Sleep Matters if you Want to Stay Well and Perform Well. "A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow” Charlotte Bronte

Sleep is a foundational pillar of wellbeing and not getting enough of it or the right quality affects us mentally, socially and physically and it has consequences for organisational effectiveness – poor sleep is bad for people and business. Yet insufficient sleep is a pervasive and prominent problem and with the pandemic we’re seeing chronic insomnia due to worry and anxiety, a loss of feeling connected to others and a lack of physical movement.

Our lives in this rapidly changing information overloaded world means that we’re taking in light and dark at the wrong times, defying the facts of circadian biology and when our heads hit the pillow, many of us are not able to ramp down the emotion generating and memory recollection parts of the brain and so the worrying and ruminating brain activity continues! 

Sleep is made up four stages and during a typical night, we go through several rounds of the sleep cycle. Moving through each sleep stage is critical to enable high quality rest and restoration of our brains and bodies to wake up refreshed. There is considerable evidence indicating that alarmingly bad things happen to our brains and bodies when we have insufficient and poor sleep quality. This affects our wellbeing and prevents us from showing up for work at optimal performance.

What is enough sleep and what happens when you don’t get it?

Typically, a range between 7 and 9 hours of non-fragmented sleep is recommended and considered central to our overall immune health, for example, the sleep deprived are more susceptible to viruses and flu. It also seems physiologically impossible to sleep too much if you’re healthy and if you lose sleep, you can’t get it back.

Without enough good quality sleep, our body tissues, organs and systems are not able repair and regenerate themselves increasing the risk of many diseases. There are also consequences for our thinking, emotions, and physical health. The research shows that the frontal lobe, which is critical for self-control and reining in emotional impulses, is taken offline by a lack of sleep. As a result, people tend to be more emotionally volatile losing patience with others, rash in their choices and decision making and even behave unethically. A loss of sleep also means we’re less effective at consolidating, storing or making new memories. It affects our ability to learn, collaborate, solve problems, impairs creativity and innovation, motivation and effort.

Sleepy employees work less productively and need to work longer and later, go to bed later creating a negative feedback loop. Under slept employees are more likely to blame others at work for their own mistakes and even try to take credit for other people’s successful work which is hardly a recipe for team effectiveness and a positive working environment. 

10 quick prompts to better sleep

1. Sleep schedule: Maintain a consistent sleep and wake up time every day of the week including weekends. Set an alarm clock for sleep time. When you get up, abstain from looking at your phone until after you’ve brushed your teeth or after breakfast.

2. Exercise: Move more and for at least 30 minutes a day. Being active helps you to fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. Finish any vigorous exercise at least 2 to 3 hours before bedtime to help your core body temperature drop to initiate sleep. Sedentary life does not help with sound sleep and if you take away good quality sleep, both exercise and careful eating becomes less effective.

3. Meals: For healthy sleep, try and avoid being too hungry or too full and ideally dinner should be eaten a few hours before bedtime. A large meal at night can cause indigestion so if you get hungry, snack lightly on foods that won't disturb your sleep. Severe caloric restriction for a month or more makes it harder to fall asleep and reduces deep sleep.

 4. Caffeine and alcohol: Caffeine is a stimulant that blocks the sleeping signal to the brain and can keep us awake decreasing the quality of our sleep. Avoid caffeine after midday if possible because its effects can take more than 8 hours to wear off. Decaffeinated does not mean non caffeinated and typically has 15-30% of the dose of a regular cup of coffee making it far from caffeine free! Although alcohol can cause initial drowsiness that makes you fall asleep faster, it is a sedative that fragments your sleep so lowers the overall quality of your sleep making you feel unrefreshed and unrestored.

5. Environment: Make your bedroom a sleep-inducing environment by keeping it quiet, completely dark, cool and device free. We stare at our screens and phones and this impacts on the time to onset sleep and it affects our natural sleep rhythms, the quality of our sleep and how alert we feel during the day. Research has shown that blue light emitted from the screens of smartphones and computers disrupts sleep patterns and decreases the body's production of melatonin—a hormone that regulates sleep cycles. Create lowered dim light in rooms where you spend your evening hours and avoid powerful overhead lights.

To successfully initiate sleep, our core body temperature needs to drop by 2 to 3 degrees and ideally a bedroom temperature of around 18 degrees is ideal for sleep. Have a bath at night if possible because blood rushes to the surface and when you get out of the bath, the heat radiates out and body temperature plummets, so you sleep better.

6. Sunlight: Try and get natural light for at least 30 minutes each day because daylight is key to regulating our daily sleep patterns.

7. Sleeping pills: These are sedatives that are minimally helpful and very harmful to our sleep health targeting the same part of the brain alcohol does. They do not provide natural deep sleep, fail to produce the benefits from natural sleep including solidifying memory - ambien laced sleep is a memory eraser.

The majority of prescription sleeping pills are addictive and when they’re stopped, there’s a withdrawal process, part of which involves an unpleasant spike in insomnia severity. Try using non-pharmacological methods for improving sleep, including effective behavioural methods such as cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia to break bad sleep habits and address anxieties that inhibit sleep. Reducing caffeine, alcohol, screen time and having a cool bedroom all help.

8. Alarm clocks: Be aware of the danger that hides in the snooze button of your alarm clock. Waking up to an alarm clock is artificial and it creates a spike in blood pressure and a shock acceleration in heart rate. ‘Alarming’ your heart is bad enough so wake up once and spare your heart from the repeated shock, in a short time frame, by doing away with using the snooze button.

9. Worrying: If you tend to take your problems to bed, try writing them down and then put them aside. Jot down any unresolved issues from your mental to-do list before you go to bed. Removing these worries from your working memory will make it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.

10. Brief napping: Research shows that a 20 minute nap during the day can create rest and restoration which sustains energy to stay focused and productive on challenging tasks. People who nap in the day do remarkably better at learning and improve their ability to memorise facts. Don’t take naps after 3pm because it affects sleep at night. 

Explore: What specific actions can you and your organisation take to protect and promote sleep quality and quantity?

Do share your thoughts and comments or connect with me for a conversation

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