Since I began self-isolating a month ago, I have dreamt (nightmared?) about the following: spiders falling from my ceilings, my bathroom flooding, being chased in empty streets by masked figures, waking up with my entire family having disappeared, suffocating in a crowded room and, unfortunately, much else.
Sounds unsettling, right? It gets worse. Friends have experienced everything from sleep paralysis to sleep-walking to insomnia. Others have taken to social media to share how vivid and elaborate their dreams have suddenly become, and how they’ve remembered the details long after waking, unlike before the pandemic.
According to a recent survey by Deirdre Leigh Barrett, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, the phenomenon of increasingly intense dreams has grown during the pandemic. Her results found many are having dreams related to the virus itself, with imagery of friends or family growing sick, or being attacked by insects. She also found that health-care workers are experiencing the most heightened dreams due to the nature of their work.
It doesn’t help that, prior to the pandemic, one in two Canadians had trouble falling or staying asleep due to chronic stress and poor mental health. In January 2019, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went as far as declaring sleep disorders a public health epidemic contributing to countless medical conditions, including cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression and hypertension. Add a pandemic to the mix and it’s not so shocking that so many are struggling to get through the night in peace.
Which isn’t to say people are sleeping less. In fact, with less commuting, recreational activities and errands to run, there is more opportunity to sleep than ever. An activity tracker study by Evidation Health reports that Americans are sleeping 20 per cent more since March – but that’s a privilege largely afforded to those still able to work and who have a set routine keeping them on the clock. That clock is known as a 24-hour “sleep/wake cycle,” which is regulated by a circadian rhythm. It’s controlled by our body’s biological clock, which primarily responds to social and light cues.
“Those of us who are fortunate enough to work in the daytime keep our sleep/wake cycle tethered to the 24-hour clock because of the need to be awake to get up and go to work,” explains Dr. Peter Powles, a professor at McMaster University and expert in sleep medicine and sleep disorders.
“Those who work shifts understand the difficulties of adjusting sleep patterns and can have significant health issues as a result,” he adds. “Similarly, working from home or not being able to work at all during the pandemic may result in some alteration to the daily routine of sleep and wake. For example, if one sleeps in too long, this can result in difficulty getting to sleep at night. Alternatively, if one works later at night, particularly with LED exposure from electronic devices, this can also cause difficulty because of the alerting effect of blue light.”
Add to that an increase in stress and anxiety, which always lead to more negative imagery while dreaming. Most people wake up several times during the night after each sleep cycle.
It’s in those gaps that our brains begin to encode memory, according to an article in the journal Learning & Memory by Jessica D. Payne and Lynn Nadel. The longer we’re awake, the better we can encode and recall those dreams, particularly the more emotional they are. Since anxiety disrupts sleep, the more you experience, the more likely you are to remember details of a nightmare. And the more you sleep, the more likely you are to reach longer periods of rapid eye movement (aka REM) sleep, which can lead to more vivid dreams later in the night.
“The bottom line,” says Powles, “should be to maintain a regular 24-hour rhythm with bedtimes and rise times that are consistent throughout the week. The overlap of the sleep epidemic and the current viral pandemic will allow many people the opportunity to learn from this experience and to take better sleep habits with them once all of this is over.”
We know that traumatic events have a pattern of impacting sleep. After 9/11, many reported having more intense and frequent nightmares. After the SARS outbreak in 2003, patients reported having more nightmares, along with poor sleep and mood, according to the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Having also been recognized as a traumatic event, the COVID-19 pandemic is already resulting in similar behaviour, which is likely to last after the health crisis has passed.
“The key is acknowledging that things may be different now,” says Dr. Brian Murray, an associate professor of neurology and sleep medicine at the University of Toronto. “But this will pass. Things will improve. We can look at this as an opportunity to protect our sleep time and doing this will help our overall health moving forward. Our society is chronically sleep-deprived. By having a chance to catch up on lost sleep, we are able to repay a massive sleep debt.”
Here are 10 tips recommended by Murray and other sleep specialists for achieving a healthier sleep routine:
1. Block off about eight hours for sleep a night.
Avoid napping, as this can interfere with the ability to return to a normal rhythm.
2. The body likes routine.
Set a consistent wake time and work backwards from there for your bedtime. If you have a rough night, don’t sleep in much longer the next day. The following night, you will be tired and fall back into your rhythm. Fighting this can lead to a vicious cycle. Your family should also try and keep their routine consistent.
3. The body clock is best synchronized by bright light in the morning.
If possible, walk or exercise in the morning. Exercise helps sleep, and fight-or-flight hormones naturally rise in the morning as part of normal circadian rhythms.
4. Avoid screen-time in the evening.
The stress of the news doesn’t help. The light from our phones and tablets, which is more intense at closer distances, sends a signal to the brain to wake up.
5. Avoid caffeine beyond the afternoon to prevent sleep interference.
If you use caffeine, three cups (at 237 ml each) of coffee a day is the most you should have – there is little additional benefit and mostly side-effects with any more. Avoid heavy meals and alcohol before bed.
6. Keep a dark, quiet, slightly cool bedroom environment.
If you’re having trouble calming your thoughts, try white noise, using a sound conditioner (the Marpac Dohm Classic is a popular option) or even an air purifier or fan.
7. The bed is for sleep.
If you find yourself working, eating or even watching TV frequently there, your brain could be conditioned into thinking the bed has become a place for waking activities rather than sleep, which will have you feeling more awake once you attempt sleep.
8. Turn the clock away from the bed.
Seeing the time may cause stress and interfere with getting back to sleep. If you are worried about missing your alarm, set two alarms. Do not use the snooze button, get up when you need to get up.
9. If you have to do shift work, try and stay on a shift for more days of the week than not.
If you are rotating shifts, make sure they rotate clockwise.
10. If you are sleepy in the day and have trouble concentrating, stand up.
This is a big biological driver of alertness. Once your sleeping patterns begin to interfere with your daily activities, or are happening on more days than not, you should consult a doctor.
