Do you sleep 8 hours daily? If yes, Great Job! You (probably) don’t need to read further. This article is for the rest of us.
My Sleep
I usually slept 4–6 hours a day for half my life (I’m 35), until I learned about the alarming downside impact of not sleeping enough!
Many times I felt it — felt like my brain wasn’t working without coffee, got irritated by little triggers, felt discussions going over my head, and worst, felt like a zombie the whole day. I powered through them all.
I used to deprioritize sleep to read books, finish office work, spend time with friends, watch tv and play video games. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I knew about the importance of sleep earlier. I was wondering how come I missed this all along. Probably due to lack of general awareness. A couple of decades back, it was neither part of school syllabus nor part of general health concern at home.
We talk so much about exercise & diet, and now mental health. But, we don’t talk about sleep.
Thanks to the book Why We Sleep by sleep scientist Prof. Matthew Walker, I know better. I bet you will be intrigued by my notes and selected quotes ‘about the book’ and ‘from the book’. Based on the learnings, I have changed a few things in my daily life.
About The Book
The book “Why We Sleep” by sleep scientist Matthew Walker emphasizes the need for 8 hour sleep, the downside of sleep deprivation & anatomy of sleep. He discusses aspects of modern lifestyle, myths and societal construct that result in poor sleep. Observations & arguments are backed by scientific experiments & stats.
In his book review, Bill Gates wrote (referring to early Microsoft days), “Now that I’ve read Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, I realize that my all-nighters, combined with almost never getting eight hours of sleep, took a big toll.”
From The Book
Very Very Important Stuff You Should Know About Sleep
- How much sleep do we need? 8 hours.
- Is it different for everyone? No. NO! It is 8 hours for all. If you tell yourself (like I did), that you feel fine after 6–7 hours of regular sleep, here is something for you from the book.
“After ten days of just seven hours of sleep, the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for twenty-four hours……. the human mind cannot accurately sense how sleep-deprived it is when sleep-deprived. …….millions of individuals unwittingly spend years of their life in a sub-optimal state of psychological and physiological functioning, never maximizing their potential of mind or body due to their blind persistence in sleeping too little.”
- What is the downside of sleep deprivation? Lack of 8 hours sleep negatively impacts body and mind — immunity, cardiac health, blood sugar, appetite (& body weight), emotional well being (& EQ), learning, memory, creativity, problem-solving, decision making. In short,
“…..the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span.”
Other Important Stuff You Should Know About Sleep
- You can’t completely payback sleep debt. Sleep debt from one night can’t be completely recovered by sleeping more later.
“It is important to note, however, that regardless of the amount of recovery opportunity, the brain never comes close to getting back all the sleep it has lost.”
- Hate to wake up early? You aren’t lazy. It’s your DNA. Our DNA makes us mentally active and sleepy at different times — early risers / morning types (40%), late risers / night owls (30%) or in-between (30%). Night owls are incapable of sleeping early and dislike waking up early. Common office hours (mainly early) are unfavourable for the night owls. We need to identify where we lie in the spectrum and plan lifestyle accordingly.
“…. night owls are not owls by choice. They are bound to a delayed schedule by unavoidable DNA hardwiring. It is not their conscious fault, but rather their genetic fate. When a night owl is forced to wake up too early, their prefrontal cortex remains in a disabled, “offline” state. The prefrontal cortex controls high-level thought and logical reasoning, and helps keep emotions in check.”
- Let your teenagers sleep till late. Sleep timings & requirements change with age. Teenagers (also young adults) usually fall asleep late (10 or 11 pm) and wake up late, not by choice. They need 8–10 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, due to usual early school timings, they can be consistently sleep deprived.
“Sadly, neither society nor our parental attitudes are well designed to appreciate or accept that teenagers need more sleep than adults, and that they are biologically wired to obtain that sleep at a different time from their parents.”
- Help your toddlers sleep a lot. Toddlers need 12 hours of sleep, but may not get it without a supporting environment and a sleep routine.
“Three-year-olds sleeping just ten and a half hours or less have a 45 percent increased risk of being obese by age seven than those who get twelve hours of sleep a night.”
- Old people ‘get’ less sleep, they don’t ‘need’ less. Old people need 8 hours sleep as well. They get less sleep due to reduced quality & quality of sleep (get fewer hours of essential deep sleep), reduced efficiency (get fragmented sleep, wake up in the middle), disrupted sleep timing (need earlier bedtimes).
“…the lower an older individual’s sleep efficiency score, the higher their mortality risk, the worse their physical health, the more likely they are to suffer from depression, the less energy they report, and the lower their cognitive function, typified by forgetfulness.”
- Sleep deprivation stunts your capability to make decisions, learn, memorize, innovate. Decision making capacity replenishes after full night sleep and day time naps. Our memories stay vulnerable to sleep disruption (including that from alcohol) for up to three days after learning. After learning something (on Day1) and sleeping 8 hours for 2 nights, 2–3 shots of vodka (on Day 3) can wipe off 40% of the knowledge. For learning motor skills (e.g. piano, tennis), proper sleep is needed, not just practice. Creativity is boosted by the REM component of sleep. Many scientists & artists came up with famous works based on their dreams e.g. “Let it be” & “Yesterday” by The Beatles, the Periodic Table (Chemistry) by Mendeleev.
“When it comes to information processing, think of the wake state principally as reception (experiencing and constantly learning the world around you), NREM sleep as reflection (storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills), and REM sleep as integration (interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other, with all past experiences, and, in doing so, building an ever more accurate model of how the world works, including innovative insights and problem-solving abilities).”
- No late evening coffee or alcohol, if you want a good sleep. Coffee is best before 2 pm. Late evening coffee can prevent you from falling asleep on time. Drinking alcohol makes you sleep better is a myth. Even moderate amounts of evening alcohol lead to fragmented sleep and suppressed REM sleep.
“Caffeine has an average half-life of five to seven hours. Let’s say that you have a cup of coffee after your evening dinner, around 7:30 p.m. This means that by 1:30 a.m., 50 percent of that caffeine may still be active and circulating throughout your brain tissue….. Alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep that we know of.”
- Are you staying up late for work (or studies), regularly? Think again. Regularly losing sleep due to work pressure can work against us. Quality of work will suffer with reduced capacity to innovate, make decisions, connect with people, solve problems. Can lead to burnout. Similarly, sacrificing sleep for studying will be highly inefficient given the impact of sleep loss on memory.
“The irony that employees miss is that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work less productively and thus need to work longer to accomplish a goal. This means you often must work longer and later into the evening, arrive home later, go to bed later, and need to wake up earlier, creating a negative feedback loop.”
There is more in the book.
My Actions
The book has changed me. Now, I sleep 8 hours most nights (and I feel the difference). We created a family schedule for me (to sleep early), my wife (to sleep till late) and our 3 year old daughter (a bedtime routine & dark curtains to ensure 11–12 hour sleep). Stopped having more than 2 cups of coffee a day; the second cup no later than 5 pm. Gifted a copy of the book to my parents. Lastly, wrote this article with a hope to improve awareness about sleep.
My Recommendation & Appeal
I would recommend the book Why We Sleep to everyone, especially the ones who sleep less and the people who care about them. Read it to get deeper insights relevant to you and prioritize sleep in your life (and your loved ones) with conviction.
Sleeping 8 hours may not be possible suddenly or regularly. All I am saying is, please sleep a bit more, feel good about it and… talk about it. :)
