NHS doctor explains ‘brain shuffling’ method that helps you fall asleep ‘in under five minutes’

A NHS doctor has said a sleep hack which is ‘the biological version of holding down the power button’ will get you off to the land of nod in no time.

Now, there’s nothing worse than tossing and turning in bed all night.

You might have already tried the ‘military sleep method’ developed for US Army fighter pilots and the ‘4-7-8 technique’.

And one doctor has even recommended rubbing the inner part of your wrist to try and fall into sweet dreams.

The NHS says that adults need between seven and nine hours sleep each night, but sometimes this is easier said than done.

Luckily, NHS surgeon Dr Karan Rajan has a hack he says is guaranteed to ‘calm your racing thoughts’.

It’s a pretty strange one - it's called the ‘cognitive shuffle’, and yes, that does sound more like a dance move than a sleep hack.

The medic said: “When you're in bed, it's easy to get into repetitive disrupting thought patterns. This can trigger a stress response which keeps you awake.

"The more you're awake, the more unwanted thought patterns you get, meaning less sleep."

We’re all familiar with spiralling thought patterns while lying in bed, which for me generally involves an exhaustive list of all the ways I’ve embarrassed myself during the day.

But the ‘cognitive shuffle’ breaks the cycle of intrusive thoughts ‘by taking away your active cognitive effort’.

This sounds pretty technical, but in practice it’s super easy.

Dr Karan explains: “This is the human brain version of picking ‘shuffle’ on your mind Spotify playlist versus having to manually change the song every time - less stress.

“Start by picking a random word like ‘bedtime’ and for each letter of that word think of another word starting with that letter and visualise it.

“So start by thinking of words beginning with ‘B’ until you get bored: ‘baby’, ‘big boss man’, ‘butter’, ‘banana’, ‘Belgium’, ‘beer’, ‘baseball’.

"It's also important you visualise the words because it's like you're simulating micro dreams.

“Those are the fleeting images that occur as you transition to sleep. Once you're bored of one letter, move on to the next.

"This trick helps to calm racing thoughts. So if your sleep software is malfunctioning, it's worth giving it a go.”

Certainly sounds better than thinking about your existential dread at any rate.