If you suffer from insomnia or even just have occassional bouts of being unable to sleep, you’ve likely tried every trick in the book.
From sleepy girl mocktails to magnesium supplements, sometimes the sleep just isn’t coming and you’re left wide awake in bed counting down how many hours of sleep you’d get if you fell asleep riiight... now.
It’s unbearable and knowing the health impacts of losing sleep such as mental health problems and even diabetes doesn’t do much to make you feel more rested.
However, according to one NHS surgeon, there is something we don’t do enough and it actually works as a ‘biological power off button’.
How to fall asleep faster, according to a health expert
Dr Karan Rajan, an NHS surgeon, social media creator and all-round health expert revealed that there is a sort of ‘Spotify shuffle’ we can do to help ourselves doze off faster.
In a recent Instagram reel he said: “If you’re struggling to fall asleep, this is the biological equivalent of holding down the power button.
“When you’re in bed, it’s easy to get into repetitive, disrupting thought patterns. This can trigger a stress response which keeps you awake, the more you’re awake, the more unwanted thought patterns you get, meaning less sleep.”
However, he revealed that a sleep hack named ‘cognitive shuffling’ can break this cycle by taking away your active cognitive effort (overthinking.)
Dr Rajan said: It’s the human brain version of pressing shuffle on your mind Spotify playlist.”
How to do cognitive shuffling
First, choose a word. The word that Dr Rajan chose was aptly “bedtime”.
From there, for each letter of that word, think of another word starting with that letter and visualise it.
So, for example, for the letter ‘B’, you could choose words like bear, brace, bones, bench.
Keep doing that until you’re out of words or bored and then move on to the next letter.
Dr Rajan urges that you visualise these words too as it simulates micro-dreams.
He said: “This trick helps to calm racing thoughts, so if your sleep software is malfunctioning, it’s worth giving it a go.”