I’ve had issues to sleep for years. Perhaps a bad habit from childhood to stay till late in combination with other things such as caffeine, late sugar intake or simply some anxiety. Problem solved.

First of all, it’s important to highlight that I’ve done multiple experiments around mindfulness, no caffeine, workouts and reading. All of them contributed to my improvements. But there was one wakeup call that changed the game. In fact, this call was a book by Matthew Walker. Why We Sleep. The book is broken down by 4 parts and all of them backed up with scientific evidence. This is a short summary of what resonated in my mind and moved me to action. If you like any of these ideas, please go and get the book as soon as possible and I promise you won’t regret it 🙂

This Thing Called Sleep

Caffeine has an average half-life of 5-7 hours. That is to say, if you have a cup of coffee after dinner around 7.30pm, then by 1.30 am, 50% of that caffeine will be active circulating throughout your brain. You might think “right, but I only do decaf”. But this doesn’t mean non-caffeinated. So, if you’re trying to stay awake till late and you use coffee, then get ready for nasty consequences when your liver removes the caffeine from your system.

The wake state is the reception mode where you are learning and experiencing things around you. NREM is the reflection mode because you store and strengthen those raw ingredients of new stuff you learn. REM sleep is the integration mode because you connect both raw ingredients and build a more accurate model of how the world works. Have you ever thought of drinking alcohol to sleep better? Well, alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep. Meaning less time to interconnect those raw ingredients, less time to come up with innovative insights and therefore less time for problem-solving abilities.

Why Should You Sleep

Only 70 years ago NREM and REM sleep concepts were discovered. This was the beginning of understanding more about how sleep (and not just if) helps to solidify new memories. The majority of our deep NREM sleep is early in the night whereas our biggest REM sleep is late in the night. By the way, for every 30 seconds you read this article, there has been a car accident somewhere caused by sleeplessness. Did you know that vehicle accidents caused by drowsy driving is much bigger than those caused by alcohol and drugs? And this is going to hurt you chaps. Sleeping too little or having bad quality sleep reduces your sperm count and also adds more deformities. Oh! One last thing. The World Health Organisation has officially classified nighttime shift work as “probably carcinogen”. In this chapter, it’s mentioned specifically that there’s scientific evidence linking sleep disruption and cancer. Ignore sleeping and be ready to face consequences in the future.

How and Why We Dream

Dreams as most of us think (emotional, bizarre and hallucinogenic) come from REM sleep, offering a form of overnight therapy. Freud believed that dreams came from unconscious wishes that had not been fulfilled. He thought there was a filter or a censor within the mind. In fact, he was certain he understood how the filter worked so he could understand the dream by decrypting (manifest content) and doing some reverse engineering to reveal it (latent content). In this chapter, we can see the lack of any clear predictions from Freud’s theory and why the science didn’t back it up. We can also understand why REM sleep helps us “fight” overnight the painful or emotional day. In fact, it offers us some sort of resolution when waking up the following morning.

From Sleeping Pills to Society Transformed

Compared to reading a printed book, reading on a tablet suppresses melatonin release by 50% at night. Using LED devices has a big impact on our natural sleep and its quality. As mentioned before as well this chapter highlights the myth about alcohol and sleep as well as some basic tips to sleep such as:

Cool bedroom – it’s always easier to sleep when it’s colder than hotter as this will drag our brain and body in the correct temperature direction of sleep. No lights will also help.

Alarm clock – if you use it, do not use the snooze function and get up only once to minimise the repeated shock to your heart.

Do not take pills – the risk of death increases with the frequency of use as well as developing cancer faster.

Reduce caffeine and alcohol intake – already explained the impact of these 2.

No LED devices – as mentioned before this will suppress melatonin release which is the hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle.

Do not lie in bed aware – if after 20 minutes you cannot sleep, then go and something until you feel sleepy.

If you have insomnia, please read this book, use the provided resources and avoid pills!

On the other hand, there’s the “new world” behaviour. In some firms, this chapter also highlights that nowadays it’s valued to work very long hours which can lead to bad sleep and resulting ultimately in an unproductive employee. And it’s not just unproductive, it’s also lack of motivation, less creative, unhappy and some other things. We trade sleep for money.

Do you remember Chernobyl? This was 100x more powerful than the atomic bombs from WWII. Reason of this happening? Sleep-deprived operations working on unreasonable shifts.