Newsletter About Sleep

Lifting Club Takes a Siesta!

Comrades,
Get ready to be blown away by another fantastic email about crap you don’t care about… psyche! Pay attention, you sleep-deprived Andover zombies because this newsletter covers sleep and how to optimize it.

Now, a quick disclaimer: I don’t have extracurricular activities and am a general bum. I get my homework done, am in bed by 11 on weeknights, and take a power nap during 5th period every day. I win. I cannot help you much if you are falling asleep at 3 in the morning consistently. With that said, I hope to give some practical advice that I’ve read and implemented with success in my own life.

Another disclaimer: I know use the caveman rhetoric a lot, but I don’t use the logic that “if caveman did it, it must be good.” That’s a logical fallacy. It just so happens that—surprise—adopting a lifestyle similar to a human living in 40,000 B.C. would probably optimize sleep and energy. Just know that there’s science to back this up and it’s not simply romanticism. Blah, blah, blah, let’s talk sleep.

Here’s what people want from their sleep: get high-quality rest, have boundless energy and focus during the day, have a better brain, and be in a better mood. Here’s where most people go wrong: they get too much light at the wrong times, eat a crappy diet, get too little exercise, have a lifestyle that promotes too much stress, and have inconsistent wakeup times. I’ll tackle these issues one at a time.

Melatonin, as some of you may know, is the sleep hormone. It gets triggered at night and makes you fall asleep. However, melatonin’s sleep-inducing effects can be offset by light. As a caveman, the sun would go down and the only light might be a fire and the stars. Today, we’ve got lights everywhere: computers, lights, alarm clocks, etc. All these lights work against you when you try to fall asleep because they stunt melatonin production. What should you take away from this? Dim the lights at night if you can (or wear shades inside for style points), make your bedroom as dark as possible (ANY light hurts, so cover your alarm clock), and wear an eye cover. I started using an eye cover last year and I noticed a difference right away. The initial discomfort of wearing it was a miniscule disturbance compared to the benefits of getting to sleep easier. Harvard studies also show that it’s a pussy magnet. Okay, I made that one up. You can get them for $10-15—a worthwhile investment. On the other hand, light can wake you up in the morning. The best light to shut off melatonin is the sun. Odd fact: there’s a stat called lux, which measures light intensity and the sun produces 10,000-25,000, while office lights produce only 320-500. Yes, I stole these stats from Wikipedia. The takeaway message: wake up and get some sunlight to help wake you up.

You’ve heard me babble on about diet for months now, so I’ll spare you the details, but the effects of diet on sleep are eye-opening. This is just one person’s experience, but this sleep guru spent a few months following a very low carb caveman diet (<30g) and kept a sleep log. His need for sleep decreased by an hour and a half. By eliminating grains and sugars, he was able to sleep less and maintain his superb energy levels. (He wrote a great post about it, but I can’t get the link because his site is under construction, so I’ll post it in another newsletter) Carbs send blood glucose levels spiking, then the body scrambles to normalize, and the moral of the story is that you end up a sleep loser. I won’t go into the benefits of fish oil, but just remember that fish oil literally helps everything. Everything. Moral of the story: ditch the bagels, eat your meats and veggies, and take your fish oil.

Perhaps the most important and controversial tenet of my sleep bible, but should make sense: I wake up at the same time every day. Yes, that means weekends and Thursdays *gasp*. Why? Your body has an internal clock, which controls your circadian rhythms. Sleep quality is optimized during certain points of your circadian rhythms. If you wake up at 7 Monday through Friday, but sleep in Saturday and Sunday until 11 in order to make up your sleep debt, you’ll throw your circadian rhythms out of whack. Waking up at a consistent time every day is a difficult transition to make, but the benefits are huge: your body gets in a groove, you get high quality sleep as a result of stable circadian rhythms, and you have more energy. Thus, we can understand why Mondays suck: you have to wake up at 7 when a day after you woke up at 11. Taking a step back and considering the life of the ancestors helps explain things. Cavemen would not have had sleep-ins on weekends because they had the sun to wake them up. They slept when it got dark and woke up when it got light. The issue people have with consistent wakeup times is they’ve accumulated a sleep debt over the course of the week. My practical recommendation: instead of sleeping in, get to sleep earlier and wake up at the same time. Waking up early on weekends is also the best time to get homework done.

If you’re still reading, gold star for you. I hope this material is engaging and relevant. I just realized I wrote 1,000 words, I’m not done, and it’s bed time for this big boy. Still to come: napping, exercise’s role on sleep, and sleep’s effects on the brain. I’ll also talk about some of my own experiences and sleep habits I might fool around with in the future. Too much to say, too little time.

Get your sleep,
Palmer