Booknotes : Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
I was wide awake at 12.30 am midnight earlier this week. I was having sleep disruptions for almost two weeks, easily roused from sleep when it was after midnight.
So, I pick up Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker which already been in my reading list and readily available in kindle library.
Spent 3 nights reading a book to understand why sleep is important while I am suppose to get some sleep myself!
It’s a type of a book that you would read in bed and have sub-optimal shut-eye level; but then again I needed to understand what has happened to my sleep cycle out of sudden. Here’s some facts and tips that I gathered from the book :
Sleep well otherwise you will go crazy and die!
Sleep is absolutely essential to all animals, including humans. Insufficient sleep reduces our learning, memory and cognitive abilities, causes brain impairment and increases the risks of numerous diseases from cancer to diabetes, coronary heart diseases and even death.
There’s still brain activity during sleep to optimize your resting period. It switches from the both below :
Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep
Basically, NREM and REM serve different but equally-vital functions. When you don’t get full 8 hours of sleep, you lose out on chunks of NREM or REM sleep with serious repercussions.
Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep
characterised by deep, slow brainwaves that’re 10 times slower than when we’re awake.
during this state, our logical center of our brain and experience sensory is relaxed
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep
Faster brainwave activity that’s similar to when you’re awake
You brain’s visual, motor, memory and emotional centers are activated, and pockets of feelings, info, memories, motivations etc. are combined into a giant movie screen, i.e. your dreams. Your eyes may move rapidly as you dream.
How do we sleep?
Circadian Rhythm - Internal body clock that runs in an approximately 24-hour cycle. Regulated by melatonin (a chemical that is produced in the brain which calibrates your body clock with the amount of light)
Adenosine - Chemical that makes you sleepy that build progressively when you are awake. This happens why you are awake 12-18 hours. It drops when you sleep and purged fully after 8 hours of sleep
Benefits of sleeping
3 main cognitive benefits: (i) improved memory, (ii) improved motor task proficiency or “muscle memory”, and (iii) improved creativity. REM sleep connects your different memories, experiences and skills to create new ideas and insights.
REM sleeps and dreams help reduce traumatic events. It usually feels much better when you fall asleep after a shock news or hard day at work
Improve problem-solving
Enable facial expression decode properly and better emotional control (Less sleep makes you more sensitive to others!)
Improve concentrations
Better mental illness from psychiatric condition to Alzheimer’s Disease
Improve health and immunity system
Better lifestyle and a happy you!
The question is, how do I get to that stage? The book mentioned about 5 key factors that can powerfully change how much/well we sleep:
constant electric light, as well as LED light - We, sleep better in dim lights. Even a hint of dim light—8 to 10 lux—has been shown to delay the release of nighttime melatonin in humans. The usual bedside lamp can have 20-80 lux, and living room lights are around 200 lux.
regularized temperature - you can fall asleep better in a low-temperature
caffeine - you will increase sensitivity to caffeine as you grow older, depending on people.
alcohol - only sedates you out of wakefulness and does not induce natural sleep.
a legacy of punching time cards - waking up at the same time every day is a good way to gradually avoid dependence on the alarm clock
Our society glorify the things that will kill us
I heard and came across a lot of articles that glorify workers who is the last to be at work and the first one to be in every morning. I disguised bosses and corporation who still practicing this hard-work cult.
We glorify the high-powered executive on email until 1:00 a.m., and then in the office by 5:45 a.m.; we laud the airport “warrior” who has traveled through five different time zones on seven flights over the past eight days.
This book gave a lot of factual evident how current lifestyle and working practice affect our sleeps.
The author wrote that many of the Fortune 500 companies are interest in KPIs - key performance indicators or measurables metrics. Commonly KPI metrics that require certain traits of employees to achieve the KPI such as the following:
creativity
intelligence
motivation
effort
efficiency
effectiveness when working in groups
emotional stability
sociability
honesty
All of the above are systematically require a sufficient sleep.
most people in modern societies are sleep-deprived, and we don’t even realize it because we’re so used to operating at sub-optimal levels.
Most us work so hard during work days, some times 80 hour per week. Each weekend, you are desperately trying to pay back the sleep debt you’ve acrrued during the week.
I did that too!
Sorry to break this to you that it doesn’t work that way with sleep.
sleep is not like a credit system or the bank. The brain can never recover all the sleep it has been deprived of. We cannot accumulate a debt without penalty, nor can we repay that sleep debt at a later time.
How to hurt your sleep?
Sleeping pills are not helping you inducing natural sleep state, they just sedate you. It did not make you feel fresh the next day but grodgy the next morning. It is no news that taking up a lot pill can cause higher mortality and cancer (up to 30-60%)
Better way to treat your sleep
If your sleep deprived is chronic, the most effective option is called cognitive behavioral therapy for imsonia or CBT-I (rapidly accepted by medical community as the first line treatment)
It is a treatment that will help you break bad sleep habits and address anxieties that inhibit the sleep.
CBT-I treatment builds on a basic sleep hygiene principles that we can do starting today too!
‘Sleep hygiene’ and better sleep practices
There’s superb exercise that was written in this book that could help you start a better sleep practice
a list of twelve key tips can be found at the National Institutes of Health website
Have a sleep schedule - Wake up and go to bed at about the same time every day including weekends
Exercise at least 30 mins every day (even if just walking out in the nature) but no later than 2-3 hours before bedtime
Avoid caffeine (know your caffeine intake timing to manage the sensitivity)
Avoid nicotine
Don’t take nap after 3pm
Relax before bed. Best is to have a bedtime routine that helps you wind down
Hot bath before bed (We know how cold shower jolt your body up in the morning)
Dark bedroom (or at least dim for me, because I am afraid of the dark 😂)
Cool bedroom (a temperature that suits you)
Gadget free bedroom
Get natural sunlight at least 30 mins every day. Or wake up with a sun or use very bright light in the morning
Don’t lie in bed awake (Get up and do something till your eye’s tired enough to fall asleep. I usually read paperback book, it helps to fall asleep faster in an ideal day)
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