Do you struggle to fall asleep at night? If so, you’re not alone. Taking to TikTok, Hazel Gale aka @betwixt.app said if you answer yes, then she has a trick which will get you from tossing and turning to your eyes shut within minutes.
In her video which has amassed over 3 million viwes, she says: “If you’re not falling asleep under about five minutes every night and wish you could, then this is for you.
“I’m a therapist and mental health game developer and this is specifically for any fellow ADHDers or anyone else who struggles to sleep due to recent thoughts.”
Posing the question how long on average does it take you to fall asleep, she says she “spent most of my life” failing to fall asleep in under 30 minutes.
But after her sleeping hack and “even though I have an ADHD brain that literally doesn’t shut up, I’m in the under five minutes category and let me tell you it is so good.”
How to fall alseep in under 5 minutes
When the lights go off, Hazel starts “playing a silent game in my head and the way this works is that the game occupies my brain with a task is complicated enough to keep it locked in but not so complicated that it stresses me out. The looking in part is really important because that stops my brain going off on a tangent.”
You start by “picking a category which can be anything from fruit and veg, movies or famous actors. Then you start going through the letters of the alphabet thinking of something from your category beginning with each letter”. For example, Apple, Banana, Cherries, and so on.
In her helpful advice, she suggests: “I feel the best way to do it is think of a letter on the end breath and then think of your answer on the out of breath then also get you just like your breathing down. So that is it that is the alphabet game. I have used this every single night for years and I don’t think it’s ever let me down.
Millions of people suffer each day from insomnia which can be caused by a number of things. Every night we need to aim to get the correct amount of sleep, any less than what we’re recommended and the liklihood is that you’ll wake up shattered tomorrow.
The NHS states if you’re an adult you need 7 to 9 hours. Children need 9 to 13 hours whilst toddlers and babies need 12 to 17 hours. They further explain that the most common causes of insomnia are:
- stress, anxiety or depression
- noise
- a room that’s too hot or cold
- uncomfortable beds
- alcohol, caffeine or nicotine
- illegal drugs like cocaine or ecstasy
- jet lag
- shift work
