Not to sound like every parental-type figure in your life, but sleep is important. Very important, in fact. Stats show that poor sleep is strongly linked to depression, with 40-to-50 per cent of people with insomnia also suffering from a mental health condition, while a study showed that those who suffer from insomnia were 69 per cent more likely to have a heart attack compared to those who didn't have the sleep disorder during an average nine years of follow-up.

So, not good.

On the flip side, there are plenty of benefits to a lengthy kip – better concentration, increased athletic performance, potential weight loss, to name a few – but if you’re someone who spends their nights staring at the ceiling, that can feel like an impossible goal to achieve. Well, we're here to tell you: that’s just not the case. Good sleep comes with structured habits and a recognition of why you become restless as soon as your head hits the pillow.

“A lot of people who have trouble sleeping don't need therapy,” explains Kathryn Pinkham, who founded The Insomnia Clinic after working in the NHS mental health sector, where she found that a lot of issues were linked with sleep quality. “They just need to know what to do and they need good advice.”

One in three people are likely to suffer from insomnia, and even if that counts for just a bad few weeks of sleep, it’s enough to have you feeling your worst. Ironically, one of the first steps (and some could say, most important) is to change your perception on sleep.

“If you say to yourself, 'I'm a terrible insomniac, I slept so badly last night, I probably won't be asleep until 3am tonight,' you're already creating physical response to that, an expectation, and you're increasing your cortisol levels,” shares Kate Mikhail, author of Teach Yourself To Sleep. “Our perception of how we sleep actually impacts our experience of sleep. So even people who haven't had very much sleep, if they think, 'Oh I've had enough sleep, I'll be absolutely fine,' they're likely to feel more energetic the next day.”

We’ve done the research into how to have a good nights sleep below, so that you can rest easy when bedtime comes calling.

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What are the different stages of sleep?

We tend to go through four different stages of sleep in one night, three non-REM and a REM cycle just before we wake up. The third and final stage of non-REM is when you’re in your deepest sleep, while the REM sleep is when you’re likely to have vid dreams.

“People often worry about waking up in the night, but it's perfectly natural, because we sleep in roughly 90-minute sleep cycles,” says Mikhail. “The point of having both our deep [non-REM] and REM is because they both serve different purposes. We have our deep sleep in the first half of the night, and that's when our body restores. We repair the damage from the day, our growth hormones are released, and that gives us our energy for the second half the night. When we have our REM dream sleep, if we do cut it short by an hour, it’s the dream sleep that really effected.”

Dreams have more value than just as a last-ditch conversation topic on a particularly bad date, as Mikhail continues to explain.

“Our dreams are incredibly important because they help us process emotions from the day,” she says. “We're emotionally strong if we have enough dreams, but we can also problem solve in our dreams. The things we've read in the day, we actually learn at night. That's when we absorb it, examine it and understand it in a different way when we're sleeping.”

What defines a good night’s sleep?

Pinkham says that there are some important questions to ask yourself if you’re wondering whether you’re getting good enough sleep.

“Can I fall asleep pretty quickly most of the time? If I wake up to use the toilet, can I mostly get back to sleep? And can I stay awake all day and not need a nap? If the answer is yes, and that's only six hours, then maybe for you that's right.”

How much sleep we need is subjective and is really dependent on the person. Generally, studies have shown that adults need between seven and nine hours a night, and that getting less than seven hours over a long period of time can create long-term health problems.

“People have different requirements,” says Mikhail. “Some people it's seven, some need more.”

The best way to understand how much sleep you need is to keep track of it with a sleep diary – you’ll see how it can come in use for other reasons down below. Make not of how you feel when you wake up after a certain amount of sleep, and go off that.

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Why might I find it hard to fall asleep?

Those who find it hard to initially hard to fall asleep suffer from sleep onset insomnia, and there can be multiple causes as to why.

Dr. Anna Persaud, a Biochemist and the CEO of This Works, explains that bad sleep hygiene – habits that can affect the quality of sleep you get – could be the cause, so it’s worth questioning what your routine is like before you go to bed.

“Have you had a load of coffee or caffeine before bedtime? Have you just been at the gym and is your core body temperature really high? Have you been in overhead lighting and was it really, really bright? These are things we may be inadvertently doing that we don't realise are making our nervous system more alert,” she says. “All affect the natural increase of melatonin, which is the sleep hormone that normally rises if you're doing things that aren’t stopping the hormone from being secreted.”

But really, if you’re going to bed stressing about your past day or the following one, then that’s going to have a big effect.

“The big thing is cortisol, so if you have excess of it in your system at night, then that can cause delayed sleep onset,” says Mikhail.

This doesn’t have to be related to stress in your everyday, even the thought of potentially having another bad night’s sleep is enough to create a spike.

“If going to bed with a hyper vigilance around sleeping well and how you're going to perform tomorrow if you don't, we’re teaching our body to be on red alert,” explains Pinkham. “We're going to bed almost like it's a battleground. We're ready to fight because we're in our fight or flight, when actually, we have to tackle those mindset issues and we have to change how people are perceiving not sleeping. Lying there tossing and turning, feeling frustrated, is creating a association with your bed that is around frustration and sleeplessness”

What should I do to help me fall asleep?

The first step is to not let one night of bad sleep affect your next one.

“My advice to anyone who has a bad night is it's fine, just shake it off,” shares Pinkham. This plays into the fact that if you start overthinking it, you’ll likely cause yourself more disruptions. “Don't go to bed earlier the next night to overcompensate for it,” she add. “Just revert back to your regular pattern.”

Obviously, managing your stress will help you hugely, but its about looking at your whole day instead of just the few hours before bed.

“Try to keep your cortisol levels under control during the day so you don't have an excess in your system at night,” shares Mikhail. “It's really about allowing your body and mind to wind down before you get to bed.”

“I think one of the things that people are not aware of is that they do need to take some moments of rest and disconnect during the day,” adds Dr. Persaud. “It doesn't need to be for hours, but it needs to be for a few minutes just to allow the nervous system to just calm down a little bit.”

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Why do I wake up in the middle of the night?

You may find that getting to sleep isn’t the problem, but staying asleep is. It’s estimated that one in five people suffer from this issue, called sleep maintenance insomnia. This is also (unsurprisingly) related to stress.

“There's a natural peak in cortisol, the stress hormone, around 3am,” explains Dr. Persaud. “Cortisol starts to rise at the end of your sleep, that's normal as we need cortisol to get going in the morning. It prepares you to move, it raises your blood pressure, it increases your breathing. But for people who are more stressed, then arguably that spike may be higher than it should be,” causing you to wake up feeling overly alert.

As well as reducing stress, avoid trying to catch up on sleep you might have missed the day before.

“If you want to sleep throughout the night, having a big nap, particularly in the afternoon isn’t a good idea,” shares Mikhail. “We have a sleep drive that builds all day long called sleep pressure, so that we're tired at the end of the day. If we have a big nap, it deflates that balloon essentially.”

What should I do to help me get back to sleep?

Firstly, you should try managing the stress within your life, and definitely cut out any naps. But Pinkham suggests something that might seem counterintuitive.

“So my advice to those people who are waking in the early hours, is go to bed later and wake up-earlier,” she shares. “Because if you can increase that sleep pressure” by giving yourself a smaller window for sleep, your body is going to create an appetite to do so.

But what about when you’ve woken in a pitch-black room and clocked that you’ve got hours till you need to get up, despite feeling like you could instantly? “If you can't get back to sleep and you’re feeling frustrated, just leave [your bedroom],” says Pinkham. “If you're awake at 3am and you're worried about the fact you're awake, you're far more likely to keep repeating that pattern than if you don’t care so much. So when you’re sleepy again, go back to bed.”

“Remember, it's a short-term solution,” she continues. “If you're combining it with reducing anxiety, managing your thoughts, going to bed later, getting up earlier and increasing that natural drive, then it's not going to keep happening for long. The reason we get out of bed is kind of trying to protect our relationship with bed.”

What should you do/not do before going to sleep?

Having a routine before bed will naturally gear your body for sleep, and that involves implementing some healthy habits. That means not having your dinner, especially spicy food, too late and ideally at the same time every day. Reducing your alcohol intake will make a huge difference, too. Of course, there are going to be days when you’re not going to be able to stick to said tips, but there are other things that you can do if you’re worried about the effects of a night at the pub and late-night drunk food.

“Your body needs to drop by three degrees to bring on the onset of sleep,” says Dr. Persaud, so leaving your bedroom window ajar wouldn’t hurt. “If you're going to take a hot shower or a hot bath before bed, take it and wait 30 minutes before getting into bed to let the body temperature drop.”

Continuing the theme of reducing your stress, don’t go to bed harbouring any negative thoughts.

“Get into the habit of writing things down,” says Pinkham, “Not on an app or an iPad or a computer, get a pen and paper every day and start writing down the things that tend to bother you in the night. Now, you don't have to solve them or come to kind of any conclusions, but just simply acknowledging to your brain that you’re worried about these things is a real game changer. Because then, your brain is less likely to try and make you think of those things in the middle of the night because you’ve dealt with them.”

How can you make your bedroom a more sleep-friendly environment?

This seems obvious, but you’re going to sleep better in darker spaces.

“There are the classic things you can do, like having your bedroom really dark, because that's giving your brain signals that it’s night,” says Mikhail. “And then if you're in bed, and you find your mind is still going a little bit, open your eyes and just let the photoreceptors in your eyes absorb that pitch blackness. It's going to push up your melatonin.”

Generally, low level lighting in the evening is better. “You want to keep it at shoulder height or lower so that you can create this much more darkened environment,” says Dr. Persaud. “Ideally use red light or yellow lights and not blue because they’re very stimulating. You want blue light in the morning.”

Scents can have a huge impact on your mindset which can inevitably effect hormone levels, as proven by the fact that aromatherapy has been used for centuries. Opting for pillow sprays or candles that have calming scents can be the catalyst for your brain to start unwinding.

“Lavender has got the strongest data as a soporific” says Dr Persaud, referring to how influential the scent can be for a good nights sleep. “We [This Works] did brain imaging on lang lang and it's actually an anxiolytic, so it's a good calming oil. Being calm is one thing but going to sleep is another, and they're not the same.”

Ultimately though, it’s about seeing your bedroom as a space where sleep can happen. That means not using it as somewhere to watching your latest Netflix obsession, or to scroll on TikTok. In the mornings, you should try get out of bed as soon as possible, further enforcing that it’s a place for shut-eye.

Is there a one-stop treatment?

If you want to build the techniques that will help you go through periods of unrest throughout your life, its best to follow the advice we’ve mentioned.

But, if you’re looking for a quick fix – this is prime for those struggling to adjust with jet lag – then Mitovit Hypoxic Training might be a good option.

Beloved by marathon runners and athletes, Mitovit has continually shown increased benefits for sleep as well as athletic performance. During the 45-minute session, the amount of oxygen you’re breathing will reduce – as if you’re climbing a mountain and gaining altitude – to regenerate mitochondria; AKA, our powerhouse cell that generates energy.

“Mitovit has a multitude of incredible benefits, in the instance of sleep specifically, by reducing your oxygen (intermittent hypoxia) while increasing altitude,” explains Mr Neil Higgins, Anaesthetic Practitioner at the Galen Clinic. “It helps your body clock reset and provides your sympathetic nervous system the boost to induce a peaceful night’s sleep – just as though you are in the Alps!”

While it’s recommended to undertake a course of ten sessions, improvement to your sleep can be found immediately. But, a one-off session will set you back hefty £300.

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Carmen Bellot
Style Editor

Carmen Bellot is the Style Editor of Esquire, writing on all things menswear and grooming.