Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our lives, wellness, and longevity. Walker’s book is an entertaining read and gives a lot of insights into all relevant aspects of sleep.
Here are the top 5 things that I learned from the book:
- Your brain switches between rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep multiple time each night. NREM sleep (slow brain waves) clears out old memories and mental “trash”, and moves information to long-term storage. REM sleep (high brain waves) strengthens relevant information and creates new connections between information. Muscles are paralyzed to prevent you from getting injured acting out your dreams.
- Sleep changes with age. In teenage years, kids naturally stay up longer and wake up later. This particularely made me be much more relaxed when dealing with the sleeping habits of my kids. Unfortunately, school schedules do not account for this.
- Sleep and memory: improves long-term memory and free short-term memory for new information, eliminates memories worth forgetting, builds “muscle memory”.
- Sleep deprivation not only impacts attention, concentration and emotional control, but also disrupts many physiological processes, contributing to…
- heart diseases (by activating the sympathetic nervours system, decreasing HDL and growth hormone)
- diabetes (by increasing insulin resistance, which is bad)
- obesity and weight gain (by reducing leptin, the hormone that makes you feel full and increasing ghrelin, the hormone that makes you feel hungry)
- infectious diseases and cancer (by reducing immune system response and promoting inflammation)
- aging (by hastening telomere shortening)
- Do for better sleep:
- Install a consistent waking and sleeping routine (try going to bed and waking up at similar times)
- Lower bedroom temperature, reduce noise, reduce light
- Avoid alcohol, caffeine, exercise or long naps before going to sleep
- Avoid very high carb diets. They decrease NREM and make you wake up more
- Avoid sleeping pills (they are not effective anyway)
- Get enough sleep in the first place. The author claims that humans today need 8 hours on average (which is half an hour more than I feel comfortable with personally)
If you want to take it one step further, start tracking your sleep (I use an Oura ring personally) to better see how lifestyle changes impact your sleep. And please, replace this harsh alarm sound! You don’t want that spike in cortisol levels, heart rate and blood pressure. Use an upbeat song instead that tunes you in nicely for the new day!
What do you do to improve the quality of your sleep? How much sleep do you get on average?