Falling asleep quickly, even in times of stress, is possible.
Every night, 1 in 5 French people suffer from insomnia. Several factors are involved: stress, anxiety or even poor sleeping habits. There are known tips to help you sleep, including limiting stimulants after a certain time (caffeine, theine) and stopping screens before going to bed. But when anxious thoughts are racing, these measures are not always enough to trigger sleep. A GP shares a radical method to short-circuit that bedtime anxiety.
“If you’re looking for a really effective method to fall asleep, there’s the one we use in medicine”explains Dr Amir Khan, a general practitioner working in the NHS (the British health system), in his podcast. His method uses cognitive mixing. Its principle “is simply providing your brain with random, non-stressful thoughts, which can be very calming”explains Dr. Khan. The brain is thus involved in a task easy enough not to be stimulating, but demanding enough to reduce the “mental noise” responsible for the famous ruminations and anxious thoughts.
Concretely, the method proposed by Dr Khan uses the alphabet. “Start with the letter A, think of all the names that start with A, then move on to B, then C.” Focus on this mental list: Anne, Antoine, Anabelle… then Benoît, Bruno, Bertrand… This seemingly banal task forces the brain to generate varied thoughts and images, without a stressful link between them. It somehow mimics the pre-sleep phase (the hypnagogic state) where thoughts naturally become fluid and disjointed. And it works! “I promise you, you won’t go further than the E or the F. You will fall asleep immediately”guarantees the doctor.
Despite its effectiveness, keep in mind that this technique remains a one-off help for difficult nights. To resolve sleep problems in the long term, a healthy lifestyle is essential. It is recommended to maintain regular bedtimes and getting up times, even on weekends, in order to synchronize your biological clock, and to maintain a cool temperature in the bedroom (around 18°C). If, despite these efforts, difficulty falling asleep persists and impacts your quality of life, it is important to consult a doctor to identify a potential sleep disorder or other health problem.
