Why Do We Need Sleep?
The following article appears in Science Focus magazine (30th July). It features the interview of Dr. Michael Mosley, a British television journalist, producer, presenter, and qualified doctor who has worked for the BBC since 1985, who has recently published a book called "Fast Asleep".
Sleep is absolutely critical for your mental and your physical health, and also your immune system, which is particularly important now, during the coronavirus pandemic.
We know there are different phases of sleep. There is deep sleep, and during deep sleep, for example, an awful lot of repair goes on, your body produces growth hormone and other things. All sorts of components of your immune system, such as cytokines and antibodies, are also created during deep sleep.
We know that if you don’t get enough sleep, it makes you much more vulnerable to infections.
In deep sleep you actually get brainwashing going on. There is a system only recently discovered, called the glymphatic system, which literally opens up during the night, during deep sleep, and fluid wishes and washes through your brain and clears out the gunk.
Plus, during deep sleep, a lot of memories are consolidated and moved from short term into the long term.
If you don’t get enough deep sleep, that puts you at increased risk of things like dementia.
And then there’s another component of sleep, which is REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. That is associated particularly with intense dreams. And it turns out that dreaming is very therapeutic.
It’s this weird stage, REM, where you are sort of paralysed, where you’re having these sort of intense reenactments of the day where a lot of emotional processing goes on.
If you don’t get enough REM sleep, you feel perfectly grouchy and out of sorts. And again, a lot of people reporting some pretty weird dreams during these COVID times. So those are just some of the things that a good night’s sleep does for you.
How much sleep do we actually need?
It’s hugely variable, depending on your age. So when you’re a baby, you probably need more like 14 to 15 hours a day – you get a lot of sleep. And then as a teenager, they probably need around nine to 10 hours, but get an awful lot less. When you’re an adult, it’s probably somewhere in the region of seven hours.
Old Age and Sleep Myth
And there is a myth that as you get older, you need less sleep. In fact, you need just as much, but you just don’t get it.
There are some people who can get by on very short periods of sleep. They call them ‘sleep mutants’. There is a family they found recently, who have a particular genetic profile and they get by quite comfortably on four to five hours. But most people can’t. The evidence is pretty strong that broadly speaking, we need around seven hours.
In fact, for a considerable chunk of that, you’re probably awake. So maybe 10 or 15 per cent of that time, maybe an hour, sometimes more. You’re actually awake.
What’s really important is this concept of sleep efficiency, which is a measure of the amount of time you spend in bed asleep as opposed to in bed. Because the classic sign of an insomniac is they are in bed, but they’re awake, and they’re worrying about stuff. And sleep deficiency is linked to all sorts of mental health issues as well.
What should we do if we’re lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing we could get to sleep, but not being able to? Yes, well that’s one of the problems about reading books about sleep is you start worrying about how much sleep you’re getting and that keeps you awake.
The advice from psychologists is that what you absolutely need to do is associate bed with sleep and sex and nothing else. The problem is that once you get into a bad pattern where you’re looking at your smartphone or you’re watching telly or you are simply awake worrying, then you’ve broken that link between sleep and bed and you have to reassert it.
So the advice is, broadly speaking, that if you wake up in the middle of the night, 3 am, which is the classic form of insomnia, and you feel you’re not going to drift off, then after about 10 or 15 minutes you should get out of bed.
You should find a nice warm space, which you set up earlier with some really boring books or perhaps some music with a rhythm of about 60 or 70 beats a minute. Jazz seems to be particularly good. And you just sit there and chill out until you feel relaxed and you feel sleepy and then you go back to bed.
This seems to be a very effective way. Just lying there, worrying about it and worrying about how bad you’re going to feel the next morning is one of the worst things you can do.
It’s hard to keep those boundaries, especially now, isn’t it? It is. It’s very hard indeed. I’m fortunate at the moment that I have a house where I can find the space.
So how can I improve my sleep efficiency?
The main thing you can do is to keep to a sleep window. That means waking up at the same time every day, and try to stick to that time rigorously.
When I get out of bed, I open the curtains and I get a good old dose of light because we know that’s really important for resetting the internal clock.
When it comes to meals, meals seem to be quite important, particularly towards the end of the day. You should try to avoid eating within about three hours of bedtime. You need to have good wind-down routine.
Some people like to have a nap. But I don’t because I find that reduces my sleep drive. So when I go to bed, I want to make sure that I’m going to go to sleep pretty fast.
Beyond that, if you wake up in the middle of night, there are also some breathing exercises you can practise. One of them that I like is called four, two, four.
Unfortunately, weekend lie-ins, although lovely, are probably not terribly good. It's almost like jet lag. If you get up say three hours later, then that would be the equivalent of travelling to Athens for the weekend. What you do there is you breathe in through your nose to a count of four. Hold it for two and then out again for your mouth to the count of four. You just do that for a minute or two.
You’ll find is your heart rate will drop, and the drop in the heart rate is one that triggers for sleep. It’s very kind of calming. It’s best to practise it during the day as well. Any time you feel stressed. These sort of breathing exercises are unbelievably effective and they just kind of distract you as well.
There is another approach to it which some people try, though I personally find it quite challenging, which is called acceptance theory. And I write a bit about that. And that’s what you kind of just learn to accept the fact you’re awake, you challenge the thoughts you are having, so if you’re thinking, gosh, I’m awake again, I’m gonna feel terrible tomorrow and those sort of thoughts, but then think, “okay, it’s fine”, you’ll generally find you go back to sleep again.
Another approach is to do something like meditation. I try to do that during the day, but again, some people find that’s brilliant at nighttime.
But it’s tricky if you haven’t already got into the habit of just taking up something in the middle of the night is never a good idea. It ought to be something that you’ve already kind of incorporated into your life. Mindfulness is very effective as well.
Because of the lockdown we may be spending more time in our homes and bedrooms, not sleeping, than ever was before. Is that causing sleep problems? Have you been having sleep problems? It can be about stress and things like that, but it is also about the breakdown of routine. And as you said, spending a lot more time in your bedroom.
Now you can try to allocate bits of your bedroom to different tasks. So you have a bit of the bedroom where perhaps you work or you do whatever you do, and then the bed is the bit where you sleep. You do not take your laptop to bed with you. You do not take your phone to bed with you.
The only thing is maybe a boring book which you read and that’s kind of it. So one part of the bedroom is work, play, other stuff, and the other side is ‘this is where I sleep’. It’s really about establishing habits. That is hugely important.
Beyond that, another component, which is not widely recognised, is the importance of the impact of food on sleep. What you eat really does have a big impact, partly because of its effect on mood, but also because of its effect on the microbiome, on the, you know, the microbes that live in your gut. And they in turn, if you feed them right, seemed to produce sort of sleep-inducing chemicals. So it’s about what you eat, it’s about routine and it’s a number of other things as well.
So what should we be eating to help us sleep better?
A lot of fibre. Fibre seems to be particularly good for your microbiome. I bang on about the Mediterranean diet because it has so many benefits – there’s a lot of research now showing that Mediterranean diet seems to be beneficial because it also feeds your microbiome.
The good diet with nuts, legumes, plenty of veg and things like that. Olive oil seems to be a key component as well. If you have all these things, then that seems to be a broadly anti-inflammatory diet. And there’s mounting evidence that depression, anxiety, are at least in part induced by inflammation in the brain, and so an anti-inflammatory diet seems to be good at reducing your risk of all sorts of things heart disease, cancer, diabetes, but also sleeplessness.
So if you can kind of shift into that sort of diet, then that seems to be a really good way to go in terms of sleep, but also all the other things.
Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/sleep-dr-michael-mosley-on-what-it-is-why-we-need-it-and-how-to-get-more/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=FOC2&utm_campaign=Science%20Focus%20Newsletter_385017_Focus_Automated%20Newsletters
Sleep is absolutely critical for your mental and your physical health, and also your immune system, which is particularly important now, during the coronavirus pandemic.
We know there are different phases of sleep. There is deep sleep, and during deep sleep, for example, an awful lot of repair goes on, your body produces growth hormone and other things. All sorts of components of your immune system, such as cytokines and antibodies, are also created during deep sleep.
We know that if you don’t get enough sleep, it makes you much more vulnerable to infections.
In deep sleep you actually get brainwashing going on. There is a system only recently discovered, called the glymphatic system, which literally opens up during the night, during deep sleep, and fluid wishes and washes through your brain and clears out the gunk.
If you don’t get enough deep sleep, that puts you at increased risk of things like dementia.
And then there’s another component of sleep, which is REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. That is associated particularly with intense dreams. And it turns out that dreaming is very therapeutic.
It’s this weird stage, REM, where you are sort of paralysed, where you’re having these sort of intense reenactments of the day where a lot of emotional processing goes on.
If you don’t get enough REM sleep, you feel perfectly grouchy and out of sorts. And again, a lot of people reporting some pretty weird dreams during these COVID times. So those are just some of the things that a good night’s sleep does for you.
How much sleep do we actually need?
It’s hugely variable, depending on your age. So when you’re a baby, you probably need more like 14 to 15 hours a day – you get a lot of sleep. And then as a teenager, they probably need around nine to 10 hours, but get an awful lot less. When you’re an adult, it’s probably somewhere in the region of seven hours.
Old Age and Sleep Myth
And there is a myth that as you get older, you need less sleep. In fact, you need just as much, but you just don’t get it.
There are some people who can get by on very short periods of sleep. They call them ‘sleep mutants’. There is a family they found recently, who have a particular genetic profile and they get by quite comfortably on four to five hours. But most people can’t. The evidence is pretty strong that broadly speaking, we need around seven hours.
In fact, for a considerable chunk of that, you’re probably awake. So maybe 10 or 15 per cent of that time, maybe an hour, sometimes more. You’re actually awake.
What’s really important is this concept of sleep efficiency, which is a measure of the amount of time you spend in bed asleep as opposed to in bed. Because the classic sign of an insomniac is they are in bed, but they’re awake, and they’re worrying about stuff. And sleep deficiency is linked to all sorts of mental health issues as well.
What should we do if we’re lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing we could get to sleep, but not being able to? Yes, well that’s one of the problems about reading books about sleep is you start worrying about how much sleep you’re getting and that keeps you awake.
So the advice is, broadly speaking, that if you wake up in the middle of the night, 3 am, which is the classic form of insomnia, and you feel you’re not going to drift off, then after about 10 or 15 minutes you should get out of bed.
You should find a nice warm space, which you set up earlier with some really boring books or perhaps some music with a rhythm of about 60 or 70 beats a minute. Jazz seems to be particularly good. And you just sit there and chill out until you feel relaxed and you feel sleepy and then you go back to bed.
This seems to be a very effective way. Just lying there, worrying about it and worrying about how bad you’re going to feel the next morning is one of the worst things you can do.
It’s hard to keep those boundaries, especially now, isn’t it? It is. It’s very hard indeed. I’m fortunate at the moment that I have a house where I can find the space.
So how can I improve my sleep efficiency?
The main thing you can do is to keep to a sleep window. That means waking up at the same time every day, and try to stick to that time rigorously.
When I get out of bed, I open the curtains and I get a good old dose of light because we know that’s really important for resetting the internal clock.
When it comes to meals, meals seem to be quite important, particularly towards the end of the day. You should try to avoid eating within about three hours of bedtime. You need to have good wind-down routine.
Some people like to have a nap. But I don’t because I find that reduces my sleep drive. So when I go to bed, I want to make sure that I’m going to go to sleep pretty fast.
Beyond that, if you wake up in the middle of night, there are also some breathing exercises you can practise. One of them that I like is called four, two, four.
You’ll find is your heart rate will drop, and the drop in the heart rate is one that triggers for sleep. It’s very kind of calming. It’s best to practise it during the day as well. Any time you feel stressed. These sort of breathing exercises are unbelievably effective and they just kind of distract you as well.
There is another approach to it which some people try, though I personally find it quite challenging, which is called acceptance theory. And I write a bit about that. And that’s what you kind of just learn to accept the fact you’re awake, you challenge the thoughts you are having, so if you’re thinking, gosh, I’m awake again, I’m gonna feel terrible tomorrow and those sort of thoughts, but then think, “okay, it’s fine”, you’ll generally find you go back to sleep again.
Another approach is to do something like meditation. I try to do that during the day, but again, some people find that’s brilliant at nighttime.
But it’s tricky if you haven’t already got into the habit of just taking up something in the middle of the night is never a good idea. It ought to be something that you’ve already kind of incorporated into your life. Mindfulness is very effective as well.
Because of the lockdown we may be spending more time in our homes and bedrooms, not sleeping, than ever was before. Is that causing sleep problems? Have you been having sleep problems? It can be about stress and things like that, but it is also about the breakdown of routine. And as you said, spending a lot more time in your bedroom.
Now you can try to allocate bits of your bedroom to different tasks. So you have a bit of the bedroom where perhaps you work or you do whatever you do, and then the bed is the bit where you sleep. You do not take your laptop to bed with you. You do not take your phone to bed with you.
The only thing is maybe a boring book which you read and that’s kind of it. So one part of the bedroom is work, play, other stuff, and the other side is ‘this is where I sleep’. It’s really about establishing habits. That is hugely important.
Beyond that, another component, which is not widely recognised, is the importance of the impact of food on sleep. What you eat really does have a big impact, partly because of its effect on mood, but also because of its effect on the microbiome, on the, you know, the microbes that live in your gut. And they in turn, if you feed them right, seemed to produce sort of sleep-inducing chemicals. So it’s about what you eat, it’s about routine and it’s a number of other things as well.
So what should we be eating to help us sleep better?
A lot of fibre. Fibre seems to be particularly good for your microbiome. I bang on about the Mediterranean diet because it has so many benefits – there’s a lot of research now showing that Mediterranean diet seems to be beneficial because it also feeds your microbiome.
So if you can kind of shift into that sort of diet, then that seems to be a really good way to go in terms of sleep, but also all the other things.
Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/sleep-dr-michael-mosley-on-what-it-is-why-we-need-it-and-how-to-get-more/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=FOC2&utm_campaign=Science%20Focus%20Newsletter_385017_Focus_Automated%20Newsletters
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