00:00:00
They just don't have the education. So our own doctors do not have enough education is something that we do a third of our lives. If you are waking up
00:00:06
in the middle of the night and it's been happen to you over and over again to resolve the habit, you're going to have
00:00:11
to [Music]
00:00:19
sleep. It's a thing that we all do every day, but for some reason in our society, it's still a little bit of a mystery.
00:00:25
How many hours should we be sleeping? What is sleep debt? Is there a perfect sleep routine? Should I wake up at a
00:00:32
certain time? Why do I get sleep paralysis, insomnia? Why do I have these dreams? My next guest, Stephanie
00:00:39
Ramoski, worked with NASA and Harvard Medical School to understand these
00:00:44
questions. Stephanie currently works as a sleep physiologist, helping people cure and understand their insomnia and
00:00:50
sleep disorders. So, without further ado, my name is Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is
00:00:56
listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. [Music]
00:01:07
Stephanie, the first question I wanted to ask you, and I've got millions and millions of
00:01:12
questions to ask you because this is a a topic which I, as I said before we started chatting on air, um has really
00:01:20
piqu an interest over the last three years. I've never had so many of my friends in my sort of close circle ask
00:01:25
me questions about sleep, send me articles about sleep. And I don't know what's happened, but as a nation and as
00:01:31
a as a species, I think we've got really really curious about this idea of sleep and also its importance. The first
00:01:36
question I wanted to ask you was how important sleep is. But I think a better way to understand that and the answer is
00:01:44
to actually look at the consequences you've seen in your line of work um for
00:01:50
people that have bad sleep or that have insomnia. Um so could you speak to that
00:01:56
a little bit? I can. That's a big big question. Um,
00:02:01
what I have seen over the last 16 years of my career is not people coming in
00:02:06
dying because they aren't sleeping or uh with really really significant illnesses. I've seen people very
00:02:14
anxious, very stressed, very low because their sleep is poor and they are extremely worried about it. And I've
00:02:21
seen people who are, you know, at the top of their game and doing really well in life but are completely crippled by
00:02:28
these sleep problems. But it is the fear of bad things, worse things happening to
00:02:33
them that is keeping them as stressed and upset as they are. So it's quite interesting because I think the the
00:02:40
things that bring people to me to get their sleep treated are exactly that
00:02:46
that fear is actually what I'm trying to alleviate rather than um fixing their
00:02:51
sleep because I think they're going to get so sick that something terrible is going to happen to them. Um so it's a really interesting question
00:02:56
to ask. How does sleep affect us? The reality is we actually we or why do we
00:03:02
sleep? We don't know actually why we sleep. We know what happens when we don't sleep. But I think we're getting
00:03:09
very very confused between those of us that struggle with sleep and those that
00:03:14
are actively depriving themselves of sleep like the CEO who says, "I'll sleep
00:03:19
when I'm dead," for example. Sure. Um, but you know, those of us who are actively trying to sleep when we
00:03:26
can't and we will do anything and we we we make our sleep opportunities larger
00:03:31
and we still can't get sleep. We're not depriving ourselves of sleep. We're doing anything we can to get sleep. So,
00:03:37
I I worry about the amounts out there about sleep at the moment and the way
00:03:43
that it's the information is being disseminated because I think that's where we're going a bit wrong and all
00:03:48
the tracking of sleep and all the tech that comes out. I'm not saying it's it's a bad thing. I'm just saying that it's
00:03:54
almost like we haven't quite caught up with all the information that we have and we can't cope with it quite the way
00:04:01
we need to. So you you speak about the tech that we have now, Apple watches,
00:04:06
all these little, you know, smart devices that are telling us how many hours a day we're sleeping. And also, there's, you know, books. There's
00:04:12
probably a couple books on the shelf behind me about the perfect night's sleep or the perfect morning routine or the perfect time to wake up. Where is
00:04:18
the [ __ ] Oh my god. Again, another massive question. Um, there is so much of it.
00:04:25
It's it's all it's so nuanced. you're going to have to ask me some specifics because there is so much there that
00:04:32
actually is I mean well the first thing the biggest thing I would say is you know going to bed at exactly the same
00:04:38
time every night dictating your bedtime is probably the worst piece of advice I've ever heard and sends people off on
00:04:45
all sorts of different tangents which does not help if anything it makes their insomnia worse because they go to bed in
00:04:51
the dark not able to sleep getting more anxious heart rate going up
00:04:56
what should they do instead stay up until they're sleepy. Don't worry about it. Enjoy yourself. Relax.
00:05:02
Do the things that you probably don't get time to do because you're busy doing all the other things during the day. Is the problem I have with that
00:05:08
approach, which is the approach that I think I've adopted maybe a little bit too much or incorrectly is if I stayed
00:05:15
up doing the things that I want to do. What happens is I'll stay up till 7 a.m. just looking at YouTube videos and learning about rockets and looking at
00:05:22
like stocks to invest in and stuff. That's that's me to a tea. At some point I have to put my laptop down and be like
00:05:27
Steve just you're going to feel awful tomorrow if you carry on looking at this investment fund that you think is interesting.
00:05:32
Yeah absolutely to to a degree you can I mean we can manipulate our bodies to do anything in a lab I could manipulate
00:05:38
your body to sleep when I wanted it to sleep. Um but that's taking away all the environmental factors all the behavioral
00:05:44
factors of your life. Um and what you're doing now you know what it's not the end of the world. You know you're obviously coping with it and
00:05:50
you're healthy. Um the problem is you probably won't be able to sustain that and unfortunately we are built in such a
00:05:56
way that kind of goes with the the light dark cycles on this planet. Um and so to
00:06:02
a degree you are sort of going against that and unfortunately we've got lots of other we've got lots of research showing
00:06:07
that after a while you just can't do that forever without implication. Um so it's not I mean if you think about
00:06:14
it insomnia is just a different pattern of sleep. You've just trained your brain to sleep differently and you're still
00:06:20
surviving with it. It's just that most of us don't like that because it's not the rest of society in the way that they're sleeping. Um, and our friends
00:06:27
are sleeping and and and it feels like we're the only ones awake in the night. I bet if you didn't have all those
00:06:32
things to do and you weren't the way you were and you were up at night and everybody else around you is asleep, it
00:06:38
would start to feel like a very lonely um, anxious place. We're not very rational at night. We're not really made
00:06:43
to think in the middle of the night. So, we're not incredibly rational. So, I don't think it's the end of the world
00:06:48
what you're doing. But at the same time, put it this way, I treat a lot of entrepreneurs when they've retired and
00:06:55
they're still fairly young but not in a good place because they have not followed anything that was fairly going
00:07:04
along with what our physiological processes want to do. Our bodies are all about regulation. We have clocks in every cell in every part of our body.
00:07:11
Um, and they like regulation. They like time. They like the timing of things to be ready. um and and regular. And when
00:07:18
we keep changing those goalposts, it might seem like we're being uber flexible, but actually the reality the
00:07:24
reality is is that later on down the line, you'll probably find that you won't be able to cope with it as much.
00:07:30
And how how how does that manifest itself for me? So So for you, if you just carried on the way you were, then unfortunately, yeah,
00:07:36
we probably would see that um maybe you were getting less sleep than you needed. Um it probably would be harder for you
00:07:43
maybe when you settled into a routine where you were working at around the same hours every day. Say you got a
00:07:49
certain kind of uh role that you had to do which made you know you had to have a certain schedule. You might find it
00:07:55
quite difficult after a while to stick to that schedule. Um you might find that
00:08:01
you aren't able to sleep as much as you want. The duration and the quality will be impaired. And so you might start all
00:08:08
the research around sleep and and how important it is for you. You might start noticing things like your cognitive
00:08:14
abilities are less. So your memory, things like that. Um your ability to uh
00:08:20
produce cytoines, so the proteins that help us with um uh keeping ourselves healthy and uh keeping uh inflammation
00:08:27
at bay and things like that, all those kind of things will be reduced. your healing. So when you go and weight training or something like that or you
00:08:33
go to the gym and you want your muscles to repair, they're not going to be able to do that so well. And of course that
00:08:39
over time, short term, it's not a problem. Over time, long term, that's when we start worrying about more
00:08:46
significant illnesses and um disorders that are happening as we get older. And
00:08:52
so that's why we see lots of research showing that as we get older, maybe some of these things like Alzheimer's might
00:08:59
be related to how we treated our sleep when we were younger. However, I hate it. I hate mentioning things like that
00:09:04
because I think it frightens people. And the problem is with frightening people is that they go into what they think is
00:09:10
most logical things to do. So, they might go away after this podcast and think, "Oh my god, I've just got to go
00:09:15
away and get my 8 hours because the rest of the information is telling them out there that they've got to get this 8
00:09:21
hours of sleep every night." Um, and of course, they can't just get that. You can't dictate to your body how it
00:09:26
sleeps. There is a process. It follows it. And so, unfortunately, you can never force yourself to sleep. You can force
00:09:32
yourself not to sleep. And that is partly how you fix a sleep problem, but you can never force yourself to sleep.
00:09:38
But you can induce anxiety and stress and depression through that and lack of sleep. So yeah,
00:09:45
in um well if you're an expert in this field so you must as you kind of spoke to there you must get pretty I can feel
00:09:52
it when you're speaking get pretty pissed off when you see unhelpful information um being pushed on I don't
00:09:58
know social media or online or through books these sort of simplified narratives. What are some of the most um
00:10:03
common misconceptions that you speak to your patients about? You mentioned one there about this like eight hours of
00:10:09
sleep being the optimal. Yeah. And even when I put out on my Instagram earlier, what are the key questions you want to
00:10:14
ask? Um I'm speaking to a sleep therapist expert today. Um I'd say the vast majority or at least the medium
00:10:21
question was uh do I need to get exactly seven or eight hours sleep every single night? Um yeah, so that is
00:10:28
definitely the biggest one we get. Um you do not that perfection is the enemy of the good. Have you ever heard that
00:10:34
term? Because at the end of the day it's true. Yes, your body loves consistency and regulation, but that does not mean
00:10:40
you have to get 8 hours of sleep every night. Think about it differently. Think about it over a month, for example. We
00:10:46
love this idea of the way the way we look at time is slightly different to the way your body looks at time. And
00:10:52
over a month, you might actually be all right. So maybe one night you get six and a half hours, the next night you get
00:10:58
seven and a half, and then the next night you might get slightly different. As long as it's fairly consistent and maybe 80% of the time you're doing
00:11:04
fairly well and you're you're giving yourself the right opportunity to sleep, that's okay. Your body's going to do,
00:11:10
you know, it will do what it needs to do. And and with that, a caveat to that is this understanding of sleep debt. So,
00:11:16
we don't understand sleep debt properly. People think it's an eye for an eye. I lose 4 hours, I must gain 4 hours. Well,
00:11:22
what happens when your body being as efficient as it is doesn't actually need you to gain an extra 4 hours of sleep to
00:11:28
recover you? your expectation is that it should. And when your expectation doesn't get met, you get upset about it
00:11:34
and you change your behavior. And that's when you start getting sleep problems. When the reality is your brain is so
00:11:40
smart that even in the certain amount of hours that you get normally at night, it can recover you from that sleep
00:11:46
deprivation by just improving or increasing the sleep stage that it thinks you missed the most, for example.
00:11:52
But because we have a lack of education, we believe we don't get some sleep, we need to regain that sleep. And when we
00:11:58
don't regain that sleep, that's when the anxieties and the stresses over not sleeping start. So that's a big one, the sleep debt one. The other one is this
00:12:05
idea that fatigue and sleepiness are the same things. So yes, when we don't sleep well, we get a lot of fatigue. So
00:12:11
fatigue is anything from feeling like your body needs to rest to needing to shut your eyes to pain to your brain
00:12:20
buzzing because you've been working so hard for like 48 hours straight and you don't know what to do with yourself. But
00:12:26
the only definition of sleepiness is the ability to shut your eyes and within a few minutes you're falling asleep. So if
00:12:32
you were saying to me right now, Steph, I am so so sleepy. I'd probably say to you, well, you don't look it
00:12:37
because right now you don't look tired in the way that I would expect you to be falling asleep. I mean, you wouldn't be able to sit still. You you would be sort
00:12:45
of probably your eyes would be shutting all the time, dozing off, having little micro sleeps. That's sleepiness. And
00:12:51
that's what we should really be understanding as a cue to sleep. So in
00:12:56
the evenings, if you're not feeling that, then don't be don't be worried. Give yourself permission to stay up
00:13:02
later because you can't dictate what happens to you during the day. And there are so many variables that affect your
00:13:07
sleep. You are never going to be able to control of them. Having good sleep hygiene. How many good sleepers do you
00:13:13
know have it? So good sleep hygiene is all these things that we get told we should do. So, the 10 top things that
00:13:18
you should do, have a warm bath, never drink coffee ever again, um never have alcohol, you know, all these things that
00:13:25
you're supposed to do. But if you look at good sleepers, are they following all those things? No, they're not. And they're still sleeping really well. And
00:13:32
that's to show that most of the time sleeping poorly comes down to brain
00:13:37
training and the patterns we get ourselves into. you start going to bed early, you might be able to get to sleep
00:13:43
earlier, but you're probably not going to be able to uh have that sleep all the way through the night because at some
00:13:49
point or another, your body's going to be like, "Well, you've had enough now." But your expectation is you should be able to sleep till 7 and why didn't I
00:13:55
sleep till 7:00? Or if you lie in, you keep changing the goalpost of your wake up time, which is the most important
00:14:01
thing that you should be looking at, not your bedtime. Um, if you keep changing that goalpost, your body doesn't know
00:14:06
when to feed you. It doesn't know when to make you feel alert because you you've changed everything. And so, of course, you're not going to be sleepy at
00:14:13
the right time in the time you wake up is the the a much more important time to be focused on.
00:14:19
Yes. The things your morning routine is going to be way more important than your evening routine when it comes to your
00:14:25
sleep at night. But be-c because people see that as a far away time compared to when you go to sleep, they don't really
00:14:32
focus on it. In fact, haven't we been taught in this society that lying in is a luxury? I can't believe that we have
00:14:38
made it okay at the weekend to lie in so much, but during the week, one of the only things that gets us up is work. It
00:14:46
makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm not saying it's the worst thing in the world. I'm not saying I never lie in,
00:14:52
but I don't use it as a compensatory method for a bad night's sleep because that's when you're going to get into trouble
00:14:58
cuz that's kind of throwing your your your schedule off. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So if you lie in on the
00:15:03
weekends and you're going to pay for it at some other point, right? Yeah. Why are we not looking, you know, if you have to lie in so significantly
00:15:09
every single weekend, why are we not looking at during the week and thinking, why am I doing this to myself at the
00:15:15
time when I need it the most, I will choose to get less sleep and then at the weekend I'll just compensate.
00:15:21
And people and you much of the conversation around sleep in society talks about the amount of hours and it's
00:15:27
almost like the amount of hours that I was in the bed. M um what what's your sort of rebuttal to
00:15:34
that? Cuz quality over quantity every single time. Every single time. And if you have good
00:15:40
quality and you need longer, your body will tell you and you will get more sleep. But people are so obsessed with
00:15:48
duration. And I I think people don't understand what I mean by sleep opportunity. I mean every single night,
00:15:55
most of the time, so about 80% of the time, I will give myself a 7 to eight
00:16:00
hour sleep opportunity, sleep window. But I do not mean that if I'm not sleepy, I take myself into a dark room
00:16:07
and shut myself down. I just know that it's there. I've got a bedroom, a place I really want to be to sleep that is
00:16:14
available to me during those hours and I will not sleep outside those hours. And that's the that is the big thing is you
00:16:22
can dictate to your body when you don't sleep but you cannot dictate when you do. And by doing that you will force
00:16:28
your body to be in a nice regular cycle. It's actually really really simple once you know how to do it. And every time I
00:16:35
fix someone of their insomnia there and honestly 50 60 years of insomnia they
00:16:40
often turn around to me they're like I don't know why I wasn't taught this um when I was younger. And I do believe if
00:16:46
we taught everyone how to sleep properly, give them a proper sleep education when they're little, I wouldn't exist. Insomnia wouldn't exist.
00:16:53
You talked there when you referenced your own bedroom. I think you you spoke about it quite lovingly. Should I have
00:16:59
this place I like to sleep? How important is that? How important is it to sleep in the same place and for that
00:17:04
space to be is there a certain way I should be designing my bedroom? Is there like a bed that's good or like a pillow?
00:17:10
You know, because there's lots of fads around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of fads around. I think your environment is important, but I can't dictate to you
00:17:16
what that is because we're all so different. Um, yes, it's true. You don't need loads of technology in your bedroom
00:17:23
to sleep. I'm not saying technology can't aid our sleep because I think in the future we're going to come up with some crazy cool things that are going to
00:17:30
really help us. I just think right now we're not quite there. I think the least you have in your bedroom that remind you of the day is
00:17:36
really important. So obviously screens and light uh is very important when it comes to sleep. But I think people miss
00:17:43
are missing a trick when when we say don't look at your phones. We're not just saying don't look at your phones because of the light exposure. We're
00:17:50
saying it because it's reminding your brain of something that you did during the day. And so your brain being the smart thing that it is is thinking okay
00:17:58
well I'll um I'll I'll I'll increase your cortisol and I'll reduce your melatonin which is your stress and your
00:18:05
sleepy hormone uh hormones. um and I'm going to help you be more alert because
00:18:10
you clearly want to be alert right now. And so your brain thinks it's helping you. And then you're thinking, hang on a
00:18:15
minute, I just looked at my phone for like 3 seconds and now I'm buzzing. Why? And it's just because your brain is your
00:18:21
your behavior is so much more influential on your physiology than you realize.
00:18:27
What do you think about the snooze button? Um I think if you have to use it on a
00:18:32
regular basis, you need to start questioning why you always need to snooze. Unfortunately, the research shows that snoozing does not benefit us
00:18:39
at all. And actually, if you think about it, if if if you are a snoozer, you know, how many times does it actually
00:18:45
make us feel better? Doesn't Exactly. delays. Sorry. No, I I think it's nonsense as well. I
00:18:51
did I one of my modules when I was doing psychology in school was about sleep and um understanding the different phases of
00:18:58
sleep made me realize that the snooze button is I think totally pointless because it's you have to be in a certain
00:19:04
phase of sleep for you to get real benefits and within 15 minutes it's get to that phase
00:19:09
right absolutely um a lot of people when they you know when they knew that I was speaking to
00:19:14
you today um they want to know how they can sleep better in the short term tonight
00:19:19
they're looking for some kind of quick fix to the to a problem they've had for a long time. What would you say to those people?
00:19:25
Okay, so the first thing I'd say is that you're never going to find that reactive very quick method. It's never going to
00:19:32
happen. And even if you find it, I promise you it won't work in the long term. It might control your condition in
00:19:37
the short term, but not in the long term. I can teach you how to re to sleep, but it's going to take you a few
00:19:43
weeks, not a night. Um, but in the meantime, don't worry. It's okay. like
00:19:48
part part of this is I just there is a solution. So what I do is called cognitive behavioral therapy for
00:19:54
insomnia. It is not the same as CBT for depression or anxiety or anything else. Um and it is just about retraining
00:20:00
yourself to sleep and building up that strong sleep drive. You have to do that over time. Um but in the short term I
00:20:06
usually tell people that they do not need to worry. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. And the reality is that
00:20:13
it's more your mood that will affect your day when you wake up in the morning than the bad night's sleep you just had.
00:20:19
So I know we've got evidence to show that when you have a bad night's sleep, your cognitive abilities, etc. are going
00:20:24
to be um reduced. However, if you think about how you generalize that, you're
00:20:29
not you're not going to lose your job. You're not going to perform horrifically in that meeting because you didn't get a good night's sleep. It would be far
00:20:35
better for you to go to bed later and make sure you're lovely and sleepy and only get four hours than to go to bed 8
00:20:42
hours before that meeting and toss and turn and be fidgety and stressed and anxious all night. That's what I do. I
00:20:48
still get nervous when I have to do like a lecture in front of 500 people. Of course, I get nervous, but instead of,
00:20:55
you know, focusing on my notes just before I go to bed, I'll put everything aside. I'll go and enjoy myself, do
00:21:01
something I really love to do. I'll get ready for bed a bit earlier than usual, just so that I do not have to think
00:21:06
about anything when I get sleepy. And when I am sleepy, even if it's 2 3 4 hours later than usual, I know that I'll
00:21:13
go and have a really lovely 3 or 4 hours sleep. And then I'll wake up and I'll be like, great. I know I'm going to be a
00:21:18
bit sleepy today, but that's only going to help me sleep tonight and I'm going to have an epic day. I don't care that I'm a bit sleepy.
00:21:25
Sleepiness is amazing. Sleepiness is such a good thing for you. Why are we teaching people that sleepiness is a bad
00:21:30
thing? You need sleepiness to sleep. I've got two questions there. The first I'm sure is it feels like a very um
00:21:38
related sort of question to what you've just been talking about there, which is do you sleep well? I'm sure you get
00:21:43
asked this all the time at every party, every time you It's like asking a comedian to tell a joke, right? It's like, how is your sleep?
00:21:50
Okay, so most of the time my sleep is fairly good because I've been lucky enough to be educating myself through
00:21:56
this for the last 16 years. But it's not good all the time because it's totally normal after some kind of life stressor,
00:22:04
new illness, some dramatic change in our society like we're seeing right now
00:22:11
for your sleep to change and for it to be poor. Okay, it is totally normal to have sleep problems. We will all get
00:22:18
them. You will never find someone who does not have a sleep problem at some point in their lives. But there is a
00:22:24
difference between somebody who has a short-term sleep problem. And when the initial issue resolves itself, the sleep
00:22:29
problem goes away and the person who has now unfortunately got a long-term sleep
00:22:34
problem. The difference is the behavior. It is not the person. It is not some trait
00:22:40
that you have over someone. It's not something genetic. There are there are all of those things that do feed into,
00:22:46
for example, insomnia. But the reality is the thing that seems to perpetuate
00:22:51
sleep problems is not usually the original trigger. So we cannot blame the divorce. For example, 20 years ago, I'm
00:22:57
not divorced, but I'm just making an example. So 20 years ago, we get divorced and it's a really stressful
00:23:03
situation and it stops you sleeping for a month. Okay? But now you're remarried and you're perfectly happy, but you've
00:23:09
got a 20 year insomnia problem. We cannot blame the divorce for that anymore. And also somebody else who's
00:23:15
gone through the same situation, same illness or divorce or new medication would not have had that sleep problem 20
00:23:22
years later. So what is it? And I believe and we know that most of it is
00:23:27
your behavior. After a few weeks of a sleep problem, most people will freak out and they'll start changing their
00:23:32
behavior. So they might start lying in, they might start going to bed early. that's trying desperately to improve
00:23:38
their sleep opportunity because they believe the mere act of lying in a bed for longer is going to miraculously give
00:23:44
them a stronger sleep drive and make them get through whatever it is they need to get through when the reality is and this is usually how we treat
00:23:51
insomnia or one of the ways we actually deprive you of your sleep opportunity. So we don't deprive you of sleep but we
00:23:57
do deprive you of your sleep opportunity. So we only allow you to be in bed for a certain amount of time and that fixes it. That's frightening
00:24:03
because with teaching people that sleep is so bad or not sorry not sleep is so bad but sleepiness is so bad that they
00:24:10
don't feel that they can build up that strong sleep drive without something terrible happening to them. So the way
00:24:15
we are disseminating knowledge right now is not working and we have got to find a way to change that.
00:24:21
You talked about the the type of therapy you offer cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. One of the elements you've
00:24:27
described is this sleep deprivation which is in essence you're stopping people sleeping I'm guessing throughout
00:24:34
the day to focus them on their sleep opportunity. Um yes so it's less about restricting
00:24:41
their sleep and more about restricting their bedtime. So often when you come across somebody who's had a sleep problem for a fair while enough to come
00:24:47
to see me they're usually spending more time in bed than they are sleeping. So for example, they might be in bed for
00:24:53
around 10 hours, but they're only sleeping for say 6 hours. And so what I would do is I would restrict them in the
00:24:59
first instance only. So it's only mildly to 6 hours in bed because or 5 hours in bed, whatever they're sleeping for. I
00:25:06
would we would we would never really go lower than 5 hours because at the end of the day, we're only um uh sort of guess
00:25:12
it's all a bit of guess work here. Um and that's important that it's like that and we're not overtracking sleep because
00:25:18
that's has its own issues. Um, and then for a week or so, I'll keep them on that schedule and try and get them to
00:25:24
strictly stick to it, which is quite scary for somebody who thinks the total opposite way is going to fix them. Even
00:25:30
though they've got no evidence that it works, it doesn't matter. They've been doing it for a long time. So, it's quite hard to get someone to do this. And then
00:25:37
once we can get them to sleep for around 90% of that five or six hours, whatever
00:25:42
they spend in bed, then we can start increasing their sleep time out very, very slowly. But people sort of get very
00:25:49
overeager about this. It's called sleep restriction therapy. Um or there's lots of different ways of calling it. Um
00:25:55
people get over excited about it and they're obsessed with reaching that 90% efficiency so they can move on and add
00:26:02
time. But I try to always explain to people and indeed I do online courses in sleep that they can do themselves. And
00:26:08
I'm always trying to explain to them it's not about adding more time. Imagine if you are getting to 5 or 6 hours sleep
00:26:15
efficient every every night for 7 days as an average. That's really good.
00:26:20
That's so much better than the broken sleep you were getting before. Think about the new quality that you have
00:26:25
built. How amazing is that? When's the last time you went for a week and you had that consistent sleep? And when they
00:26:31
start thinking about it that way, they're like, "Oh my god, yes, this is so much better. And I'm even able to add more time now." And we slowly
00:26:37
incrementally start adding sleep out. And that's how you fix it. I mean it's not everything because you've got to
00:26:42
work on the mindset. You've got to work on the re-educating people. What are those other pieces of the therapy? So mindset.
00:26:48
Yeah. You got to So first one is the the sort of sleep restriction as you called it. Yeah. One area is you we need to you've
00:26:56
got to be re-educated on sleep much like we've been chitchatting away today. That's how I will talk to someone and I
00:27:02
will try to help them understand um I'll try and pick out a lot of the things that they talk to me about. Um, but it's
00:27:08
trying to help them understand where the myths are and where the facts are with sleep because a lot of their ideologies
00:27:13
around sleep will be directly influencing their behavior. And so as soon as you can change that and it it's
00:27:19
not as simple as just saying that's right and that's wrong, you got to keep doing it and they need to trust you and and you've got to find a way and the
00:27:25
right language to speak to that person. Once you've done that, you can start with the sleep restriction. And then of
00:27:31
course, whilst there is no evidence that relaxation or anxiety reduction is going to directly and reactively fix a
00:27:38
long-term sleep disorder, after you've started improving your sleep drive and
00:27:44
using the sleep restriction therapy to do that, then yes, we do need to start looking at how do you bring yourself
00:27:50
back to balance during the day. Is it stress and anxiety that got you here in the first place because you're working
00:27:55
too much and you got yourself into the wrong patterns? How are you going to process more during the day? How are you
00:28:00
going to balance more during the day? We need to look at those things, but we need to look at them with the right expectations, which is that they are not
00:28:06
going to make you sleep because once that expectation is not met, you feel really inadequate and then you feel like
00:28:12
nothing can help you and then you get hopeless and out of control and lonely about your problem. So all this lots of
00:28:18
different sort of elements like a pyramid to try and help someone with their sleep and you know people um c caffeine has
00:28:25
become a huge part of our you know we live in a society where people take caffeine to wake them up and then quite often they'll take certain supplements
00:28:31
to shut them down again like sleep supplements or um various nol I think is
00:28:36
one of them right I don't know um what's your take on all of all of these chemicals we're using to kind of
00:28:43
regulate our alertness and then our tiredness they they can't work over time. So, all
00:28:48
the research shows that eventually you either get used to them, they stop working, they make you feel really uncomfortable. I don't think there's
00:28:55
anything wrong with, for example, sleeping pills or using caffeine in the short term, things like that. Um, but
00:29:01
starting to use them long term, they have their own all of them have their own side effects and over a long time of
00:29:07
use um aren't very good for the body. Um, but in general, they're just not going to they're not going to suddenly
00:29:13
miraculously reset your sleep button or anything that people seem to think they're going to do. So, I don't think
00:29:18
relying on these things in the short term is a bad thing every now and again. But, if you're relying on them every
00:29:24
single time you have a sleep problem, you're effectively making it worse because your brain isn't learning
00:29:29
anything. It is literally just being giving a cheap method like a fake sleep
00:29:35
almost. And that is what you get from a lot of sedatives is seditive sleep which is not the same as the cycles that you
00:29:40
go through usually to sleep well. So you're not getting but psychologically we believe that sleep is better than no
00:29:46
sleep. And actually I don't necessarily agree with that. In a way I'd rather get
00:29:51
no sleep than a really rubbish sleep knowing that my body will like build up a really strong sleep drive and help me
00:29:57
later. But people are so terrified of that that they that psychologically they just need to feel like they've slept.
00:30:03
But if they had a bit of better education around sleep and they understood how it worked more, then I don't think people would be trying to
00:30:10
grab all these things all the time. But we live in a reactive society. We're not very proactive as creatures. We want we
00:30:16
want it now and we want it done yesterday. What about caffeine? That's such a huge part of everybody's well pretty much
00:30:22
everybody's daily routine. People they you know they'll say, "I have to have this coffee to wake myself up.
00:30:29
I have three or four of them a day." And then what impact does that end up having on sleep? So caffeine is very interesting because
00:30:36
genetically we are all either sensitive or not sensitive or somewhere in between with caffeine. So it's very hard to say
00:30:43
nobody should be drinking caffeine after this time. Yes, it does have a very sort of it's a it has a big afterlife. So it
00:30:49
it definitely or halflife. So what we mean by that is that um you know it's going to have an effect on you hours and
00:30:56
hours after you've had it. But depending on how sensitive you to your to it you are, you know, but at the same time,
00:31:02
there's so much more you can do. If you started waking up at the same time every day, you would start to feel refreshed. You would be one of those people who
00:31:08
wakes up and is like, "Yeah, I'm ready to start the day." Imagine if you just used your body the way it was designed
00:31:14
to be used. I'm not saying caffeine is bad. I definitely wouldn't say you can't drink caffeine, but if you're starting
00:31:21
to use it, anything in life in anything chemical in a in a compensatory method because something is wrong, that's when
00:31:27
you need to start questioning it. But in general, having caffeine in the morning, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If you enjoy it, great. But
00:31:35
then there's lots of research that shows that even your performance isn't significantly improved by having
00:31:40
caffeine. You might feel like you're able to buzz around everything more, but your actual efficiency isn't necessarily
00:31:47
improved. I I I wonder, you know, because I think I was looking at some stats around insomnia and sleep sleep
00:31:53
disorders, and the stats are pretty staggering, and I don't know how to say this, but I just
00:31:59
don't tend to believe that humans after all these thousands of years of
00:32:05
evolution have been born with quite an apparent or seemingly apparent um
00:32:12
problem with sleep. So it makes me think, okay, so what is it in our social environment and society that's making us
00:32:20
struggle with sleep? Is it our over obsession with the perfect sleep? That
00:32:26
might be one element. And this, you know, and all the fear and anxiety around not sleeping perfectly as you've
00:32:31
described and we're actually doing pretty good, right? And labeling ourselves as insomnia, you know, cuz that word I'm an
00:32:37
insomniac or I've got insomnia is thrown around pretty easily. Absolutely. Or is it the, you know, the
00:32:42
tech in our lives? Is it the the the over stimulation of the, you know, the technology we have? Is it overwork?
00:32:49
What's your take on that? Cuz I I feel the same about depression and anxiety as well. I I look at the stats growing over
00:32:56
time um in with various sort of mental um illnesses. And I think surely we
00:33:02
weren't born um with chemical imbalances as is um said in um yeah
00:33:10
I love them. Yeah. I so it's a hard question to answer. I think that there is element
00:33:17
there's lots of different elements. I don't believe that the stats are as accurate as they probably seem. for
00:33:23
example, I believe that before, you know, the industrial revolution, for example, we had um sleep problems. I I
00:33:31
mean I no, I do I believe we did. It's just that I believe we're recording things now more. So, there's that aspect
00:33:37
of it. There is this aspect of we over worry about things and you know, at the end of the day, whilst someone keep you
00:33:43
know, lots of people out there keep telling us that actually um you know, if you sleep less than 6 hours, you will
00:33:48
die early, but actually we're not actually seeing that. Someone asked me that today. They said, How much am I reducing my life
00:33:55
expectancy with my poor sleep? The thing is, okay, so if you know you've got poor sleep, you need to
00:34:00
improve it, but hopefully it's not going to be long term. You can actually get some support for that and get it sorted.
00:34:06
If you're actively keeping yourself at 5 hours when you know you're a 7-hour sleeper, then yeah, you're going to
00:34:11
reduce your life expectancy. But if you're naturally a 5hour sleeper and they do exist then that does not mean
00:34:17
the same thing that you're going to be reducing your life expectancy when they genetically you can't you know that's
00:34:22
for you. Um it's really difficult to understand. I think um you know
00:34:27
electricity has a big part to play. So again I talked a little bit briefly at the beginning about the light dark
00:34:33
cycles of this planet and the way that we are designed well not designed but you know we're built on this planet. We
00:34:39
we seem to have evolved that way. Um, and so we we we definitely do need to be
00:34:45
in general not uh working and resting more at night and we we work better. Our
00:34:51
metabolisms, our brains function, we're more rational during the day. Um, and so
00:34:57
with electricity has become many problems. I definitely think the scareongering and the fear and the
00:35:03
tracking of sleep has definitely caused in the last few years a boom in sleep problems or at least how many people are
00:35:10
coming to us for help and with the the pandemic. What impact has that had on people's sleep? Hu let's
00:35:16
talk about hu for a second. I've spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the ready to drink Hu bottles which are my favorite for convenience
00:35:22
reasons. It means I don't have to mix anything. But this week, as my goals in gym and in my health and in my physique
00:35:29
have started to evolve, I've started using a new product that I wanted to tell you about. And the reason why I've
00:35:34
started using this product, which is called Hule, the Black Edition, is because there's 50% less carbs, 33% more
00:35:42
protein, um, zero artificial sweeteners, and it's of course gluten-free. I wish I
00:35:48
had something like this to be honest when I was a student because it's literally £147
00:35:55
per meal. I think you get about 17 or 18 meals out of one bag. And if you're someone like me that's in this phase of
00:36:01
my life that's trying to build a bit of muscle, get a little bit more lean whilst also, you know, reducing the
00:36:06
carbs a little bit, then give Black Edition Hule a try and try the vanilla
00:36:11
flavor if you do get a chance cuz that's um for me is the the tastiest flavor of them all. And do you know what I'm gonna
00:36:17
do next week in the podcast? I'm gonna take my top off. Okay? So, I'm gonna um
00:36:22
show you the impact that uh all of this being a hu has had for me. You're going to have to tune in next week and you're
00:36:28
going to have to watch it on YouTube to see that. But um I'm going to show you the the before and after of using Hule
00:36:33
and uh uh and before I used Hule. Okay. So, that's something to look forward to.
00:36:39
Or maybe not. With the the pandemic, what impact has that had on people's sleep? It's had a huge impact. So um in various
00:36:46
different ways. So the first way is that everybody's routine changed um because we couldn't go outside and move as much
00:36:52
as we once did. We couldn't get as much light exposure as we once did. We didn't get as much stimulation, social
00:36:58
stimulation. So our brains weren't being used in the same way. Plus we all had this sort of uh thing to look at on the
00:37:05
news all the time. So we're actively sort of looking at something that is stressing us out and making us anxious.
00:37:10
So various different components. No wonder sleep changed. But it would have been totally normal for that to happen.
00:37:16
Your sleep is adapting to your new environment. And so when people start worrying about this, I try to get them
00:37:22
to calm down about it because actually if your sleep wasn't working properly, you just wouldn't be here. Okay? So to a
00:37:29
degree, our sleep is doing a bloody good job for us. Um and we need to be better
00:37:34
about it. We blame sleep for everything. Um and actually there's so many other variables that we can control in our
00:37:40
lives that will have an effect on us. But yes, during the pandemic, we saw um or we still see there's plenty more
00:37:46
problems with people struggling to get to sleep. Maybe they're feeling really buzzy and they can't get to sleep, maintaining that sleep. So, people
00:37:53
waking up in the middle of the night and they're just like, "Gh, what? Why am I waking up?" Sometimes they they've got a million thoughts a minute or um
00:38:00
sometimes they're just thinking of nothing and they don't know why that's happening. We've seen more dream recall, very graphic dreams. Um, and we believe
00:38:07
that's because obviously when your routine changes and you don't have to work, and ironically I always say to
00:38:13
insomniacs that actually when they're working and when they've got busy lives, it's a lot easier to treat them than
00:38:19
when they don't have a routine because routine is everything to our bodies. I wish we understood more how much our
00:38:26
bodies love to be regulated. And going to work and doing exercise and going to see our friends and going to the gym and
00:38:33
eating at regular intervals is telling your brain so many signals. The light exposure you get is telling your brain
00:38:40
about how much melatonin to re release for you. It's fascinating, but we do need regulation. And the biggest thing
00:38:47
that changed during this pandemic was our routines. Mhm. People people have a real desire as well. You you mentioned
00:38:54
the the fact that the pandemic had caused very like vivid dreams. People
00:38:59
have asked me so many times if they can control their dreams or how do they stop themselves dreaming so vividly or um and
00:39:05
some people having, you know, recurring nightmares and things like that. What what is your answer to that? What control do we have on our dreams?
00:39:11
So you can you can learn to that's what we call lucid dreaming. So you can learn to lucid dream. The problem is it's
00:39:16
probably not very good for your sleep in general. Um, so effectively when we
00:39:21
remember our dreams, it's because we have been woken out of REM sleep. So REM is actually a very active stage of
00:39:27
sleep. It's not your deep sleep. It's actually quite a light stage of sleep. Some might argue that's even a different
00:39:33
state of consciousness than not sleep at all. So REM is a really strange time. It's when we believe that more of our
00:39:39
memory and our psychological restoration is happening and consolidation and things like that. And part of REM, we
00:39:46
tend to have more uh graphic dreams, but it's it's you being interrupted from that state, which you may not remember
00:39:52
in the night. It could just be a van driving past in your REM sleep, and it wakes you into a lighter stage of sleep,
00:39:58
like stage one or two sleep. And so in the morning, you think, "Oh my god, I really remember my dreams." Or maybe
00:40:03
your alarm woke you up in the middle of REM sleep, and you're like, "Oh my god, I can really remember my dreams." As opposed to the times when you're like,
00:40:08
"I didn't dream at all last night." Well, of course you did dream. It's just that your REM wasn't interrupted. So
00:40:14
that's why you're remembering your dreams. When we try to control our dreams, usually you have to kind of
00:40:19
control that interruption a bit. And so um I haven't looked into it properly in terms of lucid dreaming because it
00:40:25
doesn't really help me do my job. I don't really want people to learn to lucid dream because then one they're going to be remembering their dreams
00:40:31
more. Um and if they're remembering their dreams more, then their sleep is more interrupted and that's not good for your sleep. We want you to go through
00:40:36
the cycles of sleep as as uh you know as comfortably as we can and so that you get all the right percentages and all
00:40:43
the right restoration and and healing and everything that you need from your sleep. Um so yeah uh it's an interesting
00:40:49
concept. I don't think it's very helpful to healthy sleep. Um but every now and again especially kids I find when I'm
00:40:56
talking to children they seem to be able to control their dreams a little bit better like flying for example they
00:41:02
concentrate more on it that's why. So they have more time and they concentrate on it. Uh which is quite a fun thing.
00:41:08
Maybe we should all be doing more of that daydreaming and stuff. It's actually really good for problem solving. Um so yeah, it's fascinating
00:41:15
and and and there's a lot of famous people. I think Einstein though, don't I mean I don't know if I'm right about
00:41:21
this, but Einstein and various other geniuses would do things like hold a um
00:41:26
egg or or a spoon or something. Um so that if and when they fell asleep that
00:41:32
spoon would drop and then they would wake up because they felt they had all their best ideas. I can see you looking
00:41:38
at me and thinking about doing this to get better tonight and dropping it off my bed. But it's not very good for sleep to keep
00:41:44
interrupting it like that. Um, so you can, yes, you've got the power to manipulate sleep however you want, but at the end of the day, if the goal here
00:41:51
is to keep you alive for longer and to feel refreshed in the day and to have your best ideas consistently and to be
00:41:58
healthy consistently, then you probably want to do sleep right the way it was designed.
00:42:03
And what about what I eat before I go to bed? A lot of people talk about that. That's another uh thing. You know, if I
00:42:09
order food really late, someone will turn to me in the room and go, "Oh, you shouldn't be eating at this time." You know what I mean? What do I say to that?
00:42:15
Okay, you I've said it before, a good sleeper does all the wrong things and they seem to be okay, but they're
00:42:21
probably not doing all the wrong things all the time. So, yes, the the later you eat, you're basically asking your body
00:42:27
to metabolize and asking it to sleep and it does not like doing both and so one of them will be um compromised. Um in
00:42:35
terms of um anything that you can eat that will have a significant effect on your sleep, there's no real research. Um
00:42:43
there is research to show things like you know if you if you eat enough cherries or you have enough milk or
00:42:48
enough turkey it's going to give you some kind of sedatory effect but at the end of the day
00:42:54
it's you'd have to have a stupid amount of those kind of foods to have any kind of effect. It's not going to help you
00:43:00
sleep healthily from day to day. That's not going to suddenly boost the quality of your sleep um significantly. Um, so I
00:43:08
would argue that unless you have some kind of deficiency in a vitamin or mineral that is affecting your sleep,
00:43:13
then you probably don't need to be looking at the food you eat. In general,
00:43:18
as I'm sure a lot of people will say, but in general, eating a healthy balanced diet where you have what you
00:43:24
would call naughty foods and good foods in in balance, all that stuff is really good for you. And probably the only
00:43:30
piece of advice I'd give around eating is again regulating how you eat. So, if
00:43:35
it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner you like to do, trying to do that at consistent times every single day is going to help your body understand when
00:43:42
you want to be awake and metabolizing and when you want to be sleeping. And then not sleeping too late at night just so that you can make sure that your body
00:43:49
metabolizes well and sleeps well. And can I sleep too much? Is that such a people people there's this myth again in
00:43:55
society where people think that they overslept and now they're knackered, right?
00:44:00
Yeah. So you can it usually when people say they've overslept if we actually looked at them in a sleep study and
00:44:06
they've overslept for the amount that they usually sleep and they didn't need it probably the quality of their entire
00:44:12
sleep wouldn't be amazing. Um and that's why they were able to have this dribble drabby longer sleep and and and it's not
00:44:19
it's not going to be very helpful. Usually when we're talking about that research that shows that longer sleepers actually can get sicker um is because
00:44:27
the quality of their sleep is impaired by something like sleep apnnea or another sleep disorder which is
00:44:33
impairing the quality of their sleep. So which is poor quality. Yeah. So poor quality sleep. You're going to sleep longer. It's kind of the
00:44:39
same as having insomnia because you're not really sleeping and so therefore you feel you need to sleep longer and you
00:44:45
wake up and you still don't feel like you've slept as much as you needed to. If you're sleeping really well from
00:44:51
night to night, you don't need to sleep more. So, your body won't really let you. So, if the quality is good and
00:44:56
you've reached that optimal time, you'll notice that if you do try to sleep longer, it's quite if I looked at that
00:45:04
sleep for you in a polyomnography study. So, I looked at your brain activity, the quality of it is just like a snooze is
00:45:09
probably not going to be the same. It's not going to be But it's very rare you find someone like usually they're deprived of something or other or they
00:45:16
haven't been sleeping properly and then they sleep a bit longer. you you hear a lot of um a lot of successful people I
00:45:22
think it's it's part of bragging you know bragging about how little they sleep they'll say I know you sleep 3
00:45:27
four hours a day and and I think it's pushed this idea into society that in order to be successful you've got to
00:45:33
sleep for you know just 2 or 3 hours or 4 hours or whatever but then on the other side you have this total
00:45:38
contradiction which is in order to be successful you need to wake up at 6 a.m. and drink green juice and do yoga and
00:45:44
like sleep for exactly seven hours. Um, and it and it I guess this kind of speaks to the original point which was
00:45:51
um that there's so much overgeneralization and uh through an attempt to sell you
00:45:59
something whether it's a book or um my authority or to get you to follow
00:46:04
me, I kind of preach this secret which can be quite easily replicated for all
00:46:09
of you, right? that's causing us to be like uh be smack like smacked with these
00:46:17
contradicting narratives around sleep. Um which is making everyone a little bit confused. Um what's your sort of take on all of
00:46:24
that? Cuz you know, as when I was growing up, I thought, you know, if I want to be successful, I've got to just sleep less. And I I I think, if I'm
00:46:30
being completely honest with myself, I think I used to be proud of how little I sleepd. I thought it was like more
00:46:36
like a badge of honor, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, but now I think I'm getting a little bit older and I'm I don't
00:46:41
really give a [ __ ] what people think. Good. Good for you. Um uh so yeah, I I
00:46:47
definitely have seen a change around in this recently, but yeah, there has this been this thing about like clean sleeping. It's a bit like the whole
00:46:53
clean eating thing. It's it's everything that you've effectively just said. Um
00:46:58
but people trying to say you need to do this that and that to have the perfect night's sleep. Actually, that doesn't
00:47:04
really exist. Once you know how much sleep you need around, make sure you have that opportunity most nights that
00:47:10
you How do I know though? Um, so I guess you referenced genetics. You said there are 5 hour genetics.
00:47:16
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess um a more relaxed way of looking at it is when you
00:47:21
go on holiday after the 3 4 days of recovery from you know work life um what
00:47:27
happens you know left to your own devices what happens? Um that's a pretty good way of looking at it. If you're
00:47:33
looking at a really scientific way, then sleep restriction therapy. So, what we would put a insomniac through also will
00:47:39
show you how much of a duration that you need right now because there'll be a point where you can't keep adding time.
00:47:45
Your body won't get you to 90% efficient and that's where you know, okay, maybe this is around the right time for me.
00:47:52
And sleep and mental health, I feel like it's I don't know, my guess would be that it's somewhat kind of a a cycle,
00:47:58
right? I think poor sleep might lead to poor mental health and then poor mental health might lead to poor sleep. Is that
00:48:03
accurate? You're absolutely right. But it doesn't matter what came first, the chicken or the egg. The main issue is, especially
00:48:08
in medicine, and I've just done a piece of research um that shows that undergraduate um medical degrees only
00:48:15
teach a median of an hour and a half of sleep. So this is why this next thing happens a lot because they just don't
00:48:21
have the education. So our own doctors do not have enough education in something that we do a third of our lives. So historically or traditionally
00:48:28
when you go to your GP and you say I've got a sleep problem, they'll tell you you've got depression and insomniacs
00:48:33
will be able to relate to this and it is because in general we look at sleep or poor sleep as a symptom of another
00:48:40
condition. Now even if it is even if you do have a significant mental health problem and it is causing you to have
00:48:46
sleep issues if it's been longer than 3 months you now have a entrained sleep disorder and you need to be treating the
00:48:53
sleep problem as a primary condition of in itself and the one that I would treat first is whichever one is most
00:49:00
prevalent. So whichever symptoms seem to be more distressing for you at the time is where I would start. But I would be
00:49:06
fixing for example the depression and the insomnia separately. And the results
00:49:13
show that when you treat insomnia you have less relapse of depression because you have actually resolved one of these
00:49:19
things that unfortunately was perpetuating everything. So it doesn't really matter where sleep comes into it
00:49:25
but you've got to give it its own podium. It needs to be it is a pillar of health and you need to treat it that
00:49:32
way. Mhm. You reference like good sleeper and bad sleeper. What's the uh what were the characteristics of each?
00:49:38
So everyone always thinks I'm going to say well a good sleeper does this and a good sleeper does that. But actually the only difference I have seen over however
00:49:45
long doing this is that a good sleeper is somebody who just doesn't worry that much about their sleep. They are very
00:49:52
grateful for their sleep and they're very you know you know they they give themselves a fair opportunity. They
00:49:58
don't always sleep well. They don't, you know, sometimes they have sleep problems, but they don't get overly
00:50:03
bothered by it. And they notice that their sleep when left to its own devices will go back to whatever it needs to be.
00:50:09
About 10% of insomniacs we never see because they don't perceive themselves to be having a problem and they're not
00:50:15
sick and dying. Isn't this somewhat uh I guess a metaphor for the for the rest of
00:50:20
our lives as well where typically much of the problem is people thinking that they have a problem or their own
00:50:26
perception of their reality because I'll be honest um everyone around me doesn't
00:50:32
think I sleep very well. But I've always thought that I slept really really well. And I've just I think refused to buy
00:50:38
into the idea that I'm a bad sleeper. They think that because I'm up at strange times. Sometimes I'm traveling at strange time. But I I I've never
00:50:44
worried about my sleep. When I go into my room, eventually I'll fall asleep and at some point I'll wake up. But I guess the point I'm trying to make there is as
00:50:50
well, if you look at what's happening in the world, um with the pandemic and you know, people feeling certain um feeling
00:50:57
like they should be a certain way is actually making them that way. People feeling like they should feel self-pity
00:51:04
is making them feel self-pity. And um as someone that's been to Rio de Janeiro
00:51:10
and seen the um the fllas there and spent time in the fllas, but also I've been to India and spent some time in the
00:51:17
Dharavia I think they call it which is you know known as the slums which I think is a derogatory term.
00:51:22
Um I've seen people in the in the slums in India who were significantly happier
00:51:29
um than people that I know that are very you know relatively cushy. And I know
00:51:35
it's all subjective living in the UK and it just but people hate when we talk about these the these these things
00:51:41
because it gets the mirror of blame and responsibility and it just turns it back on themselves and says maybe you're the
00:51:48
problem. Maybe the way you're thinking is the problem and maybe you can do something about it.
00:51:53
Yeah, absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head. Um, like I said, about 10% of
00:51:58
insomniacs we we never see. And actually, if you think about it, insomnia is just another pattern of
00:52:05
sleep. And you have a certain pattern of sleep right now. And if it's not broken, do not fix it. I firmly believe that.
00:52:11
And if you ever have a problem, well, you know where I am. Um, but hopefully you never will because you'll follow
00:52:17
your gut, follow what you feel is right. Um, if that turns you, then fair enough.
00:52:23
Um, get some support. But actually you you really have hit the nail on the head and I really do believe with a bit more
00:52:29
of understanding and education around sleep and that it's not night to your your sleep doesn't work like that. I get
00:52:35
yes we do need to most of the time sleep night to night but it can survive
00:52:40
without doing that. Um it is in it's incredible. If we spent more time
00:52:46
understanding how amazing sleep was rather than fearing when it doesn't happen and then blaming it for
00:52:51
absolutely everything, we would be in a much better position. We would cherish it more and we would um
00:52:57
you know love it more but not overly put pressure on it which is ridiculous. Sleep cannot force you to lose your job.
00:53:04
Sleep can't do though or lack of it. It just can't. Um but our belief that it does is making this problem worse. So
00:53:12
yes, it is 100% a mindset. I spend most of my time not training people to sleep
00:53:17
again, but actually trying to help resolve that mindset. One of the last things I do when I finished with a
00:53:23
client is I have to go through and help them understand that sleep is not the be all and end all because actually even to
00:53:29
treat their sleep, I have to get them to focus on it. And actually, I need to take the focus away now. And one of the exercises I do is I tell
00:53:36
them, look, I now want you to think that we're in a world where sleep doesn't exist. And when I do that, people are
00:53:41
like, "Oh my god, that would be awful because it would just be one long perpetual day. We'd never finish our day." Just philosophically and
00:53:48
psychologically, how would we deal with that? And actually, I'm like, "Yes, that's how you should be thinking about it because that time, even when you're
00:53:54
not sleeping, is beautiful and we should cherish it." Um, and also, if you didn't
00:53:59
sleep, what would be all the other variables that would affect you? And I start getting them to think about the rest of their lives and all these other
00:54:05
things like exercise and eating right. And they're just the basics. um who you interact with, when you watch the news,
00:54:11
the bills you paid that day, whether you walked the dog, um all sorts of things, pain, um noisy neighbors, uh your
00:54:18
commute to work. How many of those things actually have a properly significant impact on you, but you'll
00:54:23
still blame it on your sleep, and then it's a perpetual cycle because then you start compensating, well, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not
00:54:29
going to go to the gym. I'm not going to see my friends. I'm terrified that it's going to do something that affects my sleep. And then your sleep is worse
00:54:35
because your body's now thinking, "Oh, so she doesn't need to get good sleep at night because she's not doing anything in the day anymore." And so you make it
00:54:42
worse and worse and worse. And that is one of the biggest things I see in a long-term insomniac is somebody who's
00:54:48
literally stopped living in order to fix the problem. Why do we think that's going to fix the problem? It doesn't.
00:54:54
What about a bad sleeper then? So we talked a little bit about the prof like the profile of the characteristics of a good sleeper. What's a bad sleeper? So a
00:55:00
bad sleeper is somebody who really does um they get bad sleep and suddenly they start worrying about the lack of sleep
00:55:06
and then what they'll do is they'll look up how do I fix my sleep? They'll come up with 10 regimented rules and they'll
00:55:12
start becoming obsessive and ritualistic about those rules. They'll stop going out in the evening and they'll start
00:55:17
having the hot warm bath, the the herbal tea and every single thing that they have um they think and they know it
00:55:24
doesn't work, but they're so terrified of not doing them because that's all they've got to hold on to now that they
00:55:30
are um you know they they they they can't go away from it. And actually trying to take teach those people to
00:55:36
sleep better is is harder than somebody who's a bit more relaxed around their routine because they've built these
00:55:42
things up so hard. Do you know what's really funny is um what you've described there is a person who is so
00:55:49
keen to solve a problem that probably isn't that much of a problem that they they're they're in search of these techniques and tips and secrets and
00:55:56
shortcuts and whatever. Probably a lot of the people that felt compelled to click on this podcast today to listen to it and you see the same within
00:56:04
uh success and ambition. you see this like this certain group of people that
00:56:09
I'm going to be honest, okay, are almost never really successful, but spend the most time trying to be.
00:56:17
And when I when I think about my success, so when I read these books about, oh, the the perfect way to be successful, here's 13 tips that all
00:56:24
successful people share, I think this is total [ __ ] nonsense because my sleep is I sleep whenever I feel tired, as you
00:56:30
say. I eat blah blah blah, you know? I don't do yoga. I don't like meditate every day. I don't I don't follow any
00:56:37
script or blueprint. I just kind of go with the flow and do my best every single day and show up and try and be better tomorrow. Like if that that's as
00:56:44
far as it goes for me. There's no looking in the mirror and saying, "Steve, you're going to be a millionaire. Steve, you're going to be," you know what I mean? All of that feels
00:56:50
like nonsense to me. But the people that seem to um do those things, the visualizations in the mirror, the mood
00:56:57
boarding my future, like they are never the successful ones. All of my successful friends don't do that. Yeah.
00:57:03
Yeah. And I I I maybe I think what I'm saying is it sounds like the same applies to sleep.
00:57:08
Yeah. Where like the the people that get addicted on techniques and tips and tricks end up having the worst sleep
00:57:14
overall. Yeah. What have we missed? I'm asking you this question because there's so many unknown unknowns. I don't I don't know a ton
00:57:21
about sleep again because I've never really cared that much about it. Right. So, is there anything that you think we've
00:57:26
missed? any specific topics or I think I would love it if people came away from this podcast and gave their
00:57:32
sleep a little bit of a break and in the same sort of with the same idea I'm sure
00:57:38
there'll be people out there thinking yes but when I wake up tonight in the middle of the night what do I do about
00:57:43
it so I guess this is one thing we haven't covered to understand that if you are waking up in the middle of the
00:57:48
night and it's been happening to you over and over again this has become a habit and therefore to resolve the habit
00:57:55
you're going to have to do something consistently ly you're not going to be able to solve it in one night. It's just not going to happen. However, if you're
00:58:01
waking up and you're getting stressed and anxious, do not lie in bed. It's not going to help you. You've got a
00:58:07
different problem now. You've made yourself anxious and stressed and you need to alleviate it. Leave the bedroom. Go and enjoy yourself. It is not going
00:58:14
to wake you up. You are already awake. Your sleep drive clearly isn't there to take you back to sleep. So, go do
00:58:19
something else. Make sure you get up in the morning. Do not lie in. Go and have the epic day. Enjoy yourself. Go and see
00:58:26
your friends or talk to them over Zoom or go and do some exercise. Get outside. Get some light exposure. Be happy and
00:58:33
content in your life. Focus on other things and go to bed when you're really, really sleepy. And when it happens again
00:58:39
the next night, do the same thing. And I promise you eventually you will be able to get out of it. But if you lie there
00:58:44
and you get anxious and stressed and you try and force yourself to sleep, you already know this doesn't work. You're
00:58:50
trying it over and over again. So don't do it. So, that's the thing that I would say. I I hope that when people listen to
00:58:56
this, they come away and they're like, "Do you know what? I'm not as worried as I was about my sleep. I'm actually going
00:59:01
to chill out and I'm I'm going to be all right about it. But if I do want to improve the quality, I've listened to what she said. There's
00:59:07
some key things there. I'm going to I'm going to try do those few things." But it's about the little things. So, it's
00:59:12
not about doing 20 different things. It is just about literally get up at the same time every morning. Stop overcompensating. Stop diluting your
00:59:19
sleep opportunity when you don't get good sleep. Make it smaller. build that sleepiness. It's actually good for you.
00:59:25
Don't freak out. Nothing bad's going to happen. And you talked one particular point I wanted to come back on there because I I
00:59:31
when I asked my audience about the questions they had for you again about I say 15 20% of them were all about
00:59:37
I keep waking up in the middle of the night. What to do? So you're saying get out of bed. Get out of bed and go and do something
00:59:42
that you love. Do not Yeah. Do not go and do something like clean the
00:59:47
bathroom or do something boring. Go and do something that is going to be distracting. For God's sake, we're
00:59:52
always going on about how little time we have. You've got more time now. So, go and use it. Go and do something fun. I'm
00:59:58
not saying get up and go to work. I'm not saying that because I still think this is your sleep opportunity. And if
01:00:03
you want to retrain your brain to sleep during this time, then you've got to sort of do things that are I'm not
01:00:09
saying you need to relax, relax, relax, because I think people get stressed at that term and they're like, I can't relax. I don't know how to relax. Don't make me do this.
01:00:15
So, I think what makes you happy? Do some things that just make you happy. Whether that's looking at old photos or
01:00:21
just doing something that you love, it is okay. Okay? It's not going to be forever. Like I said, you cannot force
01:00:27
yourself to sleep. But you can dictate when you don't sleep. So, as long as you're not overcompensating by lying in
01:00:33
or going to bed early because you're so worried about the sleep that you've lost, forget it. It's gone. There's
01:00:38
nothing you can do about it. So, just move on and do the right things. And I promise you, you will start sleeping
01:00:44
better. But the more you freak out and you're worried about what is going to happen to you if you don't sleep another
01:00:49
night in a row, the more you won't be able to fix the problem. Great. Where can people find you?
01:00:55
Uh, so I'm at sleepyheadcl clinic.co.uk. It's gone pretty international now because of the co is literally I'm
01:01:02
online now. Um, and sleepyheadprogram.com. If you have no time to speak to me or
01:01:08
you just want to do it yourself, um I have set up this online course that you can do, uh which I'm very excited about
01:01:14
with two awesome business partners who are just as crazy and passionate about sleep as I am. And hopefully we can
01:01:22
start seeing more people um and and and build on it and make it an even better experience. So yeah,
01:01:28
listen, thank you so much for your time today. Um, sleep is a a thing that I think has been, as I said at the start
01:01:33
of the podcast, has been in in increased in relevance um, in our society and in
01:01:39
my personal conversations online, through Instagram, through books that aren't, as you say, necessarily very
01:01:44
helpful. So, it's been um very refreshing to to hear a almost a
01:01:50
counternarrative to the kind of very binary specific um quick um secret
01:01:58
orientated like hacks that people push online and that's uh I think will do a ton of people a lot of good. So, thank
01:02:05
you so much for coming. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thanks. [Music]
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Heat. Heat. N.
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