Persistent short sleep raises blood pressure, worsens blood sugar control, weakens the immune system and damages mood and concentration. Most adults need seven to nine hours. Most sleep problems respond to habits rather than tablets.
What actually helps
- Get up at the same time every day, weekends included. This is the strongest single lever, more than bedtime.
- Daylight in the morning, twenty minutes outdoors, sets the body clock.
- No coffee, tea or cola after mid-afternoon. Caffeine stays in the body for hours.
- Keep the room dark, cool and quiet. A mosquito net also means you are not woken by biting.
- Put the phone away half an hour before bed.
- Use the bed for sleep. If you are awake more than twenty minutes, get up, do something dull in low light, and go back when sleepy.
What gets in the way
- Alcohol in the evening. It brings sleep on and then breaks it up in the second half of the night.
- Long or late naps. Twenty minutes before mid-afternoon is fine.
- Heavy food or hard exercise close to bedtime.
- Lying in bed for hours trying to force it.
- Sleeping tablets as a first step. They work briefly, become less effective, and are hard to stop.
When it is not just habits
See a clinician if you snore loudly and stop breathing in your sleep, if you are sleepy all day despite enough hours, if pain or breathlessness wakes you, if you need to pass urine several times a night, or if you wake very early with low mood every day. Each of those is a specific problem with a specific treatment, and none is fixed by sleep advice.
Shift work and hot nights
- On night shifts: keep the sleep period consistent, make the room properly dark, and tell the household it is sleep time.
- In heat: a damp cloth, a fan, light cotton, and a cool wash before bed.
- Do not let the net go unused because of the heat. Malaria costs more sleep than heat does.
