welcome to the deliberate way I’m Dan sewald your host and I’m joined today by
my friend Cassie hilditch who is a thought leader in all things sleep from
sleep inertia to napping alertness and fatigue counter measures we’re gonna
hear a bit more about that so uh a few words about you Cassie Cassie is a
senior research associate with San Jose State University in the great state of
California and she’s based at the fatigue countermeasures Lab at Nasa am
Research Center in California and according to my research you started
your love for studying sleep somewhat by accident while you were at the Adelaide
Institute for Sleep health and that was Adel Australia right not Adel New Jersey
I believe um well we’ll know you from your accent in a moment after the Institute you moved to London and worked
as a risk management expert or researcher in fatigue and a consultant and you had the chance to work with
companies all around the world from oil exploration in Libya and Angola to
rescue helicopter operations in the Swiss Alps pretty cool by the way you
went on to pursue your doctoral degree in Psychology at the University of South Australia with the center for Sleep
research and now your senior research associate in the fatigue countermeasures
lab based at Nasa um um you are a contributor to the research Missions at
the lab and you help to promote sleep Health in the general public with people just like you and me so Cassie it’s
awesome to have you thanks for coming and joining yeah thanks for having me I’m looking forward to this chat awesome
well I could think of no better way than to jump in and talk about something that
just passed us by daylight savings now I always looked forward to Daylight
savings as a kid especially springing forward but it’s become a bit of a polarizing topic lately actually really
political here in the United States some people say it’s literally killing people
is deight savings killing people and you think we should do away with it what do you think Cassie well obviously to say
that it’s killing people directly is perhaps a stretch but when we look at
sort of Public Health um generally and sort of look at sort of from an
epidemiological point of view there is an increased risk of death and um other
sort of comorbidities or illnesses associated with um sort of that change
when we go from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time specifically and particularly when we Spring Forward and
we lose that hour of sleep and we typically have to wake up an hour earlier than we usually do so when we’re
usually asleep um that becomes our new sort of alarm clock time and there are studies that have shown that sort of
again as a as a if you’re thinking about overall risk there is an increased risk
of um Hospital administrations heart attacks car accidents um and even um
increased um uh suicide risk as well in in that sort of week following that
spring forward change I wouldn’t have expected that like that so they there is
a an association or there’s perceived to be an association of increased suicidality during that because of that
one hour or people just so sad to lose the hour what what’s the what do you what’s your hypothesis of why that that
happens um I’m not sure that I mean again that data is sort of just looking at statistics and reported um cases in
that time frame and comparing it to other times of year and you know there there modest increases sort of of 6% but
it is um sort of a sort of a meaningful and significant difference um and the the theory is at
least in that sort of um immediate time change uh where as I say you’re losing
an hour of sleep and you’re also having to get up when you would normally be um
asleep and so your sort of body clock is thrown off even just a little bit and
this can sort of affect um mood and performance generally and so that’s
probably what sort of um you know triggering these other sort
of cases but it’s not just the time switch itself um because obviously if we
do away with Daylight Saving uh to avoid having these transition periods we then
have the option of either keeping Daylight Saving Time permanently or going back to Standard Time
permanently um and what do you where do you fall on the side to put
you on the hot seat for a moment should we do away with daylight savings what do
you think so personally as uh as a sleep
researcher and sort of in line with most of the Sleep research societies across the world uh the the choic is to do away
with daylight savings and move to permanent Standard Time um so basically
on daylight saving time we you know we’re not
changing the length of sunlight um a lot of people associate Daylight Saving Time
with um with more sunlight it’s the sunshine protection act of protecting the sunlight but we’re not changing
orbital mechanics here we’re not changing the way that the earth goes around the sun we are just changing the
light relative to what our clocks on our phones say and when our alarm is is
going to go off um and so that sort of even just that slight adjustment which
means that we’re receiving light later in the day and we’re receiving less light earlier in the day can actually
start shifting us as a population a little bit later but our bosses still
need us to be you know starting work at 9:00 a.m. we don’t get uh so our sort of
social clocks are fixed but the way the light overlays that clock is shifted um
so this can lead to sort of people kind of going to bed later and later because of this light exposure in the evening
and then on top of that in the morning you have less light exposure to help you sort of wake up in the morning you’re
getting hit on both sides you’re taking in the morning and evening yeah yeah and
if you think about if we had daylight saving time during the winter um especially in sort of more
Northern latitudes so up in sort of um you know uh Minneapolis and uh
Detroit and stuff like that the sun’s not going to be coming up until about 9 o00 in the morning wow so most people
are going to be preparing for work in school and traveling to work in school in the dark um and I think they did
actually try to make it permanent in the 70s and didn’t even last a whole year because everyone hated it so much that’s
why the 70s was a Lost Generation apparently I that’s what I hear yeah yeah
confirm or deny that but uh but the yeah it’s um and you know I speak to
it from from again a sleep and circadian perspective of this sort of timing of
your sleep and um weight periods with light um but I can’t speak to the sort
of economic impacts because I think that’s sort of the other argument I don’t know how much you know having an
extra hour of light in the evening makes a goal of course X amounts of money which improves the economy I I I can’t
speak to that side of it but um but certainly from a sleep Health perspective uh you know we’re we’re
championing permanent Standard Time um there’s also sort of a kind of natural
experiment that we can um point to in terms of overall sort of long-term
exposure to these slightly later sunlight relative to clock time and it’s
people that on the western edge of a time zone versus people that live on the Eastern edge of a time zone so across
you know um what is it would it be California and Nevada I think are all on
Pacific time but if I’m living here in San Francisco the Sun set’s a lot later
than in Las Vegas um and when they’ve done again sort of high level gen just
pulling statistics of people that live on those Eastern times so Eastern Edge versus Western Edge there’s a higher
risk of a whole list of sort of um illnesses uh if you live on the western
edge with that slightly later daylight exposure I would never have considered that a risk factor of where you are on
the eastern and western edge of a state but I do know that my daughter who is in
Bloomington Indiana is all the way on the western edge of the Eastern Standard
Time Zone and gets a lot more light and maybe happier can’t say but I’m going to
take a step back for a minute and um we’ve been talking about sleep a lot but I want to ask you how’s sleep deprived
are Americans in general for example how many hours of sleep do you think a normal adult should be getting and on
the average what does the research say people are actually
getting so the recommendation is for adults to get between 7 to n hours of
sleep per night um so that’s a pretty wide range um and there are obviously some people that sort of uh would fall a
little bit outside that range but the majority of the population should be aiming to get about seven to nine hours
a night wow um surveys I don’t see a lot of people
getting N I don’t see a lot of people getting nine hours but then again I’m not in everybody’s bedroom not yet yet
at least and but uh that seems like a lot so 7 to n’s the range but yeah tell
tell me more yeah so when they look at sort of
surveys of uh so there’s American time use survey and there other um surveys
that look at a whole range of things and so they’re not they’re not designed to
ask about sleep but they typically have you know one or two questions in there about sleep that we can use to sort of
track um how much populations getting over time they typically fall out that
about a third of the US population is getting less than S hours sleep per
night um and those Trends have changed a little bit over time but it
really depends on which um survey data you look at as to whether it looks like it’s trending Better or Worse um and
it’s it you know um there’s lots of limitations to just asking someone one
question about how much sleep you you on average you get per night um but they’re
a pretty good indicator of you know from a a sort of um 40,000 foot view
perspective that about a third of Americans are not getting the recommended amount of sleep per night
for those people who aren’t getting enough sleep that which is a pretty significant number of people and I’m
going to guess they may be in jobs of of significance or resp responsibility and
safety um what’s the impact is it just they’re a little bit drowsy and you know
they have a couple extra cups of coffee what what do you see is the the you know the quantifiable and non-quantifiable
impact of those people not getting enough sleep yeah I mean on the individual
level for not getting enough sleep you’re um yeah you’re going to feel
worse uh both in terms of your mood and uh and then feeling sleepier as you say you
might have to have a little extra caffeine but your performance your cognitive performance is also impaired
so if you’re getting behind the wheel of a car and you’re not getting the right amount of sleep again you’re putting
yourself at increased risk of having an accident due to that um fatigue or a
sleep loss um but there’s also Health consequences too and these are perhaps
more sort of longterm so if you’re not getting enough sleep can increase your risk of develop things of of type 2
diabetes or obesity or other cardiovascular problems as well um and
then sort of on a population level this turns into an economic cost as well of
people not getting enough sleep um in terms of absentee days due to um being
sick or being tired um and loss of productivity if you’re turning up to work and not at your sort of full
potential yeah and I you know I I remember that it was probably about five
years ago give or take do you remember Ariana Huffington went on this kind of this Crusade and Sh had a book that she
put out but it was like a personal mission to talk about sleep deprivation she told the story of she uh was working
you know burning the candle at both ends so to speak working 18 plus hour days and then one day she literally her head
fell over she like literally blacked out and broke her cheekbone as she lost
Consciousness from lack of sleep so she’s been on the bully pulpit talking about this and one of the things that it
struck in me was how aware and how much do most Americans know about sleep being
a top priority I feel like most people just sort of dismiss it and say yeah I’ll sleep when I’m dead um as that
expression goes what’s your your your your sense of of how important sleep is
to people I think sleep is still a little
behind um how we talk about the importance of diet and
exercise uh but we really see sleep as sort of the third pillar of Health along with diet and exercise and there’s more
and more research showing that you need good sleep to even get the benefits of the exercise you’re doing for example so
um again in sort of Public Health messaging about the importance of sleep versus the amount of messages that are
out there about how you should diet and exercise we’re definitely behind but the
um I think that messaging is increasing at a rapid Pace as we learn more about it and as we’re able to speak to more
people about it and having you know um public figures championing it as well
like um Ariana Huffington is is really great as well to sort of get that
information out there um yeah you know the another reflection that I have um
many moons ago when I just graduated college I worked for one of the big six
um accounting auditing firms erns and young at the time and my bosses there
would make it a point of bragging they would beat their chest and talk about how little sleep that they would get and
the less sleep you got the more impressive it was it was like a badge of honor for them how did that or does that
continue to be culturally acceptable to make that a bragging point or a distinction of honor to go without sleep
and it’s not just CPA firms law firms consulting firms um College studying
studying for late night exams it seems to be not just acceptable but a point of
bragging for people what’s your perspective on
that yeah I would say that unfortunately that point of view still exists a lot more than we’d like it to
um but one way to sort of um try to be
the antidote to that is to explain how much more uh you would get out of having
sleep so you know a lot of um a lot of the industries where getting not enough
sleep is a bragging right are also very competitive and they’re places where having a slight Edge over something one
else is a huge difference and getting a little bit more sleep can can give you
that edge can make you the opposite quicker smarter give you more insight right and it’s the same for um sort of
you know in the military um or for sports teams um you know there’s a lot
of that kind of Macho thinking of uh you know not having to sleep and whatnot and
sleep is for the week uh but you know more and more we’re going in and and
being able to sort of challenge those perceptions um and really promote not
rather than phrasing it as well these are all the things these are all the bad
things that happen when you don’t sleep these are all the good things that happen when you do sleep well these are
all the sort of added bonuses and things that will improve it seems like sleep
needs a marketing campaign the same way milk the dairy industry did a got milk
campaign all those years ago got sleep um maybe somebody’s already done it but
it sounds like there may be more of a need for for promotion I I want to turn
for just a moment to a topic that I know that’s very near and dear to your heart and it’s this idea of sleep inertia and
I I’d never heard the term for it admittedly it made sense to me but what is it exactly and how did does sleep
inertia impact your alertness and cognitive performance immediately after you wake up tell me tell me a little bit
more about it yeah so probably everyone has experienced this at some point but it’s
sort of when you wake up and for some reason you feel more tired than when you went to bed in the first place so it’s
this transition from from sleep to wake and it just takes your brain a little
bit of time to switch on all the switches and be back back to sort of
full capacity again um and so typically it’s a pretty short period of time that
you’re feeling this sort of grogginess disorientation just wanting to hit the snooze button um but depending on how
like your how much sleep or sleep loss you’ve had before and what time of day you’ve woken up is it uh at your normal
wake time or in the middle of the night um this will impact sort of how severe
those symptoms are how how groggy you feel feel and how long it takes to get over that feeling as well and what does
that matter I mean I know it’s this might sound like a really obvious question you know if is it just a
natural state that we all experience what’s the the the negative consequences
of maybe being less successful of kind of getting the cobwebs out to be a
little overly colloquial yeah so so yeah for for most
of us when we first wake up and in that sort of first 20 minutes we probably maybe scrolling through
something on your phone you might accidentally you know like something that you didn’t mean to or you’re making
coffee and you might put the milk back in the cupboard instead of the fridge or something like that so little mistakes
that ultimately don’t add up to much but for people who work on shift so have
extended shifts and nap on shift and um or they work on call and be called at
any time of day or night to sort of perform a safety critical activity so think about all our emergency responders
our firefighters um ambulance officers that are making life saving decisions um
or operating Vehicles immediately after waking and it sort of time is of the element um so in these
cases you’re aligning this period of impaired cognitive performance this
grogginess this disorientation with having to think clearly having to do really important
things so that’s where sleep inotia can be sort of the most um challenging um and important to
manage but even though you know for most of us as I say we’re we’re not going to
be put in positions where our sleep inertia overlaps with something important we might uh in the very near
future and the and people sort of currently as well in autonomous vehicles
so at the moment you know we have about level two automation we still have to have hands on the wheel we still have to
be able to be ready to take that control at any moment um but being put in that
autonomous vehicle where we don’t really have anything to do puts us as humans in
a very vulnerable state for feeling sleepy and actually falling asleep um
and if you fall asleep as several articles of um Tesla drivers you you
know just Google it you’ll find a whole bunch of fallen asleep at the wheel um and when the car gives back
control uh then they could be in that sleep inertia State when they wake up and have to sort of make that immediate
decision without their sort of brain being fully back online to you know take in all that information in such a quick
um space of time that’s very interesting my intuition was at first being an
autonomous vehicle you’re okay you you’ll you’re fine because the car is doing the work for you but your point is
the moment moment that you snap awake or need to you need to be alert immediately
and that drag that inertia to use the the word um that inertia is problematic
you know I I didn’t even consider other groups like bus drivers truck drivers I don’t think of them as life-saving roles
but they they certainly could be putting people at risk themselves too if they’re
not able to be in a wakeful state as quickly as they they to
be yeah if they have shifts where they’re um napping or sleeping
immediately before driving um I mean there’s there’s always this sort of tradeoff
of uh napping is a really great countermeasure if you are suffering from
sleep loss so if you’ve been awake all night taking a nap so that you can get some sleep to uh in response to that
sleep loss but you’ve just got to make sure that you have sort of a buffer
after waking from that nap so that you get the benefits of the nap but you avoid the sort of um the risks of the
Sleep inertia after the nap now I’m going to ask you a very self-centered question for a moment um my wife is a
very light sleeper and she prefers to sleep early it just so happens I’m a
pretty heavy sleeper and I like to go to bed late I do my best thinking late at
night we have opposite schedules and otherwise it’s a great marriage we’re very happy but I might be slowly killing
her I’m not sure um what do you do when you have two people who have such
different um sleep cycles what what what’s what advice would you give and any sort of insights from your
experience yeah I definitely speak to personal experience also having
uh my husband was a b tender for a long time and so we were definitely sort of
ships in the night when it came to sleeping and waking um but we sort of
just worked in um small changes like if you’re the
one that gets up first making sure that you know if you if you happen to have a
um a closet that’s in your bedroom you know picking out the clothes that you’re going to wear the next day beforehand
and having them outside the bedroom um so that you’re not sort of rumaging around when you first wake up um and
then yeah sort of on the other side if the later person’s going to bed um you know having some sort of maybe very dim
red light that you can have so that you can see what you’re doing and not bumping and crashing into things but
you’re not turning on the main light and uh waking people up when you come to bed late um and some people opt to if it if
it’s a really extreme case or for people that have sleep apnea and really loud
snoring some couples choose to sleep in separate beds and separate bedrooms um
and obviously that’s a personal discussion as to you know how you make that work but if you have two people
that are sleeping better then you’re going to have potentially a better relationship that way as well very mood
and well I I think back to like old sitcoms and TV shows from the 1960s and
70s and I always thought it was just more of a puritanical thing of like we don’t want to show a husband and wife
sharing the bed but I’m starting to think that maybe they had different sleep cycles but perhaps that wasn’t
what was on their mind hard to say um maybe they maybe they were ahead of their time they were that maybe in one
era they’re ahead of their time um I feel like Americans in general are
chronically sleep deprived people talk about it’s always in the mainstream press and it’s a general conversation
that you have around the quote unquote water cooler with friends and co-workers there’s so many books and
interviews out there about sleep I feel like I don’t know what I can really trust um who’s getting it right who gets
it right and are there examples of of people or organizations you’d point to if you said I need to know more about
sleep and I want to get it right who who and where would you direct them
to um so there are some online resources through the national sleep Foundation um
so you can sort of go through their website and see what information they have that might be relevant to you um
the Sleep research Society also publishes um some sort of public
briefings on different topics as well um so they’re sort of you know very um good
sources of information um and so I haven’t read
Matt Walker’s book that I’ll put it out there sorry Matt sorry Dr Walker but yeah um what’s or what’s it what it’s oh
gosh now you make me wor I think why do we sleep I will accept
that yeah but but but um Dr Walker is is a a sleep researcher who has um Now sort
of transitioned into being um uh yeah talking about sleep publicly and
you know being able to translate academic findings into sort of that more
sort of Pop science um dialogue and you know there’s going to be a little bit
Lost in Translation um but I think that from what from what I’ve heard from what
he’s done on different podcasts and whatnot um he has a very solid
background in sleep and is um one of the the people that I would sort of probably
recommend um you know checking out some of his his podcasts or his books um
awesome I’m gonna look that up right away I I am intrigued I’ve read a few different I I did read Ariana
Huffington’s book and I thought it was it was it’s well written it’s compelling it’s for the lay public which I am um I
did like that so I’ll give her a plug but Matt wer Dr Matt Walker I’m G to check that out um let I gotta ask you um
don’t have an aura ring on I just have my wedding band on um but uh I’ve always been intrigued by the aura ring and uh
and the different Technologies out there like sleep score lab and other organizations like that are there some
technologies resources things that you’ve used or you you’ve seen being used and you thought that’s pretty cool
I I like that or that’s useful um with no obviously there’s no no agenda or
plugs but just your experience what do you like from the tech sector for sleep that
is so this is a very fast moving and emerging sector at the moment um and
there sort of from my perspective we’re always looking at um
perform typically referred to as validation studies but really a performance evaluation to see how it
compares to RS of gold standard measures of sleep um and um Dr Evan chinoy has
been um publishing a lot in this area comparing a whole bunch of these products on the market to our gold
standard polography that’s the one with all the electrodes stuck all over you um or our sort of research grade wearable
um the uses actigraphy the same sort of underlying principles of the sort of motion detection translated into a sleep
wake estimate um and you know most of them are doing most of the products on the
market are doing very well at being able to estimate just general sleep versus Wake how much sleep you get in a night
they’ve all got sort of a little bit of error to them but you know on the whole
they’re doing a pretty good job um where the market isn’t at at the moment is um
stages of sleep so a lot of products will also offer oh you had this amount
of light sleep and deep sleep and RAM sleep um at the sort of of the ones that have
been EV valuated most of them are not much better than flipping a coin at putting you in which of those stages are
so I would would take any of that sort of feedback from any of your wearables with a grain of salt um but um yeah the
as you say the aura ring um has been pretty successful and these products are
also continuing to evolve as well so I think the oring just put out a new um
sort of algorithm or software that um may get closer to being able to actually
predict those sleep stages as well as just general sleep weight um uh timing
um but it’s um hard for us as well to to
sort of evaluate everything because usually those those algorithms from those kind of companies are you know
definitely a black box and um very private um but one one additional thing
I’d say just for for wearables is that you they are a great way to sort of
think about your sleep and improving your sleep um being more aware of how
much you’re getting um but just uh there there is
the potential that people sort of put too much weight into it and think oh it
says I had a bad sleep I you know I must have had a bad sleep or or uh it says I
had a good sleep and so I’m good to go on everything um so your your perception
of what your sleep is like can actually influence how you feel too um so just
sort of I think about it as like the way I use my step counter I you know have a
step goal um each day but I know that what it’s telling me is not literally
every step I took that day it’s just a sort of metric that I’m using and I’m
comparing Within Myself did I get more steps yesterday versus today and so you
can sort of see like did I get more sleep tonight than I did last night that kind of thing are there I have to ask
you the are there any kind of sleep tools that you personally like that that you use or or that you found like oh
this this help me um what’s your any any suggestions you have things that you’d
say you may want to try this or what’s been your experience so I don’t actually use any
sleep tracking I don’t own you sleeper watches and and whatnot uh yeah I’m I’m
a pretty good sleeper a little a little on the more on the light side than I’d like but I I do sort of try to protect
my sleep and um practice what I preach but I would say one thing that has um
that I sort of do deliberately is have a
um on my on my phone I have a social media sort of time limit um so if I
exceed that for the day then I I mean I can always override it but it gives me
at least some sort of sense of how much I’ve been on it and um so if I’m in bed
just before bed and scrolling through so social media which isn’t sort of advisable but if you do it and fall sleep that’s fine um um but I but it’s
more about displacing the time that you would be asleep with scrolling so
because you know these things are designed for you to just keep scrolling um if you can set your phone
that has a time limit to it so that you have 15 minutes and then when that like
hits you’re like okay I’m now going to sort of I’m not going to go any further
than that love it that’s a that’s a great tip you you actually took the words right my mouth but I’m going to
ask you to maybe share a few others when you think about some deliberate practices coming from an expert um maybe
that you use but things that you’ve found to be effective ways to help people get to sleep and stay asleep what
are some tips tricks or deliberate practices if you if you would um that
you would recommend to people who maybe aren’t the greatest of sleepers and they’re looking for those sort of inside
uh tips yeah so we have um a whole series
of tips for sleeping that we talk about as sleep hygiene I don’t know who coined
that term but it’s what we sort of call it um
and you know some of those things about your sleep environment making sure that it’s dark and it’s quiet um and it’s uh
cool for example um so don’t have the bedroom sort of too too hot because when
you are falling asleep you your B your C body temperature drops and you need to
sort of dissipate that heat um and if your bedroom’s too hot then your body can’t sort of lose that heat naturally
how cold how cold is acceptable or what would you I want to write this down because my wife is always like it’s too
cold in here and I’m always I’m I was just about to say it’s definitely the
the amount of degrees vary I think between uh bed partners and yeah maybe
we do need new beds I don’t know that’s okay or two or two thermostats two thermostats or I mean I
think some beds you can you can set like different temperatures for or you can get kind of
quilts that are half really thick and half thin or something like that but
um yeah um but also having a a preed
routine can help you to fall asleep easier so if you do the same couple of
steps before you go to bed each night then your brain learns that the next
step is sleep so if you sort of you know brush your teeth put the cat out or
whatever is the I guess most cats are Ino these days but um you know have
these kind of series of steps that aren’t and they’re not um steps that are like check work email one
last time and freak out that your boss just sent you a new email kind of thing like just relaxing calm quiet things and
do it in the same order same way every single time and then have going to sleep after that and sort of uh yeah help put
your brain in that sort of ready to sleep State love it I I I definitely
like the temperature suggestion and um I I really think it’s it’s hard to build a
healthy routine because you’re right I think it’s instinctive to check your
email or is there something else I didn’t get to tonight and that can completely derail your sleep so I’m
gonna stop checking I Am My Own Boss but I can be a real tough person to myself
sometimes so I’ll put myself in check as well all right yeah I awesome tips and
I’ve got one more round of uh of games for you so I want to move to a game that
I call myth or reality I love playing this with guests because in advance I do
a little bit of research of things that people will conventionally say are myths
or realities and I’m going to get to ask you an expert which one do you think it
is sometimes people say it’s a meity and it’s somewhere between a myth and a reality you could ride the fence if
you’re not convinced either way but I’d love to hear you know a few of your thoughts about it if you are one way or
the other have an opinion so are you ready all right I’m ready first one your
body gets used to a lack of sleep is that a myth or a
reality myth it’s a myth yes there’s um there’s a really great study that
um sort of sleep restricted people over two weeks so not sleep depriving they
were still allowed to have there was I mean there were different groups but some people had say 6 hours sleep per
night across the two weeks which is again pretty reflective of a large
portion of the American population getting six hours a night um and they measured their performance each day
across that time and it got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse wow when they measured how people felt what
they found is that over the first couple of days people felt more and more sleepy but then it hit a plateau and people
sort of evened out on how they felt so there be there becomes this disconnect
between how you perceive yourself to be versus how well you’re actually doing
and it’s it’s really with this sort of what we call cumulative or chronic sleep
loss where you’re Los when where you’re not getting as much sleep as you should day after day or night after night that
can all add up and while you might subjectively feel like your body has
adapted to it there are other measures that show that it hasn’t and it’s
actually getting worse awesome really great insight there and I I feel like well I have another
myth reality that I’m going to lay on you but you uh it kind of Builds on this a little bit um seven hours of sleep is
actually better than eight or nine hours of sleep at night is that a myth or reality
I would ER towards myth I don’t think well I don’t think you could ever say that 7 hours is better than 8 or n there
are individual differences in sleep needs so some people again that sort of
recommendation is from 7 to 9 hours to allow for that individual variation so
you might only need 7 hours a night to really perform at your best each day
whereas I need N9 hours of sleep her night to perform at my best each day um
so seven is definitely not always better than nine but some people might be able to get away with seven that’s
interesting it it really does depend on the individual I’m gonna come back to a
topic that you just brought up before and I’m gonna lay it on you ready you
can make up a sleep deficit just by sleeping longer the next night is that a
myth or reality
so th and this might fall into the meity category
but certainly if you haven’t had enough sleep the night before then getting
recovery sleep sleeping more the next night is going to be better for you but
um but it doesn’t necessarily fully undo what your body went through having
had that sleep loss initially um and it can often take more than just one good
night’s rest to recover from a bad night’s rest it might take you a couple of nights of good sleep to really get
back to your best again all right so not a reality but not a myth it is somewhere
between the meity space um I’m GNA ask you the the idea about teenagers teens
need more sleep sleep each night versus adults true or not true or myth a
reality that’s a reality uh teens and AD yeah adolescent children typically need
more sleep than adults um and also teens have on average a different sleep
timing need too so um it’s you know there’s the kind
of The Stereotype of the easy teenager that sleeps in in the morning but this
is actually part of their physiology driving them to sleep in later and to
stay up later so when we go through adolescence the uh time in which our
body wants to sleep is delayed a little bit um during that period and then as
we’re sort of and then more sort of elderly people that kind of shifts earlier again as
well I’ve got something which some people will be distraught over so I’m going to throw it out um people do not
eat spiders while they’re sleeping have you heard this before is this a myth or is this a
reality uh this is not within the scope of my research but but so I don’t know
what do you think I mean I’m from Australia and I feel like I would notice
if a 2in hairy spider crawled into my mouth at night um but maybe there are
smaller spiders that uh exists that might accidentally land there if you’re
breathing through your mouth I have read unconfirmed that it is much more of a
myth though of course it’s possible it’s not a uh a general belief or convention
that that happens but uh but we I I’ll say unconfirmed somewhere in the mity
space um I’ve got a couple more for you how much a person sleeps at night can
impact their weight is that a myth or
reality so certainly uh a reality in
that uh if you don’t if you’re not getting enough sleep it can increase
your risk of weight gain and obesity um and part of this relates to
the timing of the sleep as well and then the timing of your meals relative to your sleep so we’re learning more and
more it’s not just about what you eat but when you eat it so if you’re if you
are having a shorter sleep episode it might mean that you’re also sort of awake until 2: a.m. say when you should
have gone to bed at midnight and maybe you have a snack between 12: and 2 as
well and if you’re eating at that time you’re eating when your body is designed to be asleep it’s not designed to
process that intake of food so it can lead to um glucose intolerance so you
have a larger glucose Spike uh because your body is not designed to sort of
store up all that um the glucose from that food and that can increase the risk of again sort of obesity and um type two
diabetes metabolic disorders very interesting thank you for sharing well we’ve come to our last
question a 26 minute nap is a great way made a partially offset sleep loss at
night is that a myth or a reality so as I indicated earlier naps
are a great way to um sort of recover from sleep loss or
if you are having to do a night shift and your body is sort of promoting sleep
during that time if you have the opportunity to take a short nap then um that can help boost your alertness
um and typically in the realm of sort of 20 minutes you’re going to get some benefits out of the nap um but again
being aware that you might have sleep inertia when you wake up out of that nap
so you want to allow probably you know 20 minute nap and then allow 20 minutes
before you return to any sort of safety critical duties
um but typically you know nap naps are good if you’re if you’re feeling TI if
you’re if you’re hungry you have to eat if you’re sleepy you have to sleep is there a any any sort of
credibility to the 26 minute nap that number had been thrown out in a couple
of places there’s a book I think Daniel pink had written and talked about the 26
minute nap and it sounds so precise it led me to believe there must be some
signs to it um your thoughts is that matter 26
yeah I think the 26 minutes comes from and it’s sometimes referred to as the NASA nap if if it’s the same sort of
origin that I’m thinking of and Dr Mark roskind um worked in the fatigue countermeasures Lab at Nasa am back in
the ’90s and he did a study looking at napping in the cockpit for Pilots uh and
they were given sort of a 40-minute opportunity to nap and they found that in that 40-minute opportunity so they’re
sitting in their seat in in Flight um they were able to sleep for 26 minutes
on average within that time and that that amount of sleep um meant uh that
they were more alert and better um at performing on a reaction time task at
top of descent which is sort of just um at the end of Cruise when it’s sort of a safety critical period of the flight so
I think that sort of golden time of 26 minutes has evolved from that but with
naps the length of the nap really
um the the the benefits that you get from that nap really depend on your
sleep wake history so have you been awake for 24 hours and you’re taking a 20-minute nap or did you just lose 2
hours of sleep last night and this afternoon you’re just taking a topup nap or yeah are you napping in the middle of
a night shift or are you taking an afternoon nap all of these things influence your sort of severity of and
duration of sleep inertia and how much you can get out of that nap how um how
much it’s going to boost your alertness so not all naps are created equal not by
a lawn shot this is true I like that all right well thank you for for that thanks for the bonus question in that input um
you know Cassie I have one last thing to ask you you’ve been a great guest I’ve learned a ton in just a short amount of
time about sleep I hope I don’t lose sleep over sleeping which can happen um
any advice or suggestion you’d give to folks like me or folks who are listening
and confronting issues like struggling with sleep and trying to better understand and quantify their own sleep
any any other recommendations that you would have to uh to listeners about
that I think think if you’ve tried to sort of put in place those sort of basic
sleep hygiene uh suggestions in terms of making your sleep environment conducive
to sleep um having this pre-bed routine not drinking a cup of coffee or a Red
Bull within a couple of hours of going to bed sort of you know try all the basic things first but if you’re still
having sleep issues then you really should just see your uh doctor um I’m
not a clinician so I you know all advice is just sort of very general um but yeah
if you if you’re really struggling with your sleep then talking to your doctor about it is probably the best Next Step
awesome and here I thought you were playing a doctor the whole time now I I what a what a great opportunity to have
a sleep researcher explain the work and the inside knowledge about sleep so
thank you for for all the great insights um Cassie pleasure to have you on thank
you for being generous with sharing your wealth of knowledge and uh certainly if people want to follow you they can
follow you on LinkedIn or other social that you’re on and uh and thanks once again for being a part of the deliberate
way yeah thanks for having me had a great time
