Sleep: why is it so important, and how can we get better at it?
Sleep. It鈥檚 a tiny little word that encompasses a lot of baggage: how much sleep are you getting? Is it enough? Is it too much? Is it light? Is it deep? Do you have trouble falling asleep? Do you have trouble getting up in the morning? Are you always tired? Are you always restless? Are you anxious? Do you have a night-time routine?
Our sleeping habits can be complex and are usually influenced by a myriad of other lifestyle factors, such as our diets, water intake, caffeine levels, exercise (or lack thereof), and, of course, stress. In a Season 3 episode of the Delicious Ways to Feel Better聽podcast, hosts Ella Mills and Matthew Mills talk to sleep expert Matthew Walker, author of the bestselling book聽Why We Sleep.
Sleep is essentially your life-support system or, according to Walker, 鈥渢he Swiss Army knife of health鈥. We need it to lead healthy and happy lives, but studies show our sleep time and quality has decreased dramatically in the last 100 years. Currently, the recommended sleep time is between 7-9 hours, generally 8. Less than 7 hours of sleep a night and there are scientifically measurable impairments in your brain and bodily functions. Furthermore, sleep isn鈥檛 just about our everyday functioning. It鈥檚 connected to our ongoing health, and there are causal links between a lack of sleep and diseases like cancer. Walker explains that, while all of us have cancerous cells in our bodies, it鈥檚 the body鈥檚 natural 鈥榗ure cells鈥 that prevent them from becoming the disease we know as cancer. Individuals who sleep for 4 hours or less a night experience a 70% drop in that cure cell activity, thereby increasing the risk of disease.
However, at least for me, one of the problems with a lack of sleep is that I generally don鈥檛 know how badly I鈥檓 struggling until a few days later, when I鈥檓 suddenly swallowed by a wave of exhaustion. The solution here, Walker says, is regularity: going to sleep at the same time each night and waking up at the same time every morning. Other lifestyle factors also come into play. Walker recommends no coffee post-breakfast time (or at least 12 hours before sleep) and turning off our phones and other devices an hour before bed.
This all sounds fairly simple in theory, but I鈥檓 a creature of habit, and currently my habit includes copious amounts of coffee as late as 5pm and scrolling through Instagram right before I fall asleep. I suspect, then, that the key is聽驳谤补诲耻补濒听change.听I can鈥檛 (i.e. won鈥檛) cut out coffee, but I can certainly change the time of day I鈥檓 drinking it. I can鈥檛 stop using my phone before bed altogether, but I can gradually work towards switching it off an hour or so before sleep. Hopefully, a combination of a the above might produce significant results in the quality and quantity of our sleep, enabling us to be more productive, energetic, and healthier overall.