As more and more evidence emerges to demonstrate how vitally important sleep is to both our wellbeing and our mental health, we take a look at why you can’t sleep and what you can do to change it…
Sleep is a human imperative. Without it, we die. (After about 11 days actually, according to a 2002 article in the Scientific American which stated that this is the longest time a human being has gone without sleep).
So, yeah, it’s not just important, it’s vital. And it’s not just something we need to do to stay alive, but it’s also something we need to do for our health. In his book Why We Sleep, Dr Mathew Walker lists an alarming amount of conditions that could be reduced if only we were getting enough sleep. Sleep, he says, “enhances your memory, makes you more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. You’ll even feel happier, less depressed, and less anxious.”
Walker is quite evangelical about sleep, but his passion is not misplaced. Sleep has been proved over and over again to be beneficial to both body and mind. And, in fact, the impact of not getting enough sleep can be quite profound. After a bad night’s sleep we are not only physically exhausted and liable to suffer from a suppressed immune system, hypertension and obesity, but, due to an under-functioning metabolism and reduced blood flow in certain areas of the brain, our capacity to do basic mental tasks is considerably impaired – something that can only be remedied with sleep. “Each hour of sleep lost per night is associated with a temporary loss of one IQ point,” explains Lisa Artis, sleep advisor for The Sleep Council. “Chronic sleep debt can have a seriously damaging effect on our mental and physical health.”
For women, sleep problems can be even more severe. Women are more likely than men to have difficulty falling and staying asleep and, due to stress, worry and hormones we also experience more daytime sleepiness. In addition, says Artis, we work our brains harder than men, and need more sleep as a result. “Women particularly work the part of the brain called the cerebral cortex – responsible for intelligence, language, memory and consciousness – because, unlike men, they switch from one task to another,” says Artis.
The impact on our health is clearly dramatic. And, it’s not just about sleeping, but it’s actually about getting enough of the right sleep too. One of the reasons news parents report sleep deprivation is not because they aren’t getting any sleep – they are – but because they aren’t getting the right kind of sleep. We go through four sleep cycles a night – three stages of NREM sleep (non-REM sleep) and then one stage of REM sleep. We cycle through each of these stages every 90-minutes or so, repeating throughout the night. The first two NREM phases slow our breathing and prepare us for sleep, the next NREM phase is the regenerative period where our bodies body heal and repair themselves, followed by the final REM sleep phase – our deepest, most restorative sleep, and the time when we dream. It is also our longest period of sleep as the night progresses.
But it’s what’s happening during this REM sleep that is so important. As one sleep therapist explained it to me, each day, as we go through our lives, we collect things – worries, concerns, stresses, doubts, problems, challenges. All of these things get added to our brains, put into a sort of ‘stress bucket’, to be processed and worked through. And it is during this REM sleep each night that we work through these stresses, filtering them out, filing them away, addressing some of them, making peace with others. It is why the phrase ‘sleep on it’ is so powerful, and so true. And why things so often seem better in the morning. Because, if we have just a few concerns in our stress bucket, we can take on some more - the work report doesn’t worry us that much, the broken vase doesn’t upset us that much. But if our stress bucket is full, or overflowing, and we cannot access a way to empty it, something as small as a broken bowl or a work report is impossible to process, and so we get stressed and angry and worried and that leads to breakdowns, depression and anxiety. We literally need our REM sleep every single night to allow us to process the challenges of our daily lives, if we don’t get this, our ability to cope starts to break down.
“We are in the midst of a sleep deprivation crisis, with profound consequences to our health, our job performance, our relationships and our happiness,” says Arianna Huffington in her book The Sleep Revolution, which was published in 2016. “What we need is nothing short of a sleep revolution: only by renewing our relationship with sleep can we take back control of our lives.”
Huffington became interested in the science of sleep when she fell asleep at her desk in the middle of the day, and woke up with a broken cheekbone and a gash above her eye. Convinced that something needed to change in her life, she started to research the importance of sleep and has now become an advocate for better sleep health. “The way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life - is in getting enough sleep,” she told a Ted audience in 2010.
So why aren’t we getting enough sleep?
Culture plays a big part here. We are a generation of exhausted people, working harder and sleeping less. Just as presenteeism is becoming an all too unpleasant feature of the workplace, our failure to be responsible for our sleep needs is on the rise too. “There is now a kind of sleep deprivation one-upmanship,” says Huffington. “If you try to make a breakfast date, and you say, "How about eight o'clock?" they're likely to tell you, "Eight o'clock is too late for me, but that's OK, I can get a game of tennis in and do a few conference calls and meet you at eight." And they think that means they are so incredibly busy and productive, but the truth is, they're not, because we, at the moment, have brilliant leaders in business, in finance, in politics, making terrible decisions.”
We are going to bed too late, rising too early, and over-stimulating and exhausting ourselves in the process. As Dr Matthew Walker saliently points out, midnight is no longer ‘mid night’ but somewhere around the time you check your email for the last time before you think about going to bed. “Compounding the problem, we do not then sleep any longer into the morning hours to accommodate these later sleep-onset times,” says Walker. “We cannot. Our circadian biology, and the insatiable early-morning demands of a post-industrial way of life, denies us the sleep we vitally need.”
But, the tide is turning. A much greater understanding of the importance of sleep is ensuring that we are starting to give it the time, quite literally, that it deserves. Athletes, business owners, celebrities and wellbeing gurus are all starting to promote the importance of sleep. For her part, Huffington refers to what she calls, ‘the golden age of sleep science,’ and says: “The good news is that there’s a much greater awareness about the risks of sleep deprivation and the importance of sleep. And we are seeing a huge response from millennials and people in the workplace.”
The introduction of things such as sleep-tracking apps and meditative sleep stories, coupled with the rise in weighted blankets and anti-bluelight settings on phones means anyone at home can start to improve their sleep. While in the workplace, culture is changing too, with the introduction of dedicated nap rooms, an increase in flexible work hours and remote working, and considerations for wellbeing and mental health written more openly into company manifestos.
And so, the time is most definitely now. “I urge you to shut your eyes, and discover the great ideas that lie inside us – shutting off your engines and discovering the power of sleep,” adds Arianna Huffington.