PEOPLE who have suffered from insomnia have revealed they are able to fall asleep faster with a new method.
“Cognitive shuffling” is a doctor-approved tip for falling asleep fast.
TikToker Pasha Marlowe (@neuroqueercoach) created a new video about her experience with cognitive shuffling.
“I’ve struggled with sleep for 25 years and this has worked for me,” she wrote in the caption.
“Active minds need something more active than counting sheep or breathing,” Pasha added.
People who have a hard time falling asleep ruminate on the day they had, their to-do list, regrets, and more.
But Pasha said that cognitive shuffling helps break up the perseveration, so peace — and ultimately sleep — can be obtained.
She said you can choose a random world, like pumpkin. Then you think of all the words that start with the different letters of the word pumpkin.
For instance, if the word you’re using is pumpkin, you would think of all the words that start with the letter P.
Once you’ve exhausted the P letters you can think of, you move on to U. You continue down the word until you fall asleep.
Pasha said does this every night when she’s ready to go to bed, and she falls asleep before she finishes the word.
“It’s random thoughts,” she said. “It’s not the thoughts that keep you up at night.”
Pasha said to choose a different word every night.
There’s science to back up Pasha’s claim.
“Sleep researchers have found that, as people fall asleep, they often experience visual images and ‘micro-dreams’ [which] may help them fall asleep,” the scientist behind the 2014 technique, Luc Beaudoin, said in a research paper.
“In contrast, continuing to think in a verbal, analytic, problem-solving mode can delay sleep onset,” Beaudoin added.
Having a good night’s rest eludes many Americans.
Thirty-two percent of Americans said they got “excellent” or “very good” sleep, according to a 2022 Gallup Poll.
Thirty-five percent said they slept well, and 33% said their sleep was “fair” or “poor,” per the survey.
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