Techniques For Better Sleep 2

Matthew Walker is the worlds foremost leading expert on everything to do with sleep. This lecture provides his evidence-based, peer-reviewed techniques for better sleep and some explanations on the importance of sleep in regards to overall health and wellness.

Transcript

Hello my name is Sean Rapson and welcome to this short lecture based on the work of Matthew Walker,

Who is the world's leading expert in everything to do with sleep.

Matthew Walker is an English scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California,

Berkeley.

His research is focused on the impact of sleep on human health and disease.

Previously he was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

He is also the founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science.

He received numerous awards and funding for his works.

Techniques for better sleep according to Matthew Walker are as follows.

First and foremost the golden rules.

The golden rule is that you should have a regular sleep and wake cycle and sleep at least 8 hours a day,

No less.

The importance of good sleep falls into three categories.

Number one,

Matthew explains how the true lexia of longevity and good health is getting a restful,

Proper and correct quality of 8 hours of sleep a day.

The lack of sleep or in other words less than 8 hours a day has very strong links to Alzheimer's,

Cancer,

Weight gain,

Heart disease,

Poor fertility,

Especially low testosterone,

Diabetes,

DNA damage and a weak immune system.

This may just sound like a list that you would read in many other journals and books,

But this list has much research and backing behind it,

So we cannot take it lightly.

The third aspect of having a good night's sleep is that you need sleep after learning to essentially hit the save button.

Without sleep memory circuits of the brain do not work correctly.

What this therefore means is doing an all nighter to pass your exam the next day,

Certainly according to all modern research is not the correct way to pass.

The techniques for better sleep and some other important points are as follows.

Number one,

Regular sleep cycles.

Matthew Walker has gone on and on and on and on about that the most fundamental aspect of sleep is waking at the same time and sleeping at the same time every day,

Including the weekend.

He says that if you do an occasional hour later to bed or an occasional hour earlier to bed,

It's not harmful.

Number two,

Keep your house in dim light at night.

Switch off half the lights in your house and dim all the other lights an hour before bed.

Stay away from blue lights,

TV,

Smartphone,

Computers as much as you possibly can.

Light disrupts the release of melatonin.

Matthew says we are in a dark,

Deprived society in this modern era and we need darkness in the evening to allow the release of a hormone called melatonin.

So try to dim down half the lights in your home in the hour before bed.

Stay away from screens,

Especially those LED screens.

They emit a blue light that actually puts the brakes on the melatonin release.

Those blue light emitting devices also fool your brain into thinking that it's daytime,

Even though it's nighttime and you want to go to sleep.

Number three,

Keep your bedroom cool,

About 18.

5 degrees Celsius.

Your core body temperature needs to drop two to three degrees Fahrenheit in order to initiate good sleep.

Sleeping cool is therefore much more important than sleeping warm.

Number four,

No alcohol or caffeine.

Alcohol is known as a sedative.

What this means is that it knocks you out but also blocks your REM sleep.

REM sleep is essential for emotional and mental health among many other things.

In one study done with rats,

When they deprived them of REM sleep,

They would die nearly as quickly as if they had been totally starved from food.

The presence of alcohol in your body can not only reduce your REM sleep but keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep.

Alcohol also disrupts sleep whereby you wake up many times throughout the night even though you may not notice.

The problem with caffeine is that it's a stimulant.

Caffeine takes 24 to 36 hours to get out of the human body,

Which meaning that it has a quarter life of 12 hours.

Number five,

If you can't sleep,

Don't stay in bed awake because you don't want to make an association with your bed and not being able to sleep.

Number six,

You can sleep anytime between 8pm and 12pm.

Different physiology needs different times.

You will know your time as you will feel sleepy.

Time of night when you sleep makes a significant difference in terms of the structure and quality of your sleep.

Your slumber is composed of a series of 90 minute cycles during which your brain moves from deep,

Non-rapid eye movement called non-REM sleep to REM sleep.

That 90 minute cycle is fairly stable throughout the night but the ratio of non-REM to REM sleep changes.

Non-REM sleep tends to dominate your slumber cycles in the earlier part of the night but as the clock creeps towards daybreak,

REM sleep muscles inwards.

That is significant because some research has suggested that non-REM sleep is deeper and more restorative than lighter,

Dream-infused REM sleep.

Though both offer important benefits.

What does this have to do with the perfect bedtime?

The shift from non-REM to REM sleep happens at certain times of the night,

Regardless of when you go to bed.

So if you hit the sack very late at say 3am,

Your sleep will tilt towards lighter REM heavy sleep.

And that reduction of sleep,

Restorative sleep,

May leave you groggy and blunt minded the next day.

When it comes to bedtime,

There's a window of several hours,

Roughly 8pm to 12pm as previously mentioned,

During which your brain and the body have the opportunity to get all the non-REM sleep and REM shut eye,

They need to function optimally.

Your genetic makeup dictates whether you're more comfortable going to bed early or later within that 8 to midnight window.

Research also shows that teenage and adolescent sleep patterns are hormonally influenced,

And not behavioural quirks.

In the teenage years,

The hormonal response to the 24 hour daylight dark exposure that influences the circadian rhythm is altered,

Making adolescents physiologically yearn to stay awake later at night and to remain asleep later in the day.

It turns out that adolescents have a delayed release of regular daily melatonin,

Which causes them to become sleepy later at night,

Hours after nightfall.

Given the fact that teenagers have an established need for 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night,

The delayed melatonin release that allows teenagers to fall asleep later in the day has the expected effect of predisposing them to remain asleep for longer into the late morning or early afternoon when it is feasible.

7.

Don't exercise too late.

2-3 hours before bedtime,

There should be no exercise.

8.

No heavy meals too late.

9.

Don't nap after 3pm.

There appears to be no issue with napping before this.

10.

Get natural sunlight exposure.

Sun exposure during the day helps us to regulate sleeping patterns.

Try to get outside in the natural light for at least 30 minutes a day.

11.

Sleeping pills.

Matthew Walker says that they induce junk sleep,

And that all you are doing is knocking out your cortex.

Sedation is not sleep,

Nor for all the ease of acquisition are these pills harmless.

12.

Sleep isn't something like a bank account.

You can't make it up.

What this means is that less sleep during the week can't be made up by more sleep on the weekend.

13.

Mortality risk of short sleep.

Those people sleeping 5 hours a night have a 65% higher likelihood of dying at any time.

14.

Don't use the snooze button.

The cardiovascular response to an alarm is actually quite a stressful event to the cardiovascular system.

If you are using the snooze button,

You are repeatedly assaulting your cardiovascular system.

15.

There is some evidence to suggest that maybe we have been designed to have a siesta around 2pm.

There is no evidence though to suggest that double sleep is correct,

Such as sleeping during the night,

Waking up during the night at some point,

Doing some things and then going back to sleep.

I hope this short lecture provides you benefits and helps you sleep better.

Reviews

Great information! Thank you for sharing.

Good but went too fast and cut off in end.

Lots of interesting information.

Very useful information. Thank you 💜 x