When Sleep Won’t Come — and How to Keep It Once It Does

by Dr. Paul Muchowski, CEO and Founder of Defined Sleep

On July 1,  The New York Times published a helpful roundup of “in-the-moment” tactics for those nights when you find yourself staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m.¹ The experts recommend everything from progressive muscle relaxation (tense your toes, then work slowly up the body) to cognitive shuffling (mentally listing random words in alphabetical order) to simple box-style breathing. Each exercise serves the same biological goal: shift the nervous system from its high-alert, sympathetic gear into the calmer parasympathetic state that paves the road to sleep.

A few highlights from the article worth trying:

  • Progressive muscle relaxation — systematically tense and release muscle groups to drain excess adrenaline.
  • Cognitive shuffling — occupy racing thoughts with low-stakes mental trivia (“bedtime: B is for blankets, E is for eiderdown…”).
  • 4-4-8 breathing — inhale four seconds, hold four, exhale eight; slowing the exhale nudges heart rate downward.
  • Temperature tricks — a cool washcloth on the forehead or a sip of ice water mimics the natural drop in core temperature that precedes sleep onset.
  • Familiar background audio — a well-worn sitcom, audiobook, or white-noise loop can distract without stimulating.

The piece also links to an earlier guide on sleep hygiene—the daytime and pre-bed habits that set the stage long before your head hits the pillow. That distinction matters, because falling asleep quickly is only half the story. The harder problem for many insomnia patients is staying asleep.

What It Takes to Stay Asleep

  1. Protect your circadian rhythm—religiously.
    A stable bed time/wake time window (±30 minutes) keeps the body’s internal clock and its melatonin signal synchronized. Weekend “social jet lag” is a common culprit behind 3 a.m. wake-ups.

  2. Cool, dark, and quiet are non-negotiable.
    Deep and REM sleep depend on a core temperature drop of ~1 °C. Set the bedroom to 60-67 °F, use blackout shades to prevent early-morning light from suppressing melatonin, and mask intermittent noise with a steady sound source rather than silence.

  3. Avoid blood-sugar and cortisol spikes.
    Large alcohol servings, late heavy meals, and doom-scrolling can all trigger rebound awakenings as the liver clears alcohol or the brain processes stress. If you must snack, keep it light and low-glycemic (a handful of nuts, not a cookie).

  4. Support restorative sleep pharmacology—carefully.
    Quick-acting sedatives can shorten sleep latency yet fragment the deeper stages that matter for boosting immune function, memory consolidation, and mood. Our own placebo-controlled study showed that a CBD + terpene formulation increased slow-wave and REM sleep by up to an hour without next-day fog—an effect we confirmed using wearable sleep tracking technology.² Whatever aid you choose, demand data on stage-specific outcomes, not just total minutes “asleep.”

  5. Treat midnight wake-ups like false alarms.
    If you’re awake more than ~20 minutes, get out of bed, keep lights dim (< 50 lux), and do a low-arousal task (read a printed book or review a food label, as the Times story suggests). The goal is to prevent your brain from associating the mattress with frustration.

Bottom Line

Think of the Times exercises as an emergency toolkit—useful parachutes when you’re already in free fall. But if repeat awakenings are common, invest most of your energy in the boring, evidence-based foundations of sleep hygiene and circadian regularity. That’s where the real dividends on next-day performance, metabolism, and long-term brain health are earned.

Sleep well, stay well.

 

¹https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/07/well/i-cant-sleep.html

²https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.11324

 

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