Keeping A Sleep Diary May Help If You Are Struggling To Sleep

Struggling With Sleep?

An approach to overcoming a sleeping problem is to carefully track your lifestyle, your sleeping issues and sleep patterns. Keeping a detailed sleep diary may help you identify issues / activities that may be leading to sleeping problems. It is important to note that for some sleeping disorders or conditions, the only solution is to visit your doctor.

Approaches to keeping a sleep diary

Ideally a sleep diary should include information on

• The time that you went to bed and woke up
• The total sleep hours achieved per day
• The perceived quality of your sleep – you could use a simple scoring system
  • Grade A – Really deep sleep
  • Grade B – Mixture of deep and light sleep
  • Grade C – Light sleep
  • Grade D – Disturbed sleep
• The time you spent awake in bed and what you did e.g.
  • Stayed in bed awake with eyes closed
  • Got up, had a glass of warm milk
  • Read book
• Types, quantity and times of consumption of
  • Food
  • Liquids
  • Caffeine, or alcohol you consumed before bed,
• Your feelings and moods before you went to bed ­e.g.
  • Happy
  • Sad
  • Relaxed
  • Stressed
  • Anxious
  • etc
• Drugs or medications taken, including dose and time of consumption

Keeping A Sleep Diary

The details within your sleep diary are important and may reveal how your behaviors are affecting your chance for a good night’s sleep. After keeping your diary for a period of time (weeks) you might see patterns that effect your sleep. For example when you have coffee in the evening, before you go to bed you end up waking up during the night.

For more information on getting a good nights sleep download the free sleep guide