleep specialist, who can order a sleep study (polysomnography) to diagnose the problem and recommend treatment.

Foods that may promote better sleep

• Tryptophan-rich foods. Your body uses this amino acid to make serotonin and melatonin. Sources include turkey, chicken, eggs, cheese, nuts, seeds, tofu and fish.
• Complex carbohydrates. Whole grains, oatmeal, sweet potatoes and quinoa may help tryptophan reach the brain, especially when eaten with tryptophan-rich foods.
• Magnesium-rich foods. Magnesium plays a role in nerve signaling. Good sources include leafy greens, nuts such as almonds and cashews, seeds, legumes and whole grains.
• Calcium sources. Dairy, leafy greens and fortified foods supply calcium, which may help your brain use tryptophan.
• Foods with melatonin. Tart cherries, grapes, tomatoes and walnuts contain small amounts. In a study of 20 adults, 7 days of tart cherry juice concentrate raised melatonin and improved total sleep time and sleep efficiency.
• Omega-3 fats. Fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel and sardines supply omega-3s, which may help regulate serotonin. Fatty fish is one of the foods with some direct sleep research behind it.
• Herbal teas. Chamomile, valerian root, passionflower and lavender teas are calming for many people, though strong proof they improve sleep is limited.

Foods & drinks that disrupt sleep

• Caffeine. This one has real data. A 2023 meta-analysis found caffeine cut total sleep by 45 minutes and deep sleep by about 11 minutes. To avoid losing sleep, the authors suggest having coffee at least 8.8 hours before bed and a standard pre-workout at least 13.2 hours before. An earlier study found that 400 mg disrupted sleep even when taken 6 hours before bed. If you go to bed at 10 PM, that puts your last coffee around 1 PM.
• Alcohol. It helps you fall asleep faster, then costs you later. A review of the research found that alcohol at all doses increases sleep disruption in the second half of the night and delays REM sleep, and moderate to high doses cut total REM. It also relaxes your throat muscles, which can worsen snoring and sleep apnea.
• Heavy, fatty or spicy meals before bed. These can cause indigestion and heartburn, which make it hard to fall or stay asleep.
• High-sugar foods. Diets high in sugar have been linked to lighter, more restless sleep, though the research on any one late dessert is thin.
• Lots of liquid before bed. This makes it more likely you'll wake up to use the bathroom.
• Tyramine-rich foods. Aged cheeses, cured meats and fermented foods contain tyramine, which is often said to increase brain activity. There's not much direct evidence, so only cut them if you notice a pattern.

Meal timing for better sleep

Don't go to bed too full or too hungry. Aim to finish dinner 2 to 3 hours before bed. If you need a snack later, keep it small, like a small bowl of whole-grain cereal with milk, yogurt with berries or a banana with almond butter.

Consider a consistent eating window. Eating within a set window, such as 8 AM to 6 PM, may help some people keep a steadier daily rhythm, but the evidence that it improves sleep is mixed. The simple part, eating at about the same times each day, is the part we'd keep.

Stay hydrated during the day. Dehydration can make you feel worse, but do most of your drinking earlier in the day to avoid nighttime bathroom trips.

Bedroom temperature

Your body temperature naturally drops as you fall asleep, and a warm room can get in the way. A common recommendation is 60 to 67°F (15 to 19°C). Some people will do better at the warm or cool end of that range, so adjust it to your own comfort. Fans, air conditioning and lighter bedding all help.

Bedroom darkness

Light is the main signal your clock uses to decide whether you should be awake, and evening light can suppress melatonin. Use blackout curtains or shades, cover or remove devices with LED lights, try a sleep mask if needed and use dimmer switches to cut your light exposure before bed.

Bedroom noise

Quiet is ideal for most people, but if you live with noise, a white noise machine or fan can mask it. Earplugs work too, though they take some getting used to. Heavy curtains can help with traffic noise, and moving the bed away from a noisy wall can make a surprising difference.

Mattress & pillows

Your mattress should be comfortable and supportive. Many last about 7 to 10 years. If yours is older than that, sagging or leaving you sore, it may be time to replace it.

The best pillow depends on how you sleep. Side sleepers usually need a thicker pillow to keep the spine aligned. Back sleepers usually need a medium one. Stomach sleepers need a thin one or none at all. Consider replacing pillows every 1 to 2 years as they lose support and collect dust mites.

Choosing bedding

Choose breathable fabrics such as cotton or bamboo. Thread count isn't everything, since the quality of the cotton and the weave matter more. Layers give you more flexibility than one heavy comforter, because you can adjust them through the night.

Keeping the bedroom for sleep & intimacy only

Take out work materials, exercise equipment and televisions if you can. You want your brain to link the bedroom with sleep and relaxation, not with work, stress or stimulation.

Bedroom air quality

Fresh air helps a room feel more comfortable. Make sure it's ventilated, consider an air purifier if you have allergies and keep humidity at about 30% to 50%. A snake plant or spider plant is a nice touch if you like them, but don't count on them for cleaner air. A review of plant studies found you'd need 10 to 1,000 plants per square meter of floor to match normal air exchange.

Elements of a bedtime routine

• Set a consistent schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. Irregular schedules disrupt your circadian rhythm.
• Dim the lights. About 2 to 3 hours before bed, start turning down bright lights. Turn off overhead lights and use lamps.
• Limit screen time. Set a "screens off" time at least 30 to 60 minutes before bed. CDC suggests turning devices off at least 30 minutes before. If you must use a screen, night mode or a blue light filter may help some, though it's not a complete fix.
• Take a warm bath or shower. A meta-analysis found a warm bath or shower 1 to 2 hours before bed, for as little as 10 minutes, helped people fall asleep faster. Warming up brings blood to your hands and feet, and your core temperature then falls more quickly.
• Practice relaxation. Try slow breathing, like the 4-7-8 pattern: breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 7 and exhale for 8. Progressive muscle relaxation, which means tensing and relaxing each muscle group from your toes up, is another option. So are 5 to 10 minutes of meditation or gentle stretching or yoga.
• Journal. Writing down your thoughts, worries or tomorrow's to-do list can help clear your mind. Keep a notebook by the bed.
• Read. Choose something calming, like fiction, and use a dim reading light rather than overhead lighting.
• Listen to calming music or podcasts. Pick something that takes your mind off your worries without being so engaging that it keeps you up.

What to avoid before bed

The most common problems in the hour or two before bed are large meals, caffeine, alcohol, stressful activities, bright lights and screens, work email and doomscrolling upsetting news. Any one can disrupt your sleep, and a few together make a bad night much more likely.

Vigorous exercise is on many lists, but the evidence is narrower than that. See exercise timing below.

What to do if you can't fall asleep

If you've been awake in bed for about 20 minutes, get up and do something quiet in dim light until you feel sleepy. Don't watch the clock, so turn it away from you. If anxious thoughts keep you up, try "worry time": set aside 10 minutes earlier in the day just for worrying. Some people also like the cognitive shuffle, where you think of random, non-emotional words starting with each letter of the alphabet.

Understanding your chronotype

Your chronotype is your natural lean toward mornings or nights. Early schedules are favored by society, but some people really do function better later in the day, and forcing yourself against your natural timing can backfire.

If you can, match your schedule to your chronotype. Morning larks tend to fall asleep around 9 to 10 PM and wake around 5 to 6 AM. Night owls fall asleep around 12 to 1 AM and wake around 8 to 9 AM. Most people are intermediate types somewhere in between.

Sleep tracking

You don't need a tracker, but it can show you patterns. Wearables such as fitness trackers and smartwatches monitor movement and sometimes heart rate. Bedside monitors use radar or other sensors, so you don't have to wear anything. Phone apps use the accelerometer to track movement.

Consumer trackers aren't as accurate as clinical sleep studies, especially for sleep stages. Use them for trends, and stop if the numbers start making you anxious about sleep.

Strategic napping

A short nap can help after a bad night. In a study of 24 young adults restricted to about 5 hours of sleep, a 10-minute nap brought immediate improvements in alertness and thinking, with some lasting about 155 minutes. Longer naps took more time to pay off, and that delay fits with the grogginess, called sleep inertia, that can follow longer naps. Naps too late in the day, after about 3 PM, can interfere with nighttime sleep.

If you're badly short on sleep, a 90-minute nap (about a full cycle) can help, but it isn't a substitute for sleeping at night.

Light therapy

For people with circadian rhythm disorders, shift workers or those with seasonal affective disorder, light therapy can help reset the clock. A common approach is morning bright light from a 10,000 lux light box for 20 to 30 minutes within the first hour of waking, along with less bright light in the evening so melatonin can rise. Talk with your doctor first if you have an eye condition or bipolar disorder.

Sleep supplements

Some supplements may help a little, but none replace good sleep habits, and the effects are usually small. For a broader look at supplement strategy, see our Weight Loss Supplements guide.

• Melatonin. This hormone helps regulate your sleep-wake cycle, and it's most useful for jet lag and some circadian disorders. For general sleep problems, a meta-analysis of 19 trials found modest effects: about 7 minutes faster to fall asleep and about 8 more minutes of sleep. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests against it for chronic insomnia, in a weak recommendation. If you try it, low doses (0.3 to 1 mg) 1 to 2 hours before bed are a common starting point. Long-term effects aren't well studied, so use it with medical guidance.
• Magnesium. Evidence is limited. A review of 3 small trials in older adults found low-quality evidence, with no significant change in total sleep time. Doses of 200 to 400 mg of magnesium glycinate or citrate before bed are common, and they're most likely to help if you're low.
• L-theanine. This amino acid found in tea may promote relaxation without drowsiness, and it may help sleep quality, though the studies are small.
• Glycine. This amino acid may improve sleep quality by lowering body temperature. The evidence is also small.
• Valerian root. A meta-analysis found a possible benefit, but most studies had significant problems. Treat the evidence as mixed.
• CBD. Some people find it helpful, but the research is still emerging, and product quality varies.

Check with a healthcare provider before you start any supplement, especially if you take medications or have a health condition.

Sleep medications

Prescription sleep medications, such as benzodiazepines, Z-drugs and orexin receptor antagonists, can help with short-term insomnia, but they come with risks of side effects and, for some, dependence. They should be used with close medical supervision. CBT-I is the recommended first treatment for chronic insomnia, and its benefits seem to last with no reported harms.

Exercise timing

Regular exercise tends to help sleep, and you've probably been told not to do it at night. A meta-analysis of 23 studies doesn't back that up. Evening exercise didn't hurt sleep overall, and deep sleep went up slightly. The exception was vigorous exercise ending within 1 hour of bedtime, which might make it harder to fall and stay asleep. So if evening is the only time you can train, train, and finish hard sessions at least an hour or so before bed.

Myth: You can catch up on sleep during the weekend

Sleeping longer on weekends can repay some debt, but it doesn't fully make up for short weeknights. In a controlled study, young adults who slept 5 hours on weeknights and as long as they wanted on the weekend slept only about 1.1 hours more than usual. When short sleep resumed, their insulin sensitivity fell by about 9% to 27%. The authors concluded weekend sleep isn't an effective way to prevent these changes.

Myth: Everyone needs exactly 8 hours of sleep

The 7 to 9 hour recommendation is a range, not a rigid rule. Needs vary with genetics, age, activity and health. Use how you feel during the day as your check, along with the 7-hour floor.

Myth: Older adults need less sleep

Sleep gets lighter with age, with more waking, but older adults are still advised to get 7 to 8 hours. The myth likely comes from how many older adults have trouble getting it because of health conditions, medications or sleep disorders.

Myth: Alcohol helps you sleep better

It may help you fall asleep faster, but it disrupts the second half of the night and delays REM sleep, and more of it cuts total REM. You wake up less rested than the hours would suggest.

Myth: You can train yourself to need less sleep

A very small number of people need less sleep because of rare genetic differences. For everyone else, ongoing short sleep builds debt, even if you feel you've adapted. In fact, feeling fine isn't a reliable measure, since people who are chronically short on sleep may stop noticing how impaired they are.

Myth: Hitting snooze gives you more rest

It probably doesn't give you more rest, but it may not be the villain it's made out to be. In a 2024 lab study of 31 habitual snoozers, 30 minutes of snoozing cost about 6 minutes of sleep and either improved or didn't change thinking right after waking, with no clear effect on mood or sleepiness. Setting the alarm for when you need to get up is still the simplest choice, but if you need to snooze a lot, the real issue is probably not enough sleep.

Myth: Watching TV in bed helps you fall asleep

Screen light, engaging content and linking your bed with being awake can all make sleep worse. If it's your habit, try moving it to the couch and ending it before bed.

Myth: The time you sleep doesn't matter

Your circadian rhythm is tuned for sleeping when it's dark. Night shift workers and people with irregular schedules have higher rates of health problems, and regular sleep is a strong predictor of lower mortality. When you sleep matters along with how much.

Where to start with better sleep

Improving your sleep doesn't take expensive supplements or a complicated protocol. Often, a few simple habits do most of the work. If you only do 4 things, do these:

1. Keep the same wake time every day, weekends included.
2. Make the room cool and dark.
3. Have your last coffee at least 8 hours before bed.
4. Put screens away 30 to 60 minutes before bed.

If you're working hard on diet and exercise and skipping sleep, you're making both harder. Better sleep can help you keep more muscle on a diet, feel less hungry, train better and handle stress better.

Cooking is one of the things that takes up your evening, and it's hard to do well when you're already tired. That's a workload problem. Our High Protein Meal Plan is one way to take it off your plate: chef-cooked, portion-controlled meals from $63.00 for 6, with 2 extra ounces of meat per meal, that heat in a few minutes in the microwave. To pick meals one by one, Build A Meal Plan has $8.99 to $13.99 meals and a High Protein filter. Some people like to line up the week with our Complete Meal Prep Guide instead. Either way, dinner is one less decision, and that time can go to your bedtime.

Make it easy withHigh Protein Meal PlanFrom $63.00View plan