SLEEP 101 | #THEHUE
Unlocking the secrets of sleep and its vital role in our well-being. Highlighting key takeaways from Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker's and understanding why sleep is foundational.
In the realm of optimal well-being, one often overlooked aspect is the profound impact of a proper sleep regimen. It’s no secret that in our modern world, with endless distractions and disruptions, maintaining a regular sleep routine can be challenging. However, creating the right environment and being kind to ourselves about the natural fluctuation in life is essential for promoting positive sleep habits.
To anchor ourselves towards more optimal slumber, we must awaken to the inherent health benefits that come with good sleep. In his groundbreaking book, “Why We Sleep,” Dr. Matthew Walker sheds light on the transformative power of sleep, debunking myths and presenting decades of research-backed facts. Walker points to how as a society, “we have stigmatized sleep with the label of laziness,” while instead glorifying lack of sleep in the name of zealous productivity, which he highlights as a catastrophic value to our survival.
This masterpiece serves as the ultimate guide to understanding why sleep is the secret to baseline well-being, encompassing cognitive performance, emotional wellness, and even disease prevention. As one of The Happy Hue’s mainstay pillars, sleep holds the keys to unlocking our full potential. Join me as we delve into Dr. Mathew Walker’s enlightening quotes and captivating insights, unveiling revelational truths that everyone needs to hear.
Today, I’ll illuminate these revelational truths through Dr. Matthew Walker’s words himself. We’ll dive into some quotes and captivating insights from his widely acclaimed book, to educate you on some critical information on why you should prioritise sleep:
“Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day—Mother Nature’s best effort yet at contra-death.”
“The physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep dwarf those caused by an equivalent absence of food or exercise.”
“Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer.”
“Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic.”
“...the powerful sculpting force of your twenty-four hours rhythm, also known as your circadian rhythm… the internal twenty-four-hour clock within your brain communicates its daily circadian rhythm signal to every other region of your brain and every organ in your body.”
“That humans (and all other species) can never “sleep back” that which we have previously lost is one of the most important take-homes,” in other words, there’s no such thing as making up a night’s loss of sleep.
“Sleep is not like the bank, so you can’t accumulate a debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time.”
“Below seven hours of sleep, there are objective impairments in the body. Eight hours are recommended.”
“No matter what you may have heard or read in the popular media, there is no scientific evidence we have suggesting that a drug, a device, or any amount of psychological willpower can replace sleep.”
More great news for you though– an afternoon nap is scientifically proven to be great for your health, though probably hard to convince your boss of:
“...there is anthropological, biological, and genetic evidence, and which remains measurable in all human beings to date—is one consisting of a longer bout of continuous sleep at night, followed by a shorter midafternoon nap.”
“The more sleep spindles an individual obtained during the nap, the greater the restoration of their learning when they woke up.”
But, perhaps it’s time to think more critically about how we choose to live and what we consume, as a major factor in the prescription of quality sleep, is how alcohol and caffeine impact our sleep. (Trust me, I whinging as much as you are.)
“Alcohol sedates you out of wakefulness, but it does not induce natural sleep.”
“Alcohol fragments sleep, littering the night with brief awakenings. Alcohol-infused sleep is therefore not continuous and, as a result, not restorative.”
“Alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep that we know of. When the body metabolizes alcohol it produces by-product chemicals called aldehydes and ketones.”
“Recall that one function of REM sleep is to aid in memory integration and association: the type of information processing required for developing grammatical rules in a new language, or in synthesizing large sets of related facts into an interconnected whole.”
“The aldehydes in particular will block the brain’s ability to generate REM sleep. It’s rather like the cerebral version of cardiac arrest, preventing the pulsating beat of brainwaves that otherwise power dream sleep.”
“Squeezed by the vise grips of an electrified night and early-morning start times, bereft of twenty-four-hour thermal cycles, and with caffeine and alcohol surging through us in various quantities, many of us feel rightly exhausted and crave that which seems always elusive: a full, restful night of natural deep sleep.”
“Caffeine is the most widely used (and abused) psychoactive stimulant in the world.”
“What is problematic, though, is the persistence of caffeine in your system…caffeine has an average half-life of five to seven hours.”
“...you have a cup of coffee after your evening dinner, around 7.30 pm. This means that by 1:30 am, 50 percent of that caffeine may still be active and circulating throughout your brain tissue”
“Caffeine–which is not only prevalent in coffee, certain teas, and many energy drinks, but also foods such as dark chocolate and ice cream, as well as drugs such as weight-loss pills and pain relievers–is one of the most common culprits that keep people from falling asleep easily and sleeping soundly thereafter, typically masquerading as insomnia…”
“...de-caffeinated does not mean non-caffeinated. One cup of decal usually contains 15-30 percent of the dose of a regular cup of coffee, which is far from caffeine-free.”
Yes, I know, it’s hard to kick both habits, especially due to the social culture we’ve built around both habits. But, it’s not impossible and definitely getting a lot more common these days. Some simple solutions can be to reduce the amount of caffeine and alcohol intake. Perhaps only drinking alcohol on the weekends or on special occasions, and drinking caffeine on the days you feel you really need it. For caffeine especially, timing is everything. Also, understanding your caffeine sensitivity is key. But, as always it’s about trial and error and doing what works best for you and your sleep. Just be careful not to binge!
Pro Tip: If the new habit is causing you more stress or worry, then perhaps slow down and think about making incremental changes as your best way forward.
But, let’s go through a few more fun facts on sleep:
“That older adults simply need less sleep is a myth.”
“...what spanned almost a decade of research, identified the type of sleep responsible for the overnight motor-skill enhancement, carrying with it societal and medical lessons…it was the number of those wonderful sleep spindles in the last two hours of late morning–the time of night with the richest spindle burst of brainwave activity–that were linked with the offline memory boost.”
“Ten days of six hours of sleep a night was all it took to become as impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight.”
“With chronic sleep restriction over months or years, an individual will actually acclimate to their impaired performance, lower alertness, and reduced energy levels. That low-level exhaustion becomes their accepted norm, or baseline.”
“Individuals fail to recognize how their perennial state of sleep deficiency has come to compromise their mental aptitude and physical vitality, including the slow accumulation of ill health.”
“...the amygdala–a key hot spot for triggering strong emotions such as anger and rage, and linked to the fight-or-flight response–showed well over a 60 percent amplification in emotional reactivity in the participants who were sleep deprived.”
“There is no major psychiatric condition in which sleep is normal.”
This is a call to action to make time to read this book yourself! There are too many goodies to share in one post. A girl can only quote so much before copying the whole book. So, please, I urge you to make time to read this book and prepare to have your minds blown away by the wealth of value-adding information. I guarantee you will never be the same again!
Investing time to read his wisdom will change your perspective on sleep for the better. I believe it’s paramount for every person to do so. This book is definitely one book I often suggest to those who never read it.
But, here are some of my takeaways, that I like to remind myself of:
