1: Ever heard someone say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
Actually, ironically, not sleeping enough is a terrific way to end up dead much sooner.
“Sleep is nature’s miracle drug, yet it remains severely underappreciated and underutilized,” Sahil Bloom writes in his terrific book The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.
A 2019 Philips Global Sleep Survey of 11,000 participants in 12 countries found 62 percent of adults don’t sleep well, and 80 percent want to improve their sleep quality.
The importance of sleep did not truly enter the popular culture until 2017, when Cal Berkeley neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Walker published his book Why We Sleep. The book became a bestseller and caused many of us (present company included) to value sleep in a whole new way/
“According to Dr. Walker’s research,” Sahil writes, “sleep deprivation has a variety of negative effects on the brain, including diminished attention, focus, concentration, and emotional control, and has been linked to a long list of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers.”
When we prioritize sleep, we begin to perform at higher levels. We also feel better.
“Beyond simply mitigating the negative effects,” he notes, “sufficient sleep improves brain and body function.”
Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman says, “After two or three days without quality sleep, we fall to pieces. With quality sleep over two or three days, we function at an amazing level. There’s either a gain or loss of function—not just less function with poor sleep, but much better function with better sleep.”
Sahil focuses on four key benefits of sleeping more:
- “Memory processing and integration, consolidation, and connection of new information and learnings
- Second, the brain undergoes a ‘cleansing’ process during sleep, removing toxins that build up while we are awake. This supports long-term brain health.
- Third, sleep triggers a shift to the parasympathetic nervous system—the body’s rest-and-recovery mode—which facilitates physical restoration and repair.
- “Emotional restoration and mood rebalancing”
2: Scientists recommend the following practices to maximize sleep quality:
- Amount: 7 to 8 hours per night, with a consistent sleep and wake schedule.
- Environment: The sleep setting should be dark, quiet, and cool.
- Routine: Winding down with a relaxing evening routine signals to the body that it is time to sleep. Brief morning sunlight exposure—five to ten minutes on clear days or fifteen to twenty minutes when overcast—and low-angle afternoon sunlight help regulate cortisol and the circadian rhythm (our internal clock).
To simplify sleep and recovery, Sahil uses a video-game analogy with three levels.
Approach each level in order: Master Level 1 before moving to Level 2, and advance to Level 3 only after consistently achieving Level 2.
The Three Levels of Recovery:
- Level 1: Seven to eight hours of sleep
- Level 2: Seven to eight hours of sleep in an optimized sleep environment (a dark, cool, quiet room)
- Level 3: Seven to eight hours of sleep in an optimized sleep environment; a fixed sleeping time window with morning and afternoon sunlight exposure to regulate circadian rhythm and improve sleep quality; additional recovery methods
3: Sleep is our primary tool for recovery. Once we’ve locked in on better sleep practices, we can then turn to a number of other recovery methods, some ancient, others recent, to improve our bodies’ ability to recharge.
Other best practices for recovery include: Cold and heat therapy, massage therapy, meditation, and breathing protocols.
Sahil’s recommendation: “These additional recovery methods should be considered, experimented with, and prioritized only after the basic building blocks of recovery (sleep!) are executed with 90 percent consistency.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: If I’m honest about my current habits, am I treating sleep as a true priority and recovery tool, or as an optional extra I squeeze in around everything else?
Action: Choose one Recovery Level (1, 2, or 3) that fits my current season and commit this week to a consistent sleep window of seven to eight hours each night, adjusting my evening routine to support it.