Sleep Better After 60

1. Write one sentence at the top of a fresh page: my sleep has changed, and most of that change is normal. Sit with it for a moment before you go on.
2. Start your sleep diary. Tonight, note any caffeine after lunch, any alcohol, and any nap. In the morning, add your rough guesses about the night.
3. Turn your bedside clock away from you, or cover its glow, so you can't watch it in the night. Notice how it feels not to know the time.
4. Pick your real wake time, the one your life actually needs, and write it where you'll see it in the morning. Set a gentle alarm for it.
5. Within an hour of getting up, stand at your brightest window or step outside with your coffee for a few minutes. Give your clock its morning signal.
6. Look at your bed and list everything you do in it besides sleep. Just notice the list. You'll act on it soon.
7. Read your week's diary across, not down. Look for one thing that lines up with your worse nights. Circle it.
8. Get up within an hour of your chosen wake time, even though it's a day off. Feel the pull of the lie-in, and skip it once, on purpose.
9. Move one wakeful habit out of the bed, the reading, the tablet, the crossword, to a chair. Set the chair up to be comfortable.
10. Set your caffeine cutoff at early afternoon today. Have your last coffee or tea before it, and a decaf or herbal one after if you miss the ritual.
11. In the last hour before bed, drop the overhead lights and switch to a lamp. Give your evening a dimmer, quieter close than usual.
12. Go to bed only when you're genuinely sleepy tonight, eyes heavy, head nodding, not just because the clock says so. Wait for the real signal.
13. If you nap today, set an alarm to keep it short and take it in the earlier afternoon. Or skip it and see how tonight goes.
14. Look back at the week. Which single change felt like it helped most? Keep doing that one; it's yours now.
15. Hold a ten-minute worry window early this evening. Write out what's nagging you, mark the next action beside anything that has one, then close the book.
16. Practice slow breathing for five minutes before bed: breathe low into your belly, make the out-breath longer than the in-breath. Do it to be calm, not to force sleep.
17. Write your difficult-night plan on a card and put it in the nightstand drawer. Rehearse it once in your head while you're calm.
18. Walk the path from your bed to the bathroom in the dark. Fix the clearest hazard, add a nightlight, move a rug, clear the floor.
19. Make your bedroom cooler tonight, a cracked window, a lighter blanket, the heat turned down a notch. Notice whether a cooler room settles you.
20. Try the last-hour-before-bed with no screen close to your face. Read something dull on paper, or listen to something quiet instead.
21. Look back. Notice whether your wakings, if you have them, feel less alarming now that you have a plan. That calm is the real progress.
22. Gather every sleep-related thing you take, prescription, over-the-counter, supplements, into one bag. Just gather them; don't change anything.
23. Write the four pharmacist questions on a card and put it with that bag, ready for your next visit or a call to the pharmacy.
24. Move your evening alcohol, if you have it, to dinnertime, or skip it for a night, and watch tomorrow's diary for the difference in your early-morning waking.
25. Get outside in the morning light and also move your body a little today, a walk, some stretching. Both help your clock and your sleep.
26. On a rough morning, if you have one this week, get up at your usual time anyway and keep your day. Practice not writing the day off.
27. Bring back one comfort you'd paused, gentle reading in bed, say, and test whether your sleep can handle it now. Set it down at the first sign of sleepiness.
28. Read across your whole month of diary. Circle the two or three habits that clearly earned their place. Those are your keepers.
29. If sleep is still a real grind despite all this, write the CBT-I script on a card for your doctor. Make sure that word gets said out loud at your next visit.
30. Write yourself a short plan: the three or four habits you'll keep, one line about what you'll do on a bad night, and one condition that will always send you to a doctor. Put a check-in date on the calendar a month out. You're equipped.

Circadian rhythm

your internal clock, the roughly 24-hour cycle that decides when you feel sleepy and when you feel alert. Light, especially morning light, is its main signal.

Phase advance

the common age-related shift toward an earlier clock, sleepy earlier in the evening, awake earlier in the morning. Normal for many people, and workable.

Sleep pressure

the buildup of the drive to sleep the longer you're awake, like an appetite for sleep. Long or late naps discharge it, which is why they can steal from the night.

Sleep diary

a short daily record of your sleep, kept for a week or two, that shows your real patterns instead of your fearful guesses about them.

Stimulus control

the idea of keeping the bed strongly associated with sleep by using it only for sleep, and getting up when you're awake and frustrated, so your brain learns bed means sleep.

Nocturia

waking in the night to use the bathroom. Common after 60, sometimes workable at home, and worth raising with a doctor if it's frequent or new.

Sleep apnea

a disorder where breathing repeatedly pauses during sleep, often with loud snoring, gasping, and daytime sleepiness. A reason to see a doctor, not something to self-manage.

Restless legs

an uncomfortable urge to move the legs, usually in the evening, relieved by movement. If it's disturbing your sleep regularly, it's worth mentioning to a doctor.

Melatonin

a supplement related to the body's own sleep-timing signal. It may have a role for some sleep problems, but dose and timing matter, so it's a question for your clinician rather than a guess off a label.

CBT-I (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia)

a short, structured, drug-free program that sleep doctors generally reach for first with long-running insomnia. Set up with a trained professional.

Who is Sleep Better After 60 for?

For adults over 60 who wake too early, lie awake too long, or feel tired all day and want a clear-headed way to work on it.

What does it not do?

It is not a source of advice on sleeping pills, melatonin, or any supplement, and it cannot diagnose a breathing or medical problem that needs a clinician.

How long is it?

About 25,000 words across 10 chapters, with 13 full-page illustrations. In paperback that is about 120 pages. The audiobook runs about 2h 35m.

Can I read some of it first?

Yes. The foreword and the whole introduction are on this site, free, with nothing to sign up for.

What languages is it in?

The books exist in five: English, German, Spanish, French and Dutch, each localised properly — its own illustrations with the labels drawn in that language, and its own country's institutions named in the text. This shop can sell you the English and the Spanish today; the other three are finished books waiting on their paperwork.

What does the complete set include?

All thirty guides in print, in one box, and the ebook and the audiobook of every one of them at no extra charge.

En español