CBD Alone Won’t Fix Your Sleep. Here’s How to Improve Your Sleep Hygiene

Cannabinoids alone probably aren’t enough to get you a good night’s sleep.

According to a WebMD survey, the most common reasons for people struggling to get to sleep include:

• emotional distress (24%)
• feeling too hot (16%)
• physical pain (16%)
• being disturbed by someone else (16%)
• noise, light or temperature (13%)
• bad dreams (10%)

While some of these could be aided by CBD, a surprising amount are related to what’s called “sleep hygiene.”

Sleep hygiene is essentially “best practices” for sleep, from the obvious ones like not drinking a huge cup of coffee before bed to the less obvious, such as using mindfulness meditation to handle late-night over-thinking.

We’ve spoken to sleep experts and looked beyond the basics to give you this guide to improving your sleep hygiene.

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Create an Optimal Sleep Environment

A cool, dark and quiet environment is essential for a good night’s sleep.

Darkness and quiet are straightforward enough – if light comes through to your room, use an eye mask or heavy curtains, and if it’s too loud, use earplugs, a white noise machine or even something like a fan.

A cool bedroom is also generally preferable, with most experts recommending around 65 °F (18 °C) as the optimal temperature.

Only Use Your Bed for the Three S-es

You should only use your bed for sleep, sex, and sickness to strengthen the link between your bed and sleep.

Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is one of the most empirically-backed methods for treating insomnia, and stimulus control is a crucial component of it. This was first applied to insomnia by Richard Bootzin in 1972, and the basic instructions have persisted into modern versions:

• Lie down to go to sleep only when you’re sleepy.
• Don’t do anything apart from sleep in bed, with sexual activity as the only exception in Bootzin’s formulation (but sickness is a sensible addition).
• If you’re not able to go to sleep, get up and go into another room. Stay awake for as long as you need and then return to bed when you’re sleepy.
• Repeat the last step as necessary.

Keep a Consistent Sleep Schedule

Keeping a consistent bedtime and wake-up times helps you get into the “rhythm” of a consistent sleep schedule.

You should schedule between 7 and 9 hours for sleep, and ideally you should also keep it consistent throughout the weekend. You’re training your body, and consistency is vital to success.

If you do want to shift your sleep schedule, it’s best to do it gradually, moving your bedtime and wake-up time by an hour or two at most in a single day.

The Most Important Factors for Sleep Hygiene, According to Research

Sleep hygiene advice isn’t directly tested as often as you might think, but finding out which factors are most closely linked to sleep quality is crucial if you have issues getting to sleep or staying asleep.

However, some research has looked directly at these issues, with one study from 2009 comparing good sleepers with bad sleepers, and one from 2020 comparing participants based on their scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. 

From these studies, the factors that make a statistically significant difference are: 

• Avoiding exciting or emotionally upsetting activities near bedtime
• Trying not to worry about or plan for important things either at bedtime or in bed (journalling can be helpful to counteract this)
• Keeping a comfortable temperature
• Keeping mealtimes regular
• Not drinking alcohol before bed – no “nightcaps” 
• Not looking at your phone/tablet in bed
• Getting sunlight exposure when you wake up
• Avoiding eating within 2 hours of bedtime
• Keep your bedroom quiet (or use white noise machines/a fan/earplugs)
• Avoid daytime napping
• Avoid complex tasks that require a lot of concentration near bedtime
• Eating vegetables every day
• Avoid caffeine at night (although this may not be detrimental unless it happens every day)

According to the research, the strongest associations are in the upper part of the list, with everything below sunlight exposure in the morning having less statistical significance. However, the more of these you can do, the better your chances of a good night’s sleep! 

Gamify Your Learning

Sleep hygiene advice has been around since the late 1970s, and while there has been some development in that time, the most common tips are fairly well-known.

However, there’s a big difference between having heard that you shouldn’t, for example, drink alcohol just before going to bed, and actually taking the lesson onboard. 

One unique approach to learning the basics of sleep hygiene is to gamify your learning.

A 2024 study tested an app called Restful Journey (on Google Play and App Store) developed by the University of Central Florida, which serves to both educate on important sleep hygiene practices and to track your progress when it comes to implementing them.

The study found that using the app for a month improved sleep duration, sleep quality, the time it takes to get to sleep and more, with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores improving across the group. 

It was only a small, preliminary study but if you’ve been struggling to put sleep hygiene tips into practice, and “gamification” appeals to you, it’s definitely worth trying out the app. 

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The 60 Minute Sleep Routine

While there are many other well-known sleep hygiene practices, most of them concern the hour or so before you go to bed, and a regular routine is a much more intuitive way to pair them with CBD. So here’s our approach:

Take Some Full Spectrum CBD (5 Minutes)

About an hour before you want to go to sleep, take a dose of full spectrum CBD. Full spectrum is important because THC is likely better for putting you to sleep than CBD alone.

Do Some Yoga or Tai Chi (15 Minutes)

We spoke to Dr. Eric Zhou from the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine, and author of a paper investigating integrative medicine approaches to insomnia.

Dr. Zhou’s paper notes that “mind-body movement” (such as yoga or tai chi) is one of the more well-supported approaches, but he stressed to us by email that there haven’t been enough randomized clinical trials to recommend a clear plan. Most research doesn’t even try to follow one.

But he continued, “With that said, the majority of these mind-body movements are benign from a sleep perspective. Meaning they are mostly unlikely to harm your sleep. If an individual finds that mind-body movements (of any kind) help to calm them, then I suspect it would be of some benefit for their sleep.”

In other words, even if we don’t know the optimal way to do this, it will not negatively impact your sleep and will likely help you wind down for a night’s rest.

Pick some simple yoga poses or a tai chi form and spend 15 minutes calmly going through them.

Dim the Lights

Light exposure is central to your body’s circadian rhythm, so it’s time to dim them.

Research confirms that even exposure to room light has a dramatic impact on your body clock, shortening its perceived “night” time and suppressing production of melatonin, a crucial hormone for sleep.

It’s worth noting that the opposite of this is true for the morning – then, sunlight exposure reinforces your circadian rhythm!

Eloise Theisen, AGPCNP-BC, nurse practitioner and CEO of Radicle Health, recommended, “Getting early morning sunlight can improve circadian rhythms. It is important to not block the sunlight from your eyes.”

Drink Warm Milk, Horlicks or Välling, With a Book or Soft Music (20 Minutes)

Take a quiet 20 minutes with a book or soft music and a sleep-promoting drink.

While the most obvious option from an American perspective would just be a glass of warm milk, there are other great options too, including Horlicks (British, but available in the US) and välling (Swedish, not easy to find but easy to make).

Karl Andersson, owner of Nordic Perspective, explained to us, “A classic trick to get your kids to sleep better in Sweden—I say kids but adults are definitely using it too from time to time—is to drink ‘Välling,’ a warm porridge-drink containing milk and oats, right before bedtime.”

Adding that, “Warm milk, by itself, has been shown in studies to produce more melatonin (which will kickstart your biological sleep cycle) and raise your body temperature slightly (which is enough to make you a bit sleepy). Adding some oats in the mix also makes sure whoever drinks it will stay full, and hopefully asleep, for longer. On top of these two main ingredients, välling has also been enriched with minerals (mainly iron) and vitamins.”

Karl explained, “A standard way to make välling is a couple of deciliters [i.e. 200 ml or about 4/5 of a cup] each of warm water and milk mixed with a couple of tablespoons of oat flour and some butter, until the consistency is ‘lagom’ (just right!). Add some cardamom as a finishing touch (“pricken över i:et” – the dot over the i).”

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Prayer, Journaling or Meditation (15 Minutes)

Taking 15 minutes before you sleep for mindfulness meditation is an evidence-based method for improving your sleep problems.

Dr. Zhou commented to us that, “Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a specific program which is well-studied. Data suggests that this can be quite helpful for sleep.”

You can find many guides to mindfulness-based stress reduction, but simply choosing a few mindfulness-based exercises to run through each night can be a massive help, and further cements the “winding down” aspect of preparing for sleep. It’s calming, but doesn’t depend on blue-light emitting screens, physical activity or noise. 

Eloise Theisen added that, “Meditation can reduce stress and improve mood,” and this is a good alternative to mindfulness exercises even though there is a lot of overlap. 

There is also evidence suggesting that prayer (whether on behalf of yourself or others) is effective in managing stress, even in demanding professions such as nursing. Given that stress is closely linked to insomnia in many cases, it’s likely that the stress relieving nature of prayer will translate into sleep benefits. 

If meditation, mindfulness or prayer is not your thing, there is also some evidence that journaling has benefits to a multitude of mental health conditions. In particular, one study suggests that writing a “to do list” reduced the time it took participants to fall asleep compared to writing about tasks you’ve completed throughout the day. 

Prepare for Bed (5 Minutes)

Brush your teeth (in low light, if possible!) and get into bed, either putting earplugs in or using a fan or white noise machine to avoid distracting sounds.

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In Bed But Not Sleeping? Don’t Worry; Just Be Awake for a While

We spoke to Dr. Chris Winter, a sleep specialist and neurologist, and author of The Rested Child and The Sleep Solution, who recommended what might be described as a shift in perspective instead of taking treatments for insomnia.

Dr. Winter described insomnia as “a feeling of anxiety when sleep doesn’t happen when you want it to happen,” and offered a very useful analogy:

“It’s a feeling of control loss. I think there are fantastic parallels to appetite. Have you ever arrived at a meal time and simply not been hungry to eat? Of course. Did you call your doctor for an appetite stimulant? Most likely not. We accept that hunger, as a primary biological driver, is not perfect. We often do not grant the same grace to sleep.”

Staying in bed tossing and turning will just make things worse. It’s better to get up and do something calming in low light, remembering that sleep will come when you’re ready – just like hunger does, eventually. There’s no need to clock-watch, but a good rule of thumb is to get up if you don’t get to sleep within 15 minutes.

Make Time for Sleep, But Don’t Stress If It Doesn’t Come

The key recommendations for sleep hygiene boil down to making time for sleep, including a gentle wind-down in the evening and avoiding things that keep you awake, and to accepting your body’s natural rhythm.

Try as you might, you can’t force sleep, and trying just exacerbates the problem.

While things like full spectrum CBD can help you get to sleep, if it doesn’t work, letting anxiety or stress build up because you’re not asleep yet will only worsen the insomnia. Make time for it, stay consistent, and sleep will come when it comes.