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12 Evidence Based Tips to Improve Your Sleep

2021-07-23 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 8:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health, sleep and habits · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book

In a Book Club episode on Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, Ali sets out why most people need eight hours of sleep and the harms of too little, notes a blog post by Alexey Guzey disputing the book's science, and gives the book's 12 rules for better sleep with his own practice: a fixed schedule, no caffeine after 2 p.m., no alcohol, warm lights, a cold room and getting up after 20 minutes awake.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A Book Club episode on Why We Sleep and its 12 evidence-based tips

  • ★★ This Book Club episode, in Ali's series on key lessons from books, is on Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, ending with 12 evidence-based tips for sleeping better. — 00:00:00 · Book Club
  • ★★ Ali had never given much thought to how to sleep better and more productively until he read Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, which he calls fantastic. — 00:00:00

00:00:20 — Why we should sleep better: eight hours, the harms of sleep deprivation, and a critique of the book

  • ★★ Citing Why We Sleep, Ali says there is a lot of evidence that chronically sleeping less than eight hours a day harms you in various domains of life. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Ali says people who can sleep less than six hours a night and function completely fine are less than 1% of the population, and most who think they are in that group are not. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Even if six or seven hours of sleep feels fine, Ali says, the evidence shows we are bad at judging our own performance while sleep deprived. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ Ali says that, because of the evidence in Why We Sleep, we should sleep for eight hours a day. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali cites Matthew Walker's claim that routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes the immune system and more than doubles the risk of cancer. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali says Walker links sleep deprivation with higher mortality, heart disease, weight gain, infection and even Alzheimer's disease. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali says repeatedly sleeping less than eight hours reduces performance, productivity, social fluidity, rational decision-making, memory recall, emotional control and even testosterone levels. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali cites Walker's claim that after 10 days of seven hours' sleep a night the brain is as dysfunctional as after 24 hours without sleep. — 00:01:27
  • ★ Ali says there is a lot of evidence linking lack of sleep with reduced creativity. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Ali points to a blog post by Alexey Guzey that argues Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep is riddled with scientific errors and inaccuracies. (hedged) — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Ali suggests reading Why We Sleep or a summary of it, then Alexey Guzey's critical blog post, to see what issues he takes with the book's evidence. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Ali feels his life has improved since following the advice of Why We Sleep, and thinks it is still worth following even if some of it is not entirely sound. — 00:02:26

00:02:50 — Shortform book summaries

  • ★★ Ali read Why We Sleep properly once and now revisits its points through the Shortform summary, his favourite way to read book summaries. — 00:02:55
  • ★ Ali likes that Shortform cross-references each book with others in its library, for example linking a point of Walker's to a similar one by Ryan Holiday. — 00:02:55 · Ryan Holiday

00:03:40 — Twelve rules for sleeping better, with Ali's own practice

  • ★★★ Rule one for better sleep: keep a sleep schedule, sleeping and waking at the same time every day, without sleeping in at weekends, which makes Monday mornings harder; Ali admits he often puts off going to sleep. — 00:03:42
  • ★★ Rule two: avoid alarms if you can, since alarms cause a big stress response on waking. (hedged) — 00:03:42
  • ★★ Rule three: wake up with the sun or use very bright lights, which helps set the circadian rhythm. — 00:04:11
  • ★★ Rule four: avoid caffeine and nicotine completely if at all possible; Ali himself cannot wake up in the morning without caffeine. — 00:04:11
  • ★★ Ali has a rule for himself not to have caffeine after 2 p.m., because he knows it will affect his sleep. — 00:04:40
  • ★ Ali sometimes still has a caffeinated Diet Coke with a McDonald's drive-thru in the evening and always regrets it when he struggles to get to sleep. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Rule five: exercise regularly, which helps sleep, but avoid exercising within three hours of going to bed. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Rule six: do not nap after 3 p.m.; naps are good for us, but late ones make it harder to sleep properly at night. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Rule seven: drink no alcohol unless it is fully metabolised by bedtime, since alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep. (hedged) — 00:05:10
  • ★★ Matthew Walker (quoted): Matthew Walker writes that nightly alcohol disrupts sleep and that abstinence is the best and most honest advice he can offer. — 00:05:39
  • ★★ Ali does not drink alcohol at all and thinks not drinking is great, with plenty of health reasons, one being that alcohol is terrible for sleep. — 00:05:39
  • ★★ Rule eight: avoid large meals and drinks at night; a big meal before bed makes you sleepier but harms the quality of sleep. (hedged) — 00:05:39
  • ★★ For good sleep the biggest meal of the day should be lunch and dinner a lighter one, so Ali concedes his midnight McDonald's drive-through takeaways are probably not a good idea. — 00:06:08
  • ★★ Rule nine: reduce light before sleep, blue light above all; Ali sets the Philips Hue bulbs around his living room to a warm yellow glow at night. — 00:06:08 · Philips Hue
  • ★★ Ali still gets blue light from his devices and uses f.lux and Night Shift to reduce it, which he says is not completely ideal. — 00:06:37
  • ★★ Citing Walker, Ali says a relaxing activity such as reading or listening to music, instead of devices, should be part of a bedtime ritual. — 00:06:37
  • ★★ Rule ten is to cool your body before sleep: the ideal sleeping temperature is 65 °F, or 18.3 °C, which Ali calls pretty cold. — 00:06:37
  • ★★ Ali now sleeps with a fan and the window open to bring his room down to 18 °C, and in hotels sets the air conditioning down to 18 degrees. — 00:06:37
  • ★★ Rule eleven: do not rely on sleeping pills, which put us into sedation rather than sleep and do not give its benefits. — 00:07:06
  • ★★★ The final rule: do not lie awake in bed trying to fall asleep for more than 20 minutes, since trying raises stress and makes sleep harder; get up and do something until you feel sleepy. — 00:07:36
  • ★★ Ali applies the 20-minute rule by reading on his Kindle in bed until his eyes start to close, then going to sleep, though he says this reading of the advice may not be entirely sound. (hedged) — 00:08:05 · Kindle, Brandon Sanderson

00:08:40 — Pointer to his video Why I'm Never Tired, sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Matthew Walker · Why We Sleep

Also: People: Alexey Guzey · Brandon Sanderson · Ryan Holiday

Projects: Book Club

Organizations: McDonald's

Concepts: Alzheimer's disease · caffeine · cancer · cardiovascular disease

Products: f.lux · iPhone · Kindle · Night Shift · Philips Hue · Shortform

Only in the description or credits: Alessandro

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