#49 - Are National Geographic's Sleep Tips Credible? - Part 1
Photo by @magnuswennman (Instagram handle)
‘Selective attention’ is a psychological process that can occur for people experiencing anxiety, depression and even insomnia.
It means that people who don’t sleep well will pay more attention to objects in their environment that are associated with sleep.
Even the word ‘Sleep’ can catch their eye.
But it’s not only people with insomnia who experience this - so do sleep experts …
Yesterday, I had finished my shopping at the local supermarket, and as I was on my way to the checkout, something caught my eye …
I heard National Geographic (Nat Geo) were developing a special issue on Sleep.
Way back in 2018 they were promoting images on their Instagram feed - such as this one of the Re-Timer glasses that my PhD mentors invented:
And a very Happy Birthday today to Dr Helen Wright - co-inventor of the Re-Timer glasses!
But it was one of the captions on the front cover that caught my eye:
“Test 10 Tips For Better Sleep”
Alright, let’s take these for a test run and see how much they match the science.
And we’ll do the first 5 of these now (and test the other 5 in a future blog).
Sleep Tip #1: Keep to a consistent schedule
“Go to bed and get up at the same time each day. Yes, that includes weekends and vacations. Make sure you get a minimum of 7 hours a night”
Well, this is actually two sleep tips, but we’ll focus on the first part.
We claim that “Sleep loves structure!”.
So yes, consistent bedtimes and wake-up times can work.
But the second part to this is knowing your ideal bedtime and wake-up time.
If you are having trouble sleeping, you can try to keep consistent times that you go to sleep - and consistent times that you wake-up and get up out of bed!
If you find this doesn’t work for you, then I guarantee you haven’t found your ideal bedtimes.
Sleep Tip #2: Time Your Naps
“About 30-minutes in the first part of the day is fine, but long naps in the late afternoon will keep you up later”
Let’s break this sleep tip into its parts.
If you are able to nap for 30 minutes in the first part of the day - no - that is not fine.
It means - for some reason - you are not sleeping well at night.
That reason could be because you got less sleep than you need.
Or it could mean that when you slept, you didn’t get good quality sleep. That could be because you have a sleep disorder that is yet to be diagnosed (eg, sleep apnea, periodic limb movements of sleep, etc.). Or perhaps you were woken often by something in your environment (eg, your bedpartner, a pet, the neighbour, your baby).
So let’s look at the 2nd part of this tip.
Theoretically, it makes sense that if you nap in the afternoon, then you have reduced your pressure to sleep, and then you need to take more time at night to build up more pressure to sleep. This is a concept known as - sleep pressure.
But to my surprise, there is a lack of research proving that a long nap in the afternoon affects your sleep at night (eg, Irish et al., 2006).
Sleep Tip #3: Establish a Soothing Bedtime Routine
“Take a bath (then cool down), read a book, meditate. This is not the time for watching a pulse-pounding thriller on TV or arguing with your spouse”
Well, there a lot of components to this sleep tip.
Take a bath and then cool down - Correct. But how hot? For how long? And how many hours before your intend to fall asleep? We’ve addressed the links between sleep and temperature in a previous blog. So this tip is unlikely to help someone who has insomnia.
Read a book - Correct. But it should be a printed book in dim light, but this will reduce your time taken to fall asleep by ~10 minutes. But if you prefer an e-book, perhaps dim the screen or invert the colours (ie, white font on a black background). If you don’t like to read on a black background, then sure - keep sleeping bad. What do we know? We’re just sleep doctors …
Meditate - We’ll say Correct - if it’s something like a body scan technique.
No (pulse-pounding) TV - Non-pounding TV is fine. There’s in fact a near-zero correlation between watching TV and sleep. But ‘pulse-pounding’ TV? First, it should be rare to find pulse-pounding TV. People usually react to a TV episode if something occurs that they did not expect - so how do you plan for that? … OK, I fell into that one (Read a Book). But as we’ve found, it’s hard to raise the heart rate of someone playing a violent videogame before bed.
Arguing with your spouse - I looked it up and cannot find a study that has tested whether arguing with your spouse in the lead-up to bedtime affects your sleep. And then I thought how this could be tested. And then I realised this type of research wouldn’t get through an Ethics Committee. So this part of the sleep tip makes sense; it’s just not scientific - just like “teleporting to Mars just before bedtime is not good for your sleep”.
Sleep Tip #4: Use your Bedroom only for Sleep And Sex
“Avoid establishing a connection between you bed and work”
Correct-ish. We’ve addressed this sleep tip in our blog we published 3 months ago.
But I just realised - if your bed is associated with sleep and sex, does this mean people get horny when they go to bed? Maybe the recommendation should be to have sex against the bed?
Sleep Tip #5: Avoid Caffeine and Other Stimulants
“...Such as nicotine, before bed. Steer clear of alcohol, too. It will make you drowsy at first but break up you sleep later”
Again, let’s break this sleep tip into its parts:
Avoid Caffeine - Hmm. No? - We do recommend caffeine as a method to cope with sleepiness. The research we’ve conducted shows that daytime caffeine use does not really affect sleep. But evening caffeine use does (eg, after 6pm). But, we truly recommend people become ‘Caffeine Savvy’. Know what foods and beverages contain caffeine (eg, decaf coffee does - but white chocolate doesn’t).
Avoid Nicotine - It’s correct that nicotine is a stimulant and that not smoking is better for your sleep. But is you are currently dependent on smoking nicotine, then you’ll know that the withdrawals from not smoking before bedtime are worse for your sleep than having that final smoke of the day.
Steer clear of alcohol - Correct, but not just for its ill effects on sleep. After all, you’re drinking fancy-looking ethanol. 2 serves per day may provide cardioprotection, but you can increase your odds of developing cancers (plural) with the same amount of serves. And you cannot choose where the ethanol goes in your body (did you know that the most common cancers are the ones lying in between one hole (your mouth) and the other hole?)
What Sleepy Things Happened This Week?
Besides dancing between the assessment of 200+ postgraduate applications for 2021 - and - dealing with the politics of an educational institution that thinks its a successful company - there was a shining light!
Our very own Dr Michal Kahn had her research into the effects of COVID-19 on the sleep of babies in the USA accepted for publication.
This study actually looked at two different groups…
One group were families who continued ‘life as usual’ (if that’s a thing) - by continuing to go to work because they were an essential worker. The other group were families who had to self-isolate - and for the most part - stay indoors.
Her study was conducted in conjunction with researchers from Nanit. This means that the sleep of the babies was measured with specialised cameras, positioned above the babies’ cribs. You can learn more about the Nanit cameras here.
COVID-19 has created a large-scale experiment into how families behave during the day (social isolation).
So we were interested in finding out what happens during the night.
The Nanit cameras were running in the months before social isolation - and for months afterwards.
This allowed us to compare the before and after effects.
What happened?
Well, let’s just say that despite all the concern about what the corona virus could do to people’s sleep, we saw some silver linings.
We’ll tell you more specifics to this study in a future blog, as well as linking you directly to the study.
Until then …
Search for your own silver linings from 2020 - and sleep well!
Prof Mike Gradisar
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