If you’re setting wellness goals in 2016, make sure you put sleep as a priority.
Last year, the buzzword was “mindfulness”. I predict that in 2016, we’ll see the start of a sleep revolution – a focus on improving sleep habits.
It’s time to reclaim your sleep.
It’s no secret that people don’t get enough sleep. It enhances everything – your health, your mood, and your physical and mental performance.
In the corporate world, the sleep conversation is starting to change. I spent 20 years in the corporate world, bragging with my colleagues about 2 am finishes and 6 am starts. We wore fatigue like a badge of honor. Now we’re beginning to understand how stupid that is.
Corporate wellness programs center around sleep, fatigue management, and sleep improvement strategies.
How Important is a Good Night’s Sleep?
We intuitively know that sleep is important. I think it’s one of the most important behavioral experiences you have in your life. If you sleep on average 7.5 hours a night by the time you’re 90, you would have slept for 32 years.
There is mounting evidence that our nation and the world is becoming seriously sleep-deprived. Research shows that in the 1950s, most people were getting an average of 8 hours of sleep a night. Today, the average is 6.5 hours. It’s even worse for shift workers.
The Adelaide Centre for Sleep Research reports that if you’ve been awake for 17 hours, your performance is reduced to the same level as having a blood alcohol content (BAC) reading of 0.05g/100ml. This makes you twice as likely to have an accident. Stay awake 24 hours and your BAC equivalent is 0.1g/100ml. The TAC estimates that 20% of fatal road accidents involve driver fatigue.
Why is sleeping so hard?
Russell Foster is a circadian neuroscientist. He says that sleeping is hard because it seems like you’re not doing anything while you’re sleeping.
“You don’t eat. You don’t drink, and you don’t have sex. Well, most of us anyway. So therefore, I thought of it as a complete waste of time,” he said in a TEDGlobal talk in 2013.
However, intuitively, we all know that sleeping isn’t a waste of time.
There are three accepted theories on why we sleep:
- It’s restorative – a whole raft of genes are only turned on while we sleep, and most are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways.
- For energy conservation – we only save about 110 calories over the course of a night. Not so convincing, but a theory nonetheless.
- For brain processing and memory consolidation.
Foster’s studies show that if you deprive people of sleeping while learning a new task, their ability to learn is “smashed”.
“What’s turned out to be really exciting is that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep. In fact, it’s been estimated to give us a threefold advantage. Sleeping at night enhances our creativity,” says Foster.
Learn to Sleep Better
You can stick to your old busy story and continue to brag about lack of sleep, or you can take action and improve your sleeping habits and the rest of your life.
Like running a good marathon, good sleep doesn’t just happen. You have to plan for it and stick to it when you get tempted to stray from the wrong path.
Key tips to improve your sleep
Andre’s Tips:
- Acknowledge that sleep is critically important to your health.
- Place a priority on sleep and having a bedtime routine.
- Turn off all electronics an hour before bed.
- The bedroom is for two things, and one of them is not for social networking on Facebook or email.
- Try to go to bed and wake up around the same time each day.
- Make your room cooler and don’t have a warm shower just before bed.
Fix your sleep problems
The Chernobyl and Space Shuttle Challenger disasters were attributed to poor judgment as a result of tiredness. On a more everyday scale, it’s all about your brain, your health, and your performance.
Sleep deprivation is a serious issue. Studies show that consistently getting less than 7 hours of sleep a night can lead to:
- Obesity
- Increased stroke risk
- Increased chance of diabetes
- Increased memory loss
- Increased cancer risk
- Increased risk of heart disease
- Decreased mental health
- Increased chance of long-term stress
- Early death
The key point is that sleep is fundamentally important. So if you don’t sleep well now, make 2016 the year you do something about it.
