Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life. It enriches a diversity of functions, and affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being.
Matthew Walker has made abundantly clear that sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when it is absent. Compared to the other basic drives in life—eating, drinking, and reproducing—the purpose of sleep remains more elusive.
Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity.
Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night’s sleep every night.
Key Takeaways
Not only is sleep productive, it might be the most productive thing you do all day.
During a full night of sleep, our brains transition between three types of sleep:
- REM Sleep (dream sleep) Improves our ability to make sense of information and any emotions connected to that information..
- Light Sleep mental refresh which renews your ability to remember new facts. Improves our ability to learn new information.
- Deep Sleep think of deep sleep as a mail delivery service. Improves our ability to recall information.
Every 90 minutes we cycle through these 3 phases of sleep, but not every sleep cycle is the same.
If we fail to get a full nights sleep (7-9 hours) and miss any part of our deep, light of REM sleep, we will remember less, learn less, and understand far less. Without a full nights sleep it is impossible to be our best selves.
To ensure that we get a full 7-9 hours of sleep each night, sleep needs to be our number one priority during the day. Treat it like the most important meeting of the day. To be ready for that meeting, and fall into a deep sleep every day, build nightly habits based on two pillars of sleep hygiene.
Dark when your brain detects light, especially the bus spectrum in light, it suppresses the release of melatonin, which is the neurochemical which triggers your first sleep cycle and provides the initial push you need to fall into a deep sleep. Even small sources of light (like an iPad, iPhone or lamp) can have a profound effect on melatonin.
- When the sun goes down, you can put on blue light blocking sunglasses. They simply filter out the majority of blue light hitting your eyes so you can watch tv or be on your phone at night without profoundly impacting your sleep.
- A little before going to bed, start reading print book under a red light that emits almost no blue light.
- When it’s time to sleep, put on a sleep mask for total darkness.
Cool our body temperature needs to drop 2-3 degrees fahrenheit to fall into a deep sleep, but this is often had for the body to do when our houses stay at room temperature.
- Program your thermostat to 65 degrees every night at 9pm.
- Keep this temperature throughout the night to ensure a higher quality of sleep.
- Right before bed, take a hot shower, which seems counterintuitive, but what happens when you take a hot bath or a hot shower is your body heat goes to the surface of your body, then dissipates into the atmosphere once you get out of the bath or shower.
- This dissipation of heat immediately drops your core temperature to the ideal temperature for sleep.
Focus on dark and cool prior to sleep to get your full 7-9 hours of sleep so that you can reap the benefits of all three types of sleep. When you experience deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep, you strengthen your memory, your ability to learn, and your ability to make sense of complex problems and recover from emotional setbacks.
