Most people agree that sleep is really important. Think of how good you feel when you wake up after a really good, uninterrupted night’s sleep. Now think of how bad you feel all day when you’ve had one or more terrible night’s sleep. I’ve been doing some digging into sleep recently, and it turns out that the benefits of sleep are way bigger than I realised. I’m pretty sure that sleep is the foundation of health and happiness.

What sleep does for us

When we’re asleep, all sorts of activity takes place while we’re snoozing the night away. Here are some of the benefits of sleep:

• Our brain processes what happened during the day – this can help us form memories, solve problems or make sense of what happened during the day
• Hormones flow through the body regulating sleep, growth and repair
• We relax – our sympathetic nervous system gets a break
• Cortisol (stress hormone) levels are lowered during the first few hours, and then they increase towards wake up time to get us ready for the day
• Muscles get paralysed – that way we don’t act out our dreams
• Anti-diuretic hormone gets released so we (hopefully) don’t need to go to the toilet during the night
• Cytokines (inflammation fighters) are released – so sleeping well helps our immune system do its job
• Creative problem solving improves

Consequences of insufficient sleep

How much is enough? Somewhere between 7-9 hours a night is apparently the sleep sweet spot for us humans. Insufficient sleep has serious consequences – way bigger than I had realised. Here are all the consequences of insufficient sleep:

• Reduced empathy
• Memory problems
• Concentration problems
• Increased blood pressure
• Increased diabetes risk
• Weight gain
• Low sex drive
• Risk of heart disease
• Poor balance
• Under sleeping by an hour per night has the same impact on our brains as if we were 10 years older
• 24 hours without sleep is worse for us than 24 hours without water or food
• 20 hours without sleep is cognitively the same as being drunk

I was amazed by all of this. Makes me regret the macho years of work hard play hard, or bingeing on Netflix … it may end up costing me a lot.

Sleep Tips

For many of us, our routines have changed a lot in the last 18 months, and that disruption gives us the opportunity to work deliberately on improving things. If you’re interested in taking advantage of more of the benefits of sleep by improving the quality and quantity of yours – try these:

• Routine – go to bed and wake up at the same times each day, even on weekends.
• Wind Down – the 30 minutes before you go to bed should be calm and relaxing. No work, no devices (get your alarm set before you start your wind-down). Phones stimulate our brains and wake us up. The apps are designed to trap us in plus he light is interpreted by our brain’s as daylight. That confuses us into thinking it isn’t time to sleep yet. Read, talk, meditate, take a bath or a shower.
• Caffeine – I love it, but it is a stimulant and doesn’t help with sleep. Try to avoid coffee in the afternoon. It takes 10-12 hours to remove 75% of the caffeine from your system each time you drink a cup.
• Booze – it might make it easier for you to get to sleep, but you’re actually sedating yourself. The quality of sleep is lower with alcohol in the blood – you don’t sleep as deeply, you wake up a lot more, you don’t feel as rested. For every drink you’ve had, wait an hour and drink a glass of water, before you go to bed.
• Exercise – is great for us and helps us sleep, but it’s very hard to sleep right after exercise. Try to avoid strenuous exercise in the 2 hours before bed.
• Temperature – apparently 18 degrees is the best ambient temperature for sleep. Cold is better than hot. When our core temperature drops, it is easier to sleep. A hot shower before bed allows our body to cool afterwards, helping with sleep. The cold shower should be saved for the morning – learn more here.
• 3am wakeup – we’ve all experienced the swirl of thoughts or the doom loop at 3am. Everything seems a little worse and more complicated then. It is super easy to get stuck going round in circles. Breathing exercises help – 4/7/8 breathing, counting breaths from 1-10 and then repeating, or counting breaths backwards from 100 can really help. If all else fails, get up, sit somewhere else and read a book (paper one, not electronic) until you feel tired. Then go back to bed. If none of that works, accept it for today, stick to the rest of your routine. Don’t overdo the caffeine and look forward to being nice and tired when you go to bed tonight.
• Wake-up Routine – start the day with 5 deep breaths – get your system going. Then get out of bed, and go and spend some time in direct sunlight if you can, or at least near a window. This starts the internal timer for going to sleep that night.
• Power nap – stuff happens, we don’t always sleep well despite our best efforts. When this happens, it is often best to try to hang in there until bed time, and let that increased sleep pressure help you get a great night’s sleep. But, the power nap is another option. A 20 minute power nap can turn most of us from grumpy monster back into a functioning human again. Just don’t sleep much longer than that and get it done by around 2 in the afternoon – otherwise you risk messing up your sleep that night.
• Don’t Overdo It – stress and overwork don’t help us sleep. A general rule of thumb is to only do today what you can recover from by tomorrow. When I try to fit too much into a day, I’m much more likely to sleep poorly, which then goes on to affect me the day after … and so it goes. This is probably the biggest barrier to me enjoying more of the benefits of sleep. So think twice before you try to jam that extra thing into today’s to do list. You’ll pay for it that night and the day after.

I love sleep. I look forward to going to bed each night. There are so many benefits of sleep that help me be healthier and happier. But I don’t always do all the ‘right’ things when it comes to sleep. Like everything, this is a practice and I get better at finding what works over time. I’m not suggesting that anyone has to do all of these things. But it is great to understand how it all works, in order to make informed decisions. We’ve also got to enjoy ourselves at the same time, so this doesn’t mean we can’t stay up late now and then or have a few drinks. It just allows us to do so with a better understanding of the consequences – so maybe we can plan for a lighter ‘day after’?

Have a great day, have a great sleep. But most of all …

Be Brave

I’m quite a wuss when it comes to the cold. I prefer summer to winter. I lived in Sweden for 11 years – but I didn’t learn to love being cold. Despite being as tight as it gets with money, I like to have the heaters on at home. I sleep in hoodie top in winter to stop my bald head getting cold. But there’s one exception to this preference for warmth – the morning cold shower. Cold showers are an amazing way to start the day.

I started taking cold showers about 3 years ago when I was completely drained. I’d been surviving on adrenaline and when that ran out, it was hard to get going in the morning. I’d heard about the benefits of cold showers on a podcast somewhere, so I thought I’d give it a try. Character building is probably how I would describe the first few times. I’m sure I made a lot of noise when the cold water hit me. I reckon my self-timed 30 seconds was actually about 5. At first it was a bit like banging your head against the wall – it feels so good when you stop.

I should clear about what I mean by a cold shower. I will have a warm shower and get clean and then finish with somewhere between 30-60 seconds of cold tap only. Despite how it feels, the water in the tap (at least here is Sydney) isn’t actually that cold. It’s normally 10 degrees or higher, though it can go a bit below that in the morning if it is really cold overnight.

Health benefits.

I don’t like getting sick (not many people do), but somewhere after I left uni I stopped enjoying the age old art of the sickie. Too much stuff piled up while I was lying around wavering between life and death as I battled with man ’flu. Bringing the doona out to the sofa and watching films and snoozing was no longer the ultimate joyful escape it once was. Now that I’m grown up and responsible it’s even less fun. Avoiding illness is really handy, and cold showers have surprising health benefits.

• Reduced stress
• Higher alertness
• Increased immunity
• Improved willpower
• Weight loss

Ice bathing – the next level

Once you’ve made peace with the cold shower, there’s another level of cold. Ice bathing. I’ve jumped through holes in frozen lakes in Sweden and Finland. I’ve swum in glacier fed streams in the north of Sweden and in the Andes. It’s a bit hard to do that these days. One thing I did manage to do was ice bathing with Deano – one of the Bondi Life guards, and the partner of one of the instructors at my yoga studio. It was awesome. Character building is definitely the way to describe it. He took us through the whole Wim Hof method using breath to prepare the body for the ice bath. I managed to sit in the 4 degree water for 3 minutes. There’s a big difference between 4 degrees and the 10 or so I get at home. The first minute was really hard – it got easier after that – or maybe my nervous system had walked off the job in protest by then. It felt absolutely amazing afterwards. My whole body was supercharged. It was more than just a sense of achievement. I felt alive, calm and at peace. Here’s part of the video – I think you can see from my face that most of the benefits I describe were experienced after I had left the ice bath.

Sense of achievement

Part of the sense of wellbeing came from achieving something, from overcoming something. I was doing something before I was really up and going for the day. Perhaps I could achieve this with some other form of self-flagellation – not sure … this is my vice and I’m sticking to it. It’s a bit like the ‘make your bed first thing in the morning’ advice (I like that one too). That way no matter what else happens in the day, at least you’ve done one thing.

Winter is best for this. It does still work in summer, but not as much. Take advantage of the cold weather while it lasts (at least here in Sydney) and give your day a brave start. Cold showers are an amazing way to start the day. Remember … it feels so good when you stop!

Be Brave