Sleep depravity is taking its toll...
Modern day people are not sleeping enough
extracted from Wired.com
Tim Cook reportedly wakes up at 3:45am to start work. Barack Obama said he only sleeps about five hours. He's a "night guy." Donald Trump and Elon Musk both have said they sleep only a few hours a night. But Musk has also admitted to The New York Times that his work schedule was taking a toll on his mental health and whole life.
Sleep deprivation hurts people: it makes you dumber, more forgetful, unable to learn new things, more vulnerable to dementia, more likely to die of a heart attack, less able to fend off sickness with a strong immune system, and more likely to get cancer, and it makes your body literally hurt more. Lack of sleep distorts your genes and increases your risk of death generally, he said. It disrupts the creation of sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone, and it leads to premature aging. Apparently, men who only sleep five hours a night have markedly smaller testicles than men who sleep more than seven.
"Sleep loss will leak down into every nook and cranny of your physiology," he said. "Sleep, unfortunately, is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a nonnegotiable biological necessity. It is your life-support system."
Everyone is obsessed with sleep. And they know they're not getting enough—hence the growing demand for sleeping pills, the emergence of sleep-tracking devices (Walker wears an Oura Ring to track his), smart beds, Alexa integrations to put you to sleep, and mindfulness sleep apps. Arianna Huffington famously left journalism to found a company devoted to sleep and wellness.
What to do?
Don't drink caffeine or alcohol. Go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning (even on the weekends). Sleep in a cool room. If you are lying awake in bed, listening to the litany of worries your brain is churning through, get up, go into a different room, and do an activity, then return to bed when you're ready.
You wouldn't sit at the dinner table waiting to get hungry, so why lay in bed waiting to get tired? Meditate to calm your nervous system and your mind. Don't default to sleeping pills, which are "blunt instruments that do not produce naturalistic sleep.
Sleep makes us better at everything
The disruption of deep sleep is contributing to cognitive decline, and even in healthy people. You need sleep after learning, to essentially hit the save button on those new memories so you don't forget. But recently we've discovered that you also need sleep before learning, almost like a dry sponge to suck up new information. Without sleep, the brain becomes essentially waterlogged.
Modern day people are not sleeping enough
extracted from Wired.com
Tim Cook reportedly wakes up at 3:45am to start work. Barack Obama said he only sleeps about five hours. He's a "night guy." Donald Trump and Elon Musk both have said they sleep only a few hours a night. But Musk has also admitted to The New York Times that his work schedule was taking a toll on his mental health and whole life.
Sleep deprivation hurts people: it makes you dumber, more forgetful, unable to learn new things, more vulnerable to dementia, more likely to die of a heart attack, less able to fend off sickness with a strong immune system, and more likely to get cancer, and it makes your body literally hurt more. Lack of sleep distorts your genes and increases your risk of death generally, he said. It disrupts the creation of sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone, and it leads to premature aging. Apparently, men who only sleep five hours a night have markedly smaller testicles than men who sleep more than seven.
"Sleep loss will leak down into every nook and cranny of your physiology," he said. "Sleep, unfortunately, is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a nonnegotiable biological necessity. It is your life-support system."
Everyone is obsessed with sleep. And they know they're not getting enough—hence the growing demand for sleeping pills, the emergence of sleep-tracking devices (Walker wears an Oura Ring to track his), smart beds, Alexa integrations to put you to sleep, and mindfulness sleep apps. Arianna Huffington famously left journalism to found a company devoted to sleep and wellness.
What to do?
Don't drink caffeine or alcohol. Go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning (even on the weekends). Sleep in a cool room. If you are lying awake in bed, listening to the litany of worries your brain is churning through, get up, go into a different room, and do an activity, then return to bed when you're ready.
You wouldn't sit at the dinner table waiting to get hungry, so why lay in bed waiting to get tired? Meditate to calm your nervous system and your mind. Don't default to sleeping pills, which are "blunt instruments that do not produce naturalistic sleep.
Sleep makes us better at everything
The disruption of deep sleep is contributing to cognitive decline, and even in healthy people. You need sleep after learning, to essentially hit the save button on those new memories so you don't forget. But recently we've discovered that you also need sleep before learning, almost like a dry sponge to suck up new information. Without sleep, the brain becomes essentially waterlogged.
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