You are destroying your sleep if you don't take these three things into consideration
All you ever wanted to know and understand about sleep, and more. - part 1
If you are reading this because you had a bad night's sleep, or even a couple of them in a row, then this is the most important advice of the whole piece: Do nothing.
Don’t go to sleep earlier, and don’t sleep in the next day. Stay with your rhythm. Don’t try to make up for the lack of sleep. The truth is, that there aren’t many things you can do to compensate for a bad night’s sleep. There is, however, a lot to do (as you will see) in order to improve your sleep overall and avoid the next bad night from ever happening.
The return on your investment in sleep is astronomical - it is the tide that moves ALL boats!
So first, let’s talk about the fundamentals of sleep, so you can fix whatever problem you are facing.
There are mainly three factors controlling your sleep:
Adenosine: A substance that starts building up in your body the moment you wake up. It’s referred to as the ‘sleep pressure’. Adenosine is usually what makes people tired. It gets cleared out by sleep,1 which is why we feel better after having slept or napped.
Melatonin is often referred to as the dark hormone. It acts as the ‘timekeeper’ in your body and resets the 24h rhythm so you don’t drift away from that.
Body temperature: Sleep is almost entirely mediated by your body’s temperature, or better yet the variation of it. Even though this variation is relatively small, without it you wouldn’t fall asleep and you wouldn’t stay asleep.
One good way to describe the dependency between adenosine, melatonin, and the right body temperature for quality sleep, is to compare it to a three-legged stool. Each of the three factors - adenosine, melatonin, and your body temperature - is one leg of the stool. If any one of these legs is not present or is not functioning properly, the stool becomes unstable and unable to support the weight of a person.
equivalently, if any of these factors is not present or is not functioning properly, it can disrupt the ability to get quality sleep. And if we continue this metaphor - when all three legs are present and functioning properly, the stool becomes very stable and supports a person comfortably, just as having all three factors present and functioning properly allows for good quality sleep.
There certainly are other things influencing your sleep, and we will have a look at those, however, if you understand what influences these three things then you can fix 99% of all sleep problems for yourself.
If you want to know all about sleep, you can watch this 3-hour episode with Dr. Matt Walker2, interviewed by the one and only - Andrew Huberman:
For everyone who is a bit short on time (my guess is… everyone…) here are the basics, and the answers to your most pressing questions.
How much sleep do you need?
Before we get to the answer - a warning for all you people out there trying to get away with less and less sleep based on techniques like the - ‘uberman’3 schedule. Nature had 3.5 million years4 to slice away at sleep, but still, we do it - almost entirely across all species. Don’t try to outsmart evolution, you won't win, because when you start fighting biology - you’ve already lost.
Now, back to the main question; A healthy sleep length, is between 7-9h long, and has an efficiency of ~ 85% or more. Efficiency means the time in bed that is actually spent sleeping. Both the quality of sleep and the quantity are equally important, and you can’t have one without the other.
Waking up during the night is normal. For example, when we shift body positions. If you fall back asleep within 5-15 minutes, there is nothing to worry about. However, if it takes you 20 or even 25 minutes to fall back asleep, this post might be of special interest to you.
How is sleep controlled?
There are so many things influencing your sleep, that it can feel overwhelming to sort through them. However, always remember the three basics:
Melatonin is the ‘timekeeper’, that tells you when to go to sleep.
Adenosine is the ‘sleep pressure’, that knocks you down to sleep.
Your body temperature is ‘the conductor’ that, like for an orchestra, keeps all the individual mechanisms in line.
Your body temperature mediates sleep: your body temperature varies throughout the day and night and follows a beautiful curve, therefore everything that has an influence on your body temperature, can in fact influence your sleep.
As you can see, your body’s temperature has its lowest point approximately one-and-a-half hours before you wake up. The maximum occurs late in the afternoon5, and then, it begins to decline again. All you need to do is remember these two anchor points, and by controlling and shifting them around you will eventually take control of your sleep. You can learn here, why what you do in the morning has an influence on how you fall asleep at night.
What about naps?
Naps can be a great tool to catch up on sleep, but you have to be careful.
Napping, like sleeping at night will clear out some of that adenosine to reduce the pressure you feel to go to sleep. In that way, naps can be a great tool to catch up on sleep and feel more refreshed later in the day. However, you have to be careful. If you are someone who has trouble falling asleep then clearing out adenosine during the day is a terrible idea. It will make it even harder for you to fall asleep quickly at night.
If you are like me, asleep before your head hits the pillow, then there is a good chance that you could benefit from a little nap during the day (and I mean a little nap- a nap should not be longer than 30 minutes).
Apparently, NASA experimented with naps in the 90th and found that naps of 26 min can improve mission performance by 34% and overall daytime alertness by 50%!
What else needs to be said about sleep?
Biology works in averages. Just because you had one bad night of sleep doesn’t mean that all is lost. You can use that to your advantage.
In the next post, we will look at everything you can do to influence your sleep quality and rhythm to get the most out of it. In the meantime, I encourage you to be your own sleep detective, and try to understand how the things you do influence one of the three components needed for sleep. Instead of looking for the latest hack or trick, most people would benefit greatly from understanding the fundamentals. That’s what I tried to do with this post, by giving you the background. You really don’t need to remember a hundred tricks - just the fundamentals, and how they are influenced.
As always let me know what you think in the comments or answer this email. I read every email myself and try to answer quickly.
Have a successful day and a restful night.
GNF
There are other things, like different types of sports, for example, that can get rid of some adenosine.
Dr. Matthew Paul Walker - is a scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his degree in neuroscience from Nottingham University, UK, and his Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the Medical Research Council, London, UK. He subsequently became a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, USA. Currently, he is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science.
‘Uberman’ Sleep Schedule: Six 20-minute naps are spaced evenly throughout the day, totaling two hours of sleep per day. ‘Everyman’ Sleep Schedule: This schedule includes sleeping for three hours during the night and supplementing with three 20-minute naps throughout the day, for a total of four hours of sleep each day.
Although dr. Walker said 3.5 million years in this conversation, according to the ‘Smithsonian’ (and other sources), one of our earliest-known ancestors, ‘Sahelanthropus’, began the transition from an ape-like movement some six million years ago. that’s a long time for evolution to perfect a ‘no-sleep’ solution, don’t you think?
Thank you! I think that sleep is something we overlook in terms of how important it is, not only to our physical health, but maybe even more important for our mental/emotional health.
When reading numerous studies and essays on the things we should be doing to be happier and healthier humans, sleep is often one of the first things cited.