Huberman’s Sleep Toolkit
A collection of 12 strategies for getting better sleep from one of the top health and neuroscience experts: https://www.hubermanlab.com/newsletter/toolkit-for-sleep
Books
What better way to lull your insomnia and try to get tired in bed than to read a book about sleep? Either you learn something about how to sleep better or you fall asleep in the process 🙂
Why We Sleep (Matthew Walker)
The bestselling book that brough 20 years of sleep research to the public. I think that the biggest benefit to reading a book like this is to simply re-commit to making sleep a priority, given the very strong case that doing so is better for health, productivity, and happiness. I find the author’s writing and speaking (he has done many podcast interviews) engaging and accessible. There are recommendations and approaches for getting good sleep throughout the book as they pertain to the research.
Sleep Reimagined: The Fast Track to a Revitalized Life (audiobook) by Dr Pedram Navab
I found this book helpful for sleep in a couple of different ways. For one thing, the narrator of the audiobook has a relaxing and soothing voice, so it might be a good thing to listen to while lying in bed and trying to achieve sleep. The content itself is stories of patients coming to the doctor to address various sleep problems, and getting advice and interventions to try, such as “stimulus control therapy”, which you you don’t allow the bed / bedroom to be associated with being awake, by getting up and doing something (relatively unstimulating) if sleep is not coming, and then returning a little later when tired, to try again. In this way listening to this book before bed could be a way to combine a soothing narrative “bedtime story” with actual psychoeducation on techniques for better sleep.
This Book Will Put You to Sleep | K. McCoy (Author), Dr. Hardwick (Author), Mel Foster (Narrator)
This audiobook is amusingly a collection of intentionally boring short texts. The authors claim that 97% of people would fall asleep within ten minutes of hearing these texts. They also claim that reading a book has been shown to be the most effective means of achieving sleep, but only if the book is sufficiently boring. This nugget alone is a valuable guiding light to finding audiobooks that are conducive to winding down the mind. I use this approach sometimes when I’m having difficulty winding down, and I look for books with a calm and soothing narration and content that is going to grab my attention just enough to stay on it, but without being stimulating or activating.
Videos(sleep education)
2022-08-08 | Sleep Toolkit: Tools for Optimizing Sleep & Sleep-Wake Timing | Huberman Lab Podcast #84
2021-08-02 | Dr. Matthew Walker: The Science & Practice of Perfecting Your Sleep | Huberman Lab Podcast #31
Videos(guided meditations for sleep)
We live in a time when content like high quality sleep meditations, ambient sound, and relaxing music are available for free. These are a couple that I found to be relaxing and effective, but it’s likely that your tastes may vary. Whatever voice and music make you feel safe and calm and help you set down your thinking and problem-solving mind is the right content for you. I used the search terms “guided meditation for sleep” and “music for sleep” on YouTube.