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How to Stop Wrecking Your Mental, Physical and Emotional Health:
Answers from the science of sleep
By Renata Taylor-Byrne, BSc (Hons) Psychol.
The Institute for E-CENT Publications. 2021
Preface
If the results of scientific research on sleep had been communicated fully to the general public, decades ago, you might have led a very different life, from childhood to whatever age you are now. You might have transformed your physical energy, ability to concentrate and memorize information, and to protect your physical and mental health and emotional well-being much better than you have so far.
But it is never too late to learn.
This book reveals many insights into sleep which should have been revealed years ago! However, some people who were once well informed of the importance of sleep can forget their learning, until they get a wake-up call.
Arianna Huffington had lost her understanding of the need for sleep when, in 2017, she fainted with physical exhaustion at work, causing her head to crash down on her desk as she was working. She broke her cheekbone, had to have stitches in her right eye, and it was a massive shock to her.
A taxi driver who was suffering from a serious sleep disorder, and who was seriously sleep deprived, nearly caused the death of William Dement, one of the pioneers in sleep medicine. The driver had undiagnosed sleep apnoea (see later, or see the Glossary for definition), and had micro-sleeps (or moments of complete unconsciousness) as a result, when he was driving. He fell asleep at the wheel of the taxi, and Dement managed to grab the wheel of the car, as it careered into the opposite lane of the motorway.
When Dement (2000) questioned the driver afterwards, the driver said he’d been to several doctors without any cure being offered for his sleep apnoea, high blood pressure, snoring and constant fatigue.
“If my driver had crashed into the Columbia River gorge, the accident would have been blamed on brake failure or some other nonsense. That my death was sleep related, let alone that it was caused by obstructive sleep apnoea, would never be known.”
With the evidence from sleep scientists becoming increasingly available to the public, we now have a chance to see how lack of sleep ravages the body, and compromises the mind, in so many different ways. One good example is this research result: When research participants had their sleep restricted to four to five hours, for just one night, the natural killer cells in their immune system were reduced by 70%!
And there is a lot of research to show that lack of sleep makes us angrier, less happy, and prone to serious physical and mental diseases.
People who are deprived of sleep have been shown, in laboratory experiments, to be unable to accurately assess the emotional messages on photographs of people’s faces, ranging from happy to angry. This is because sleep-deprivation reduces our emotional intelligence. This has implications for many people working in the emergency and security services, where highly skilled assessment of human behaviour is needed, and people can be working without sufficient sleep to meet the demands of the job.
But we live in a culture which is increasingly denying the importance of sleep. In the past Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and now Donald Trump, have denied the importance of sleep. Thatcher and Reagan paid a very high price for their denial of this physical necessity in the form of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Trump may well do too, unless he changes his lifestyle very quickly (as I wrote in 2019). (PS: Update in January 2021. Trump’s sleepless nights of tweeting unpleasant messages to his followers has blown up in his emotionally-compromised, sleep-deprived face!)
Nick Littlehales, a sleep researcher and coach, recommends that we create a sleep haven in our own homes. This advice is based on his years of experience advising sports people and athletes who have to be in peak condition, physically and mentally, in order to do their jobs properly.
Littlehales strongly recommends that we think of our bedrooms as places where restoration of our mental and physical reserves takes place. There are at least six important tricks or skills to this process!
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I have been very lucky because my parents were great believers in the value of naps, and considered it to be a valuable way to recharge your batteries. And in my career as a college lecturer, in a high stress environment, regular sleep each night, and naps when I could, got me through a thirty-five year career as a college lecturer without any serious health problems. This has led inevitably to my recent study of the field of sleep science.
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I began by reviewing a dozen books on the subject, including the following authors: Matthew Walker, William Dement, Nick Littlehales, Arianna Huffington, and several others.
I then set out to summarize the essence of those books, in an accessible form. And in the process, I had to consult a total of 108 sources, including books, journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles, and website blogs.
The result is before you right now. And the important insights summarized here amount to several dozen health-promoting and health-conserving strategies.
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This book addresses many important questions about sleep, including the following:
- Why should we be concerned about the quantity of hours slept? (Including the physical and mental diseases linked to inadequate sleep).
- Why should we be committed to getting high quality, undisturbed sleep? (The physical and mental health benefits).
- What causes common sleep problems? And:
- How to fix common sleep problems, like insomnia. (This includes looking at foods that promote sleep; and foods that destroy sleep. Plus how to manage your lifestyle in general to promote healthy sleep – which, in turn, gives you a healthy life. And also how to manage your mind, and your sleep environment, to reap the great rewards of regular, nourishing and regenerating sleep experiences).
The fundamental purpose of this book is to show you:
- The many ways in which lack of sleep can damage you: physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and materially.
- Why your sleep is so very precious.
- Why it needs protecting, as carefully as you protect the people you love. and:
- The key insights that you need to learn in order to optimize you sleep-related health indicators.
Most people today are not aware of the crucial importance of a good night’s sleep. And those who are clear about its importance, are unclear about how to bring it about; or how to defend their sleep time from encroachment by others, including work emails, and social media addiction.
In recent times, several good books on the science of sleep have been published. And there have been some important articles in newspapers about sleep. Nevertheless, even general medical practitioners have been, and continue to be, unaware of regular, adequate, nourishing sleep’s crucial role in promoting and sustaining our physical and mental health.
Why is this the case?
Here is one answer:
“According to researcher Raymond Rosen, most physicians have received less than two hours of training about the entire field of sleep in their four years of medical education”. (Dr Chris Winter, 2017).
Daily, nourishing sleep is an essential supporter of our ability to function as a healthy, resilient and happy person. If you don’t get enough sleep every single night, your emotional intelligence will decline, and this will affect your ability to understand and register the emotional states of those people around you, with any degree of accuracy.
You will also tend to gain weight; and have dangerous micro-sleeps (or moments of unconsciousness!) while driving or operating equipment; and you will be much angrier, and more prone to depression.
However, there are very powerful commercial forces operating to make people disregard their need for sleep. One executive director of an internet company is reputed to have said: “Our major enemy is sleep.” (While people are asleep, they cannot be buying and consuming products and services online!)
Without the knowledge that we get from scientific sleep research, we are unlikely to understand that sleep is as essential as air, water and food for our daily functioning. When people lack adequate sleep, they don’t realise that this is negatively affecting their energy, their willpower, their emotional intelligence, their physical and mental health, and their sense of happiness and joy in life.
Unfortunately the general public have little or no idea of the important insights that have come out of sleep research. And the need for sleep hygiene has certainly not been part of children’s school education, until very recently.
If you don’t know about these research findings, then you will not know why sleep is so essential for your physical, mental and emotional health. The sleep experiments that I describe in this book are the essential knowledge base on which rests our understanding of sleep’s critical importance for our well-being.
Here are some of the negative consequences of insufficient sleep:
– Our emotional intelligence plummets;
– Our appetite and weight level increases;
– Our immune system is weakened;
– Cardio-vascular health is very negatively affected;
– Emotions fluctuate;
– Fertility reduces;
– ‘Micro-sleeps’ (or moments of unconsciousness) occur, creating dangers: for example when people are driving; and:
– Our ability to memorize new information plummets.
These consequences can have very bad effects on our working lives and our family life, and the goal of this book is to inform you not only of the bad news of what can happen if you ignore the facts about the importance of sleep, but also to show you the good news – how to enrich and restore your sleep so that you can have a high level of physical and mental energy, and emotional wellbeing.
The second, major aim of the book is to show you how to protect your sleep against outside pressures – from constant texts, TV and internet sources; work, and peer group and social pressures.
In this book, research experiments – which show the power and necessity for proper sleep – are summarised; as well as relevant articles, books, blogs and video extracts.
It is written in an accessible style with specialist vocabulary explained (including a glossary of terms at the end of the book).
A variety of tried and tested techniques for improving sleep quality are described in the second part of this book. There are also several ‘boundary-strengthening techniques’, which can be used to counteract the kinds of social pressures you can expect to arise when you plan any kind of sleep behaviour change.
If you follow the advice in this book, you will get a much happier, healthier and more enjoyable life.
The focus of the book is on information that will be highly relevant to people who are ‘on the front line’, whether as a new parent, family carer, or dealing with the public in many types of occupations, including health service workers, security staff, factory workers (including night shift workers), probation officers, teachers, nurses, students in colleges and universities, counsellors, psychologists, learning assistants, transportation staff, police officers, firefighters, customer service staff, local and central government staff, and others.
But also this book is designed for self-help enthusiasts, who realize that…
– if they are to achieve their personal, relationship and career and life goals, then they will have to learn how to bring more nourishing, restful sleep into their lives to build their resilience and stamina. And:
– they must be able to protect their sleep boundaries – a skill which can be learned and slowly developed, step by step!
Ultimately, if you do not learn about how to manage yourself and your environment, in line with the key insights of sleep science, then you are highly likely to compromise your physical and mental health, happiness and life prospects.
This book will show you how to avoid the trap of neglecting your sleep needs. It will strengthen you against the pressures of your culture, which seems determined to enrol you into the big lie that sleep is ‘unimportant’!
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I hope you enjoy your journey through this book, and that you benefit greatly.
Sleep well!
Renata Taylor-Byrne
Lifestyle Coach/Counsellor
Hebden Bridge, January 2021.
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Contents
Preface……………………………………………………………………………………. v
Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………….. 1
Part 1: The basic sleep science research……………………………………….. 9
Chapter 2: Inborn patterns of sleep, and cultural variations…………. 11
2.1: The 24 hour clock inside our brains………………………………… 11
2.2: Do all cultures follow the same sleeping pattern?………………. 13
2.3: Are you a lark or an owl?……………………………………………….. 15
Chapter 3: Deep and shallow sleep; dreams; and brain-cleansing….. 21
3.1: Types of sleep and their functions…………………………………… 21
3.2: What are dreams and why do we dream?………………………….. 23
3.3: Sleep as the housekeeper of the brain´s health………………….. 28
Chapter 4: How our sleeping patterns change as we age………………. 33
4.1: Sleep in the womb………………………………………………………… 33
4.2: Sleep in infancy……………………………………………………………. 34
4.3: Sleep in childhood………………………………………………………… 35
4.4: The teenager and sleep………………………………………………….. 36
4.5: Sleep in middle age and old age………………………………………. 39
Part 2: The major sleep destroyers and their negative effects on our bodies and minds 45
Chapter 5: The problem of insomnia………………………………………….. 47
5.1: What is insomnia?…………………………………………………………. 47
5.2: The causes of insomnia………………………………………………….. 48
Chapter 6: The Major Sleep Destroyers………………………………………. 53
6.1: Stress as a cause of insomnia………………………………………….. 53
6.2: Alcohol……………………………………………………………………….. 54
6.3: Caffeine………………………………………………………………………. 58
6.4: Electric light………………………………………………………………… 63
6.5: Nicotine………………………………………………………………………. 67
Part 3: The negative effect of insufficient sleep upon our bodies and our emotional lives 69
Chapter 7: The many negative effects of sleep deprivation on our bodies 71
7.1: Distinguishing sleep deprivation from insomnia………………… 71
7.2: Sleep and life shortening……………………………………………….. 72
7.3: The effect of lack of sleep on the immune system………………. 74
7.4: How arteries respond to sleep deprivation……………………….. 77
7.5: How your sleep level affects your fertility………………………… 78
7.6: Lack of sleep and its effect on food consumption and body weight 80
7.7: Without sleep, memory doesn´t work!……………………………… 87
7.8: Sleep deprivation causes ´Microsleeps´……………………………. 93
7.9: Sleep deprivation´s effect on your driving ability………………. 97
7.10: Sleep deprivation and ´sleep debt´………………………………. 100
7.11: The effect of shift work on the body…………………………….. 103
7.12: Sleep patterns and the phenomenon of ´jet lag´…………….. 109
Chapter 8: The negative impact of sleep deprivation or insufficiency on our emotional lives 113
8.1: Five major negative results of sleep insufficiency…………….. 113
8.2: More on anger and lack of sleep……………………………………. 117
8.3: More on emotional intelligence and the link to sleep……….. 120
8.4: More on sleep and depression………………………………………. 129
Part 4: The Top Solutions for Improving Your Sleep……………………. 133
Chapter 9: Physical solutions for better sleep……………………………. 135
9.1: Regular –and preferably daily – physical exercise…………….. 135
9.2: Meditation for better sleep…………………………………………… 142
9.3: Regular afternoon naps……………………………………………….. 149
9.4: Practising relaxation techniques……………………………………. 157
9.5: Hot baths before bed…………………………………………………… 160
9.6: Your sleeping position can help prevent sleep disorders…… 162
Chapter 10: Mental solutions for improving sleep……………………… 165
10.1: Learning to manage your mind…………………………………….. 165
10.2: The effects of stress…………………………………………………… 166
10.3: Handling worry and rumination…………………………………… 167
Part 5: Improving your sleep in the real world…………………………… 185
Chapter 11: The E-CENT solution to insomnia……………………………. 187
11.1: Insomnia: the curse of sleeplessness…………………………….. 187
11.2: How to treat insomnia……………………………………………….. 188
Chapter 12: Sleeping tablets: The research……………………………….. 193
Chapter 13: Changing your sleep habits…………………………………… 203
13.1: How to change sleep habits to improve your sleep?……….. 203
13.2: The structure of a habit……………………………………………… 204
13.3: The importance of craving!…………………………………………. 206
13.4: The importance of substitution……………………………………. 208
13.5: The rewards of our habits…………………………………………… 209
13.6: Analysing your own sleep – blocking habits…………………… 210
13.7: Creating ´keystone habits´………………………………………….. 211
13.8: Habit reversal training……………………………………………….. 211
Chapter 14: How our diet affects our sleep……………………………….. 215
14.1: Change what you eat and drink……………………………………. 215
14.2: Care for your gut by watching what you eat………………….. 216
14.3: The nutrients that are very good for your sleep…………….. 217
Chapter 15: How to improve your sleeping environment to ensure a better night´s sleep 223
15.1: Reduce as much light as possible in the bedroom…………… 223
15.2: Remove distractions from the sleeping area………………….. 225
15.3: Devices for waking up………………………………………………… 225
15.4: Room temperature needed for sleep…………………………….. 227
15.5: Get the right size of bed for a decent night´s sleep…………. 227
15.6: Creating a noise-free environment……………………………….. 228
Chapter 16: Safeguarding your sleep in action:…………………………. 231
Making changes in your lifestyle can improve your sleep………… 231
16.1: The rewards for protecting your sleep………………………….. 231
16.2: How do you protect your sleep boundaries?…………………. 232
16.3: Strategies for informing people of your sleep boundaries.. 234
16.4: How to protect your sleep boundaries from employers?…. 238
Part 6: Summary, conclusion and key learning points…………………. 243
Chapter 17: Concluding Summary……………………………………………. 245
Chapter 18: Fourteen key learning points about managing your own sleep needs 263
Eight key learning points about the ways in which lack of sleep can harm you 263
Six key strategies for protecting your sleep…………………………… 266
References…………………………………………………………………………… 271
Appendix A: Glossary of terms…………………………………………………. 283
Appendix B: Learn and practice a relaxation system……………………. 299
Appendix C: The CBT-I approach to insomnia…………………………….. 305
Handling worry and rumination…………………………………………… 305
Behavioural techniques……………………………………………………… 307
Our reservations……………………………………………………………….. 309
Endnotes……………………………………………………………………………… 313
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