4. Sleep

Why start with sleep?

Firstly, I hear so many people saying that they feel refreshed when they wake up. I can probably count on both hands the number of times when I can truly say that.

Secondly, when you look at some of the things we can do to improve our sleep, they are relatively simple and easy to do. I’ll get into that shortly.

Thirdly, the evidence for sleep benefits is overwhelming:

1. Poor sleep may be associated with an increased risk of certain cancers

2. A lack of sleep may increase your chances of getting a high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease

3. Sleep helps with reducing your stress levels and improves mental health wellbeing

A book I would strongly recommend to support a lot of the information provided above would be “Why we sleep” by Matthew Walker, a Professor of neuroscience and psychology. He is a world renowned expert on the subject of sleep and his podcasts are also excellent.

Timings

In my story, up until very recently I was going to bed between 10:30pm and midnight. I would wake between 6am and 07:30am. That sounds reasonable, right? The problem was that I was consistently going to bed around 11:45pm and waking at 6am then forcing myself back to sleep until 7am. That left me having around 6 to 7ish hours per night. Evidence suggests that we need 7 to 9 hours per night (some at the upper end, some at the lower end).

Genes

Another factor to consider is when we go to sleep is often determined by our genetic coding for being a morning or evening person (owl or lark). I’m not going to go into the science here but you can get an idea of what you might be from the morningness-eveningness questionnaire (MEQ). You can do that for free here.

I was a “moderately morning” person. I was really surprised as I had always considered myself an owl and could go to bed late. However, it might explain why I wake up early. The fact I’m tired may be just the fact I need to go to bed earlier! So that’s what I have started to do.

Caffeine

Anybody who knows me would vouch for the fact I love coffee! In fact, I love strong and good coffee as an espresso. Historically (even up to only a few months ago), I would drink around 12 such shots of coffee per day! Not good. Last year I tried to improve my sleep quality by cutting out coffee altogether in order to reduce by caffeine consumption and aid my sleep. I didn’t notice any difference whatsoever. My energy levels were no different, my sleep duration and quality were no different. Caffeine stays in your system for a long time. Caffeine levels are halved by the body every 6-8 hours. So, If I drink a coffee at noon, half is still present at 6pm and a quarter at midnight. That’s quite a bit if you have more than one coffee per day. Please don’t quote me as the science is even more scary when we realise that some people break it down even slower (and some even quicker).

Gadgets

I was so committed to changing my sleep quality that I wanted to monitor it. The science behind the brain activity monitoring for sleep is called somnography. The equipment you would need is around £8,000…second hand! No thanks. So I bought something that was recommended through my research called an oura ring. This helped to try and differentiate the different levels of sleep we have and so I could see if I was getting good quality sleep. It works on a principle looking at the pulse and respiratory rate and clearly not brain wave signals. The manufacturers suggest 79% accuracy compared with polysomnography (the equipment used to measure sleep) which is better than wrist monitors (around 60-65% accuracy). What did it show? I had very poor deep sleep (it’s not so good at detecting this so well) but it gave me some pointers.

Sleep hygiene

There are so many external influences of our sleep. I’m not going to go into them all in this section other than to say temperature, light exposure, food (timings and content), stress and exercise all play a part! Avoiding bright lights (especially blue light at least 2 hours before retiring to bed), not eating carbs after 6pm, winding down and warming our extremities (to reduce our core temperature) prior to bed are all things we can do to improve our sleep.

My challenge

1. I am trying to go to bed earlier at 10pm and wake at around 6 to 7am.

2. No mobile phone/gadgets after 9pm

3. Dim lights from 9pm. Sun light from as soon as I wake up (like a kick-start to my brain to say “wake up!”)

4. Wearing socks to keep my feet warm until I just go to bed (I have a habit of preferring bare feet!)

5. No food after 6pm (not always possible if we’re out with friends)

6. No caffeine whatsoever (sad face). I am still drinking coffee but decaf. NB coffee is actually very good for you as it contains polyphenols (chemicals which are very good for you). You still get those benefits with decaf ! (smiley face)

7. Exercise more during the day (more to say on that in the section on physical activity)

There is so much more to say on sleep and that may form part of a future blog! We will talk about our circadian rhythm and sleep pressure and their effects on sleep at some point. Next, we’ll see my stats for the beginning of next week and then talk about exercise.