10 Steps to Improving Sleep Hygiene

Several months ago I had the opportunity to see Adriaan Louw speak.  I really enjoy Adriaan’s perspective and appreciate the work he’s done in the areas of chronic pain understanding and rehabilitation.  His books are excellent for patients and if you’ve never heard him speak.  His info is equally informative, immediately applicable and incredibly entertaining.

One thing that Adriaan spoke about that I’ve been wanted to share for some time was sleep hygiene.  What’s interesting about sleep is that it’s going to be beneficial for just about everyone.  We have plenty of research to support this and it can be very valuable for both athletes (Looking for optimal performance) and patients in chronic pain (To get out of pain).

I think most people understand this (Maybe not in the chronic pain population as a means to help decrease pain) but don’t always implement this knowledge into their athlete’s program or patient’s plan of care in a practical way.

Changing behaviors is our priority and knowledge is not always enough.  Take for example our current obesity epidemic.  We have an enormous problem here but really no lack of information on how to change the problem.  Everywhere you look there is a book or doctor or trainer out there espousing how to lose weight.  Knowledge doesn’t always change behavior.  If this was true we wouldn’t have this problem on our hands.  Putting that knowledge into action is the key.  This also goes for something like getting better sleep at night.

One thing I’ve been recently doing is sending patients home with this information and making goals for them to incrementally reach those goals.  Adriaan gave a nice practical and comprehensive program for increasing hygiene and that’s what I’m going to share today.  He recommends trying to implement one of these strategies each night until you’ve accomplished …read more

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