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2
Sleep: nutrition for the mind
Stephen
Introduction: work, play, sleep, repeat
Of all the things in this book we are writing about, I have come to the conclusion there is one factor most instrumental in self-care, well-being and productivity – and that is sleep. I have heard the same phrase time and time again: ‘If only I could get a good night’s sleep, I feel I could face anything.’ I have heard this from practitioners, and I’ve heard it from family carers struggling to maintain their caring role. Sleep seems to be the cornerstone of any attempt to keep things together and on track. As we shall see, not only does a lack of sleep affect things like concentration, planning and analysing, it also has a profound physical effect on our bodies, making us more susceptible to ill health. Walker (2018) comments that for too long we have seen poor sleep as a symptom of conditions rather than the possible cause. We need to give that careful consideration.
Before the industrial revolution, workers were more attuned to night and day. We now understand how our bodies are locked into a circadian rhythm that relies on dark and light, as this helps the production of chemicals in our brains. The cues of it getting dark or light, along with other factors, initiate our sleep and waking. Picture our earlier lifestyles, living off the land, working while it was light, sleeping when it was dark. Without wanting to paint an idyllic picture of life in previous centuries, it is clear the trappings of modern life, and the opportunities that go with it, can get in the way of a good night’s sleep.
The pattern culturally associated with how we sleep has changed since the advent of artificial light. We can now extend the daylight into the hours of dusk and brighten up early winter mornings at the flick of a switch. We used to have a bi-modal sleep pattern, sleeping for four or five hours early in the evening, usually after our last meal of the day, followed by one or two hours awake, and concluding with four or five hours of further sleep to get us to morning. This was also supplemented by an afternoon nap just like the siesta some cultures continue to enjoy today.
This pattern of sleep, particularly the afternoon nap, has been shown to be healthy for us, ‘promoting greater life satisfaction, efficiency, and performance’ (Levitin, 2015, p 189). Companies at the cutting edge of this kind of knowledge, such as Nike and Google, provide nap rooms for employees. They know from NASA research that a 25-minute nap boosts performance by 34 per cent and alertness by 54 per cent (Webb, 2017). I suspect as busy practitioners you could do with that lift, but, equally, we are unlikely to see nap pods as a universal reality any time soon, which is a shame.
We have lost our bi-modal and afternoon nap pattern because we are locked into hours of working and ways of thinking about work and life outside of work. Using artificial light to extend our hours of activity means in some way we are working against our body’s natural, instinctive way of functioning.
I am constantly amazed by the restorative nature of a good night of sleep. In so many circumstances I find myself thinking late on an evening, ‘I can’t do any more, I’m so tired I can barely move.’ I find myself physically exhausted. I could regale you with stories of epic bike rides or marathon runs that have left me physically with nothing left but I will save you that. Equally I can find myself psychologically or emotionally drained from the rigours of the working day and feel I just can’t muster the energy to think about anything. But then, a good night’s sleep, and we’re fit to go again. Or at least should be.
The language of sleep
Sleep is embedded in our cultural psyche. When my wife and I wake up on a morning we invariably ask, ‘How did you sleep?’ This is closely followed by ‘Who is walking the dog?’ ‘I slept like a baby’ is the response I love to hear to the ‘How did you sleep?’ question. Because then I can say, ‘What? You were up three times during the night crying and during two of them you had something to eat?’ and laugh at my own amazing sense of humour (because I’m a dad and that’s what dads do).
‘I slept like a log’ is good response I often use myself. You didn’t move, you fell asleep and didn’t stir until the next morning. You were an inanimate object. This is interesting as it alludes to sleep being something in which there is nothing going on. As we shall find out, there is so much happening that is crucial to our well-being and that impacts on our productivity the next day. In some ways, being asleep is just as much an active time as being awake, except… you’re asleep. Indeed, one well-used phrase we hear when we are pondering a difficult conundrum or big decision is ‘sleep on it’. This seems to suggest something is going on while we are asleep as that decision somehow gets made, or that knotty issue resolved, while we are oblivious to the world around us.
The importance attributed to a good night’s shuteye cannot be overestimated. You don’t really need a chapter in a book to tell you how important it is because you know how you feel when you don’t get a good night’s sleep. Yet, lots of us often forgo what we know is good for us and that’s a recurring theme every time we talk about any sort of self-care. So, keep reading… there’s good stuff coming that will help you see the importance of this element of self-care and give you some ideas around promoting good sleep. We want to avoid the sluggish feeling that has you reaching for the coffee pot by mid-morning or sooner. We want to avoid you being no good to neither man nor beast by mid-afternoon.
Personally,