How to Hack your Sleep for Better Health, more Enjoyment and maybe to live to 90+!

I’ve been lucky: I’ve only very occasionally had trouble sleeping my entire life. Some friends and relatives have not been so fortunate:

Can’t sleep? You’re not alone!

I’ve read two books on the subject recently that seemed insightful about sleep. The first one is by a non-standard insomnia doctor:

Dr. Winter has some things to say that insomniacs often don’t want to hear:

• everybody sleeps; the people he studies in the sleep lab often show relatively normal sleep but claim little or no sleep
• that restricting sleep, specifically not going to bed too early, could be the key for some insomniacs (check his “Ice bucket sleep challenge” for details on this)

Once again, I don’t have much trouble sleeping, but if you do, he’s got a section on “hard insomnia” that’s designed for you.

One of his suggestions that worked for me:

• Always get up the same time every day

I’ve been trying this for over a year now, and it works very well.

A corollary that occurred to me during our recent (final? I hope but I’m not sure) switchover to Daylight Savings Time: it must be easier to switch in 5-minute increments than all at once in an hour chunk. I tried this (my normal alarm being 6:30 PST before the switchover):

• 6:25 PST
• 6:20 PST
• 6:15 PST
• 6:10 PST
• 6:05 PST
• 7:00 PDT
• 6:55 PDT
• 6:50 PDT
• 6:45 PDT
• 6:40 PDT
• 6:35 PDT
• 6:30 PDT

… and voila! This was much easier than trying to do the entire switchover in one day.

The other book I read:

Why we sleep: we’re wired that way!

This book goes over some recent science on why sleep happens, and how it’s even more important than most people realize. Too-short sleep is associated with shorter lifespans; conversely an area in Greece where everybody takes a nap everyday is known for everybody in the area living to 90+!

This author thinks that almost everyone needs 8–9 hours out of 24 to sleep to get maximum benefit. For me, that’s 7 hours at night and a 1–2 hour nap during the day anytime I can schedule this.

I highly recommend both books; Dr. Winter’s is more fun to read, but Why We Sleep is up to date with the latest science.

Enjoy, and sweet dreams!