Doctor shares go-to sleep hack which works within minutes
If you're victim to sleepless nights, you could be in luck - a doctor has shared his top tip to nod off, fast.
According to Dr Arthur Joustra, an pediatrics trainee, taking control of your thoughts by visualizing random objects and words can help calm and soothe your anxious mind.
It does this by triggering the parasympathetic nervous system, letting it take over from a stressful state of fight or flight.
Trouble sleeping? A doctor has shared his top tip on nodding off faster
In a TikTok video, he urged people to try the sleep hack, officially known as 'cognitive shuffling'.
Dr Joustra said: 'This is how I've learned to get to sleep in a matter of minutes as a doctor who does loads of night shifts and is chronically sleep deprived.
'Essentially the way it works is it distracts your brain. It is letting your brain know that it is safe to go to sleep.
'It is getting it away from that anxious state of fight or flight that makes your thoughts race around your head and keeps you up literally all night worrying about things.
'To do cognitive shuffling, all you have to do is think of a completely random word and then visualize a thing that that word represents.
'From there, think of a second word and then a third word and a fourth that are all completely unrelated.
'The aim here is to give random thoughts to your brain to stop it from being anxious and allowing it to get off to sleep.
'An easier way that I find is to try and visualize a word that starts with the letter of the last word.
'So if we start with elephant that ends in 't', so we go to tree and that ends in 'e' so we go to engine and so on.
'Keep going until you fall asleep. It will take you a matter of minutes and I promise you it will surprise you just how easy this technique is to do and just how well it works.'
