Are you going to bed after (or well after) 10:00 at night, scrolling your favourite social media site, getting lost in the mind-numbing rabbit holes until you look at the clock and it’s midnight? Maybe you’re hitting snooze on your alarm 2 to 3 times the next morning before you finally drag yourself out of bed, grab a strong coffee and maybe a muffin and try to get your day started.

You know you need more sleep, but you just can’t quite stick to your plan, and every day you’re yawning your way through emails, meetings, laundry, dog walks, studying, or whatever your day holds. Probably picking fights with your spouse or your kids, feeling less patient with the cashier at the grocery store. 

SLEEP DEPRIVATION DRIVES OUR HABITS

You’re sleep-deprived. At least half of us gets less sleep than we need. And you know what that does? It leads to those pick-me-up habits, which then circle back and make it harder to sleep. And around and around we go. 

Yup, you got it: 

• consuming too much caffeine, usually in the form of coffee
• eating too many refined and sweet carbs at the expense of other food groups

Coffee doesn’t give you ‘energy’, as in cellular energy which is part of your metabolism. It only stimulates the stress hormones norepinephrine and cortisol, making you feel a temporary zing. An hour later, you’re yawning again, because caffeine simply cannot make up for lost sleep. 

The carbs that you crave? Well, that’s your tired brain screaming at you to “feed me!!” Our neurons (brain cells) and our red blood cells are unique in the human body — they only use glucose for fuel. The rest of our cells can use both fat and glucose to fuel metabolic pathways. You know when you feel ‘tired’? That’s your brain, not your body.

[A note to all you Keto fans out there: it’s true that the brain can use ketones for fuel, but that’s a survival mechanism related to starvation, and not at all ideal.]

WHY WE NEED SLEEP

You know the expression, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”? I get it, it’s a “live life to the fullest” kind of mantra, reaching for every opportunity to feel alive and not ‘waste’ time sleeping.

Ironically, sleep deprivation is closely tied to diminished lifespan. I mean, just think about how you feel when you get a particularly great night’s sleep? It kind of speaks for itself.

So, what does sleep actually do for us? Obviously, proper quantity and quality of sleep helps us to feel “rested”. But what does that actually mean?

According to the National Sleep Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health, sleep has the following BENEFITS:

• better recovery and repair from injury
• better immune function
• consolidation of new memories and learned material (attention: students!) — partly due to neurogenesis in the hippocampus of the brain
• REM sleep specifically contributes to optimal brain function, including cognitive function and executive function (our ability to reason, make decisions, and problem-solve)
• maintenance of circadian rhythm, keeping melatonin and cortisol in proper balance
• Proper weight management
• regulates serotonin (our ‘wellness’ hormone, connected to appetite, sleep, motivation, and outlook)
• gives the cardiovascular system a ‘breather’, allowing blood pressure to drop (ideally 20-30% during sleep) and heart rate to come down (10-20%) — this allows the heart to work better and last longer over our lifespan
• for young children and teens, sleep is absolutely required for the release of growth hormone (GH)

IS SLEEP DEPRIVATION ALL ABOUT LIFESTYLE?

In a word: NO.  Our modern lifestyle is not conducive to great sleep, it’s true. But sleep is also negatively affected by many factors external to our choices. 

• menopause 
• pain
• light and noise levels where we live
• chronic illness
• advanced age
• trauma, loss, grief

HOW MUCH DO WE NEED?

Research tells us that adults need 7–9 hours, and interestingly, there’s only an hour of wiggle room on either side. Less than 6 or more than 10 is not great.

THE ‘WHEN’ IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE AMOUNT

Many people have said to me, but I DO get 8 hours a night, it’s just between 1am and 9am, so that’s good, right?

Nope! Most people don’t get good quality sleep when they override the natural circadian alignment to light levels. They are statistically more likely to be overweight, indulge in too much alcohol, caffeine and sugar, have imbalances in their mental health, and challenges in relationships. Sleeping at the wrong time is almost as bad as too few hours of sleep, and it’s referred to as circadian misalignment. 

If you’re not a shift worker, you should aim to be in bed asleep no later than 10pm, and aim to wake around 6am.

I think I heard a few people scream…. 6am!!! Are you nuts?

It’s all about melatonin and cortisol. And remember, this is over 300,000 years of our brain attuning itself to natural light changes. This is not something we can fool with and not expect consequences. Melatonin is secreted as light fades at the end of the day, and takes 2-3 hours to reach its peak. Most commonly around 10pm. Cortisol simultaneously decreases, as long as we also wind down along with it, so there’s no opposition to melatonin. This is circadian alignment.

How can we best support that natural cycle?

LET’S TALK SOLUTIONS: SLEEP HYGIENE

Now let’s take a look at ways of improving quality and quantity of sleep.

FIRST STEP: Prioritize it

Just like diet changes, sleep often gets shoved to the bottom of the priority pile in a busy life, especially between the ages of 18 and 50. Life is just too busy, and often stressful, even when things are going well. 

If you’re not waking most mornings feeling restored and energized, you need better sleep.

And to all the students out there, the self-employed, the ambitious ones — research doesn’t lie: your daytime productivity actually goes way down when you pull those all-nighters. Better sleep makes your brain more alert, efficient, and cognitively useful to you, so don’t underestimate where it should sit on the priority list.

NEXT STEP: Changing habits

aka: Sleep Hygiene

Think about your truly ingrained habits, like brushing your teeth. You know you’ll pay the price if you don’t stay on top of it, and now you do it without really even thinking about, right?

Research shows that we need consistent sleep habits for resting the brain and the body. So, let’s talk about how to do that.

• Bedrooms are for sleep (and intimacy) — not for catching up on emails, scrolling social media, binge-watching a show, or playing games on your phone. This teaches your brain that going to bed means staying awake and alert. You’re also secreting low levels of cortisol in response to the blue light, which inhibits melatonin, and you block the ‘sleepiness’ signal. Power down all your screens before bedtime. Read a book instead. Remember books??

• Make your room dark — use blackout curtains, maybe a sleep mask — get rid of that digital clock on your bedside table, or at least turn the face of it away from you. Remember, light inhibits melatonin.

• Create a consistent schedule — at least 6 nights out of 7, bedtime should be within 30 minutes of the same time for your brain to get into a good pattern. Sleepiness will start happening naturally, making it easier to head to bed. Just like we do for little kids, to help them sleep well, create some routines and rituals for your night-time winding down — whether it’s a walk, some yoga, writing in your journal….anything that brings closure to your mind and to the day will help your brain be less active during the night.

• Keep your room cool,   — crack open a window, keep a fan going on ‘low’ all night (which also provides white noise), and use extra blankets instead of turning up the heat.

• Stop caffeine by noon — caffeine has a half-life of 6 hours, meaning half the amount from your morning coffee is still in your system almost 6 hours later, half of that another 6 hours, and so on.

• Try to finish dinner at least 2 hours before bed — digestion creates heat, and that counteracts the need for a lower temperature for good sleep. If you need a nighttime snack, choose protein — it’s good for the overnight repair of your body and brain, but it also won’t cause blood sugar swings, which is a common cause of waking in the middle of the night.

• Daily physical activity — get at least 30 minutes of daily exertion, studies show it helps to sleep more deeply at night — but don’t go crazy within an hour or two of bedtime, since rigorous exercise increases body temperature, which works against sleep. I

HOPE THIS HELPS!! AND SWEET DREAMS…..