#9 I Read 'Why We Sleep' So You Don't Have To

Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" has over 10,000 reviews and is one of the most influential health books ever written. 

I read the whole thing and pulled out the 7 takeaways that actually matter 

Why? Because most people won't read, but everyone should know what's in it.

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Transcript

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Most people know how important sleep is, but they truly don't know just how important. And I don't just mean get seven to eight hours a night and you'll feel better, but I mean your fat loss, your energy, your metabolism, your hormones, your life kind of depends on it, frankly enough. And all of it is generally being quietly wrecked when you almost undersleep and you get into a habitual cycle of just being a person that says, Oh yeah, I just sleep on six hours a night and I feel good. Because you don't. See, While You Sleep by Matthew Walker is probably one of the most eye-opening books, Jen. It's one of those books I was like scared to read it because I was almost like it's gonna tell me how messed up I already am. Which is to be honest, it did shred some line a lot of things I didn't know. And for context, if you don't know Matthew Walker, he's a neuroscientist, he's a sleep researcher who wrote the book While We Sleep, which is one I'd highly recommend for anybody. And today I'm gonna give you seven things that actually truly matter that you can take away and apply almost immediately after this video that's actually gonna make a big debt in your sleep. Let's get straight stuck into it. So, number one, you are not built for less than eight hours of sleep, right? There's so many people that say, Oh yeah, I can get six hours, five hours, I'll be just fine and I'll function. And there's a lot of arguments about this. So people will argue their case on why they actually don't need eight hours, and you know, they'll generally lose. But the human body is actually designed for seven to eight hours of sleep per night, which is generally a biological requirement, not just a recommendation, something we've kind of got accustomed to. And studies even show now that eating sleeping less than six hours per day, or around six hours, generally leads to a lower performance mentally, physically, emotionally, hormonally, everything. Even though they feel fine, it's generally one of the biggest things that takes a hit on someone's health. And if you look at people that live the longest, especially when you do research onto it, the people that live the longest used to sleep a lot more. They used to have naps, and generally speaking, like there's people that have from a tribal perspective that almost have extremely long lifespans, and it's because of sleep, right? It's not because they strength train, it's not because they're nutrition and they eat enough protein, it's bigger than just that. And most people generally operate feeling good, they but that's only in the 50%, and just by improving the quantity of sleep, they can be back to 80% and even higher as well based on that. So, like if you're someone that actually is serious about your body and performance in life, you need to make sure you get those seven seven and a half eight hours a diet. That's a non-negotiable, it's not even just a you know from an anecdotal or what people feel that is needed. It's been proven time and time again, this is a biological requirement. Take point two, there's generally two different types of sleep, and you need both. See, when your body sleeps at night, you generally complete two different types and states of sleep. You've got REM sleep and you've got non-REM sleep. REM sleep, for you guys that don't know, is rapid eye movement, which is generally where you dream and the dreams happen. So, like if you're someone that generally dreams a lot more, you probably have a lot more REM sleep, which is great. And it but however, it's also more importantly where the brain recalibrates any emotional damage, it processes a lot of things. And that's why people that actually dream, that have deeper REM sleep, they feel more calm, more energetic, more in control, and more present in their life. And you know how it is, like your quality of your life is dictated by your quality, your presence, and there's purely because of REM sleep. Whereby the people that almost don't get that or almost don't dream a lot, it's they're irritable, they're foggy, they can't think clearly, they have these crashes, and it all comes back to this. Then you got non-REM sleep, which is where your brain takes in all the information, everything you've absorbed, that what you've learned, what you did, how it felt. This is where memories are ingrained, and it generally transfers it from short-term memory into long-term memory. It's basically like your brain kind of just doing all the filing whilst you're offline while you're sleeping overnight. And here's a key point when you cut your sleep short, you don't lose those stages equally. You actually lose disproportionately more one than the other, which is where the dent actually happens. And you can't just catch up with a nap, you can't just catch up on the weekend, it's a day-to-day process generally happening. And the damage is usually done, and this is where when it becomes habitual to sleep less, and to be the person that just gets very little sleep, you'll most disproportionately get less of non-REM sleep or REM sleep, which you can generally tell how frequent you dream at night. And obviously, the damage will depend on which level of sleep you're kind of disproportionately getting less of. Number three, sleep is generally your most powerful fat loss tool, and so many people ignore it. Like when I go through dieting phases, sleep and recovery is the most important thing. Not my workouts, not my steps. Like, it is the most important thing. And I'd even say it to clients as well. I'd rather you get another sleep at night than go and wake up and do another morning workout session, let's cut it down. Or we opt up for a different schedule based around that too. But like, it's so important, it'll influence generally everything, and it's a completely different ball game compared to when you've got a solid sleep schedule compared to when not, and how easy fat loss is. And this is where, like, you may see bodybuilders that sleep super early, wake up super early as well, but like they get sometimes nine and above hours of sleep because it makes their entire process of getting truly lean so much easier. See, because when you're sleep deprived, there's two hormones that play when it comes to your hunger, especially leptin and ghrelin. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone and it generally goes up. It's a thing that kind of you can say correlates with your appetite, it tells you how hungry your body are. And leptin, your fullness hormone, goes down. So you're more hungry and you get less full. And it also influences GRP one level too as well. So generally when you're hungrier, you're less satisfied, cravings are higher. Sticking to a diet, sticking to whatever you're eating, right? Regardless of how high low calories are, it's just so much harder. And I've gone through countless diets where I've been in super low calories, sub a thousand, just because I want to kind of see how it responds. I want to learn as well from a lot of female clients I coach how just go in low calories, especially if it's a male, where you don't truly have to, truly feels how you make it work. And I kind of like to use myself as a lab rat sometimes, um, but it makes everything harder. And generally, diet adherence is the hardest thing when it comes to truly getting lean. People can work out, like it's never an issue. Gyms are the biggest ever had. They're you know, it's probably the most fastest growing um industry out there, fitness, selling supplements, workouts, programs, whatever it is. But like, diet is the biggest thing, and generally, if you improve your sleep, you'll see a big improvement in terms of how easy it is to truly get. On top of that, as well, your body starts to break down muscle as energy because muscle is actually extremely metabolically expensive rather than body fat. So you may actually lose scale weight, but a lot of that would be more muscle. So, like, this is where your body composition goes in the wrong direction. So, like, yes, you can see scale weight loss, and you may be like, I'm doing everything right, but when you truly look at the end product, it's either skinny fat, it's either softer, it's not truly the way it needs to be. So, like you can generally be training hard, eating well, but still be spinning your wheels because of this, and because of your sleep, and it's so important, guys. And I've probably said this like 17 times already, but like trust me now, believe me later, okay? And it's probably the best supplement you can take, and the best thing you can enhance when you're dieting, when you're even building muscles. Number four, caffeine is generally masking the problem, not solving it. See, it's probably caffeine is probably the most overused and abused drug and supplement out there, and I get it, it works. It's you know, the first hit of coffee, the first sip is the best one yet. As soon as you wake up, get some water in you, you get a coffee in you, it's the the first coffee, the first two sips is the best one yet. After that, it's like it is what it is, right? Which is why if you're like me, I probably almost sometimes leave that second half of the mug, just I just forget about it because I've kind of got the benefit there. But like, here's what's actually happening when you link it to sleep. Your brain produces a hormone called adenosine. And so the longer you're awake, the more it builds up and the sleeper you are. Generally, what caffeine does is it blocks adenosine. It generally doesn't actually stop it, but it basically blunts it, right? So you almost stop feeling the tiredness short term. But then the moment caffeine wears out of your system, and this is the reason why a lot of people have a lot of ass afternoon crashes, then you feel the same level of tiredness in the morning than you do by the time the caffeine wears off, which is why people crash, right? And that's where the afternoon slump comes in, that's where you get foggy, um, like two hours, sometimes four hours, sometimes six hours, depending on how much you had. And that's generally where people reach for another coffee. See, caffeine itself, for everybody that doesn't know, it has a half-life of six hours. Basically, meaning if you have 200 milligrams of caffeine at 9 a.m. By 3 pm you'll have half of that, you'll have 100 milligrams, then another six hours, you'll have 50 milligrams, and then by the time you sleep, you'll have essentially a little bit still as well. But then looking at that, people don't just consume two milligrams, 200 milligrams, you consume a lot more. Let's say people may consume three, 400 milligrams, like an average black coffee may have 60 to 80 milligrams of coffee, of caffeine, sorry. But and then let's say you consume four of those a day, you've got 320 milligrams, right? And you have that, let's say 12 pm, 1 pm, whatever it is, then by the end of the day, you've still got 160 milligrams and you've still got two cups of coffee still in your bloodstream, which then actively wrecks your sleep because yes, you can get to sleep, but the quality is not there, your cortisol is high, your adrenaline is high, and overall your hormones are right. And this is why sleep quality starts to diminish, and caffeine is more of a thing that people get super reliant on, and they almost abuse way too much, and the timing is terrible. So, the best thing for you in this case, if that is you, I've been there by the way, I've got the t-shirt to wear with it, is try cutting your coffee at 1 pm, right? Or even before that, just for the next two weeks. See how much of a difference it makes. Recommended dose is usually dependent on body weight and how you respond. I respond extremely like hard to caffeine. I probably have like 100-120 milligrams a day, cut it by like 11am. And for me that's more than enough. Some people may be under responders, which is generally because they consume way too much and get it over-reliant, and your body builds a tolerance. But bring the dose down two to four milligrams per kilo of body weight, it's usually sensible. So if you're 70 kilograms, the maximum what you go for is 240-280 milligrams, and I probably want you to cut it off by before 1 pm. So enough comes out over the system as well. Okay, number five, alcohol is not a sleep age. This one surprises a lot of people because a lot of people they finish work, they have a long day, and they just go for whatever drink, wine, beer, a bit of alcohol, it's kind of unwind. And it helps them relax and it helps them relax, it helps them switch off, and you know, they feel more restful for it. Like alcohol itself is a sedative, it's a sedation, and sedation is generally not for sleep. And see, like when alcohol is in your bloodstream, in your system, your brain cannot generally produce or help actually create as much REM sleep properly. And you can't go through that cycle of that actual REM sleep, which you need rapid eye movement, which is basically the whole thing wake up to dreaming and so on. But you get a version of unconsciousness when you sleep, however, you've not getting the two stages of sleep you're actually truly in. So you actually kind of miss out on the actual quality and the benefits of sleep and things such as memory, such as improvement cognition, improvement in terms of the brain's kind of processing mean type and just emotional regulation to it. Which is generally what basic so basically like all the benefits of sleep. Right and alcoholic because it's a sedative, it's my and it basically then what happens is it actually kind of you know pretty much hinders your sleep a lot, and it's just kind of like you just get sedated and you just feel tired and you fall asleep, but you don't get the benefits of sleep right away. Which is why it kind of like you wake up after a night, uh if you go out and you go on a you got a big one and all of a sudden you're hungover, you almost don't feel as much sleep. You may even remember last night, like because like you remember everything vividly, or at least most of it, or like you may forget, right, because you've not had the REM and non-red sleep uh in the stages of that, and then what happens you went rested and the quality is hindered as well. So, like personally, I'd recommend there's obviously a difference between drinking and having a drink. Have a drink here and there. Sundays, if it's your birthday, graduation, a big event, go for it. That's completely fine in the short term. I completely get that we want to have a life to live, but like every day is not a strategy if you want to make sure you feel good in life, right? Cut it out once a week, twice a week max, and you're good to go as well. And like generally, if someone's like, Oh, I can't do that, then there's probably bigger issues at hand, like respectfully. And I think there's that needs to be a conversation that needs to be had because this sleep will change your life for the better. Number six, your sleep schedule matters way more than the duration of sleep. Like, a lot of people will get eight hours and still feel terrible, and this is why. So your body runs on a circadian rhythm, which is internal or 24-hour clock that governs sleep and wake cycles. So when you awake, when you feel tired, when the hormones are released, then your body temperature rises and falls. Like, for example, at the end of the day, your body temperature is the highest, and obviously, um there's other parts of the day where your obviously testosterone is released at certain parts of the day during like 10am, drawing like 10pm and 2am for some people, then you know you may have it where you have more energy in the mornings or more energy in the evenings, and this is where your circating rhythm is everything. It's basically your energy cycle. And see, when your schedule is consistent, same bedtime, same wake-up time, same condition, and your circadian rhythm is dialed in, everything works smooth. So when it's inconsistent, think late nights on the weekends, up and down in terms of waking up time, sleeping times. Which by the way, if you're someone that wakes up at different times of the weekend, honestly stop doing that, wake up at the same time every single day, regardless of what time you sleep. Um, but generally, this is where you may feel jet lagged from time to time, and when it gets inconsistent in terms of your sleep and weight cycles, things start to take a hit. Which is generally the biggest thing I see a lot of people do. They sleep six hours maybe Monday to Friday, and they sleep like eight, nine hours in the weekends. Like it doesn't work that way. Sleep debt can isn't basically like a bank account. You can hear the cars in the balcony, but sleep sleep debt isn't like a bank account, right? You can't just make up for it and just kind of restore the averages. It doesn't work that way. So pick a bedtime, pick a wake-up time, stick to both, including weekends. And that is gonna be what actually resets your circuiting rhythm, has you have consistent energy and you can get used to how you operate. Number seven, your pre-sleep environment is cost in equality, right? So many people they work till late, they just put their put their head on the pillow and they just call it a day, and that's there's no switch-off routine. But like the last hour pre-bed is generally where it's generally gonna make or break with your sleep, and it matters way more than anybody thinks. So screens, phones, laptops, TVs, um, lights in the house, whatever it is, what they generally do is they suppress melatonin. And melatonin is the thing that makes you feel sleepy, or if it's low, it makes you you don't feel as tired as well. Like, which is why, like, let's say you wake up in the morning and you get sunlight into your skin because the windows are open, sunlight actually suppresses and reduces your melatonin, which then basically makes you feel awake. And like, if you ever tried to nap on the beach, it's a lot harder compared to napping in a dark room. But like, generally, when you've got a lot of lights, kind of exposed you're exposed to a lot from your like, and you're pretty much taking a lot from your daily environment, and especially that last hour pre-bed, it suppresses melatonin, which means you struggle to fall asleep, and your sleep quality, if you do fall asleep, is actually hint. But beyond just lights, your body temperature and the room temperature also matters. Right? So, like the best thing to look at is sleep like in the conditions of a cave. It's dark, it's cold, your body temperature is low. But it's generally gonna be around 18 degrees, by the way, Celsius, which generally is probably the best temperature to sleep at. So if you have like a somebody can get the room temperature room, can't have it to be around 18, which is perfect. Whereby if you have a warm room or a hot room, you almost hinder your sleep a lot. And then I also say as well, like for a lot of high performers, a lot of people listen to this that walk all the time, like the last hour is where you switch off entirely, right? That last hour needs to be phone free. If you want to have your phone, crack it out, but do not check your emails, do not work. Reduce the inputs as much as you can. It could be just going for a walk, going for a debrief, put a Netflix on. Like we just started watching Loki, which is actually pretty decent by the way. Um, if you're an Avengers fan, you know exactly what I'm on about, so it's actually pretty good. But like go and just switch off to something. So if you find it hard to switch off, don't just be like, I'm gonna do nothing, because you'll be like twinkling your thumbs and you can probably get more stressed trying to figure it out. Go and switch on to something else. Go and do something. Go and uh go for a walk, go and just get some uh cardio in if you want to. Whatever you need to do, just kind of switch on rather than switching off. It's like go for it, it helps a lot. And then obviously, like from a few lot of things, I'll just rapid guys, uh sleep with as little clothing as possible. Have a fan on if you like to, or have some uh blue noise, some white noise as well, which kind of cancel that noise from the external environments, which basically a fan generally does, by the way. So if you ever put a fan on and all of a sudden you can't hear as much when someone's like kind of shouting you or other noises, is because it has uh noise cancelling features, it kind of blocks out the noise. From there, I'd also recommend a hot shower because your body temperature is the highest. So when your body actually produces a variation of temperature, so if you're cold, have a hot one, if you're hot having a cold one, or just go hot. If you want to go hot, it's completely fine. It reduces your body temperature at night, which helps you with the quality of your sleep because it influences how what your body temperature, the root temperature, kind of hits as well. Past that, if you want to go for an electric blanket, go for it, get some um get a good mattress. If you're like someone that knows a trick, if you flip your pillow the other way around, it gets cold, so like that's probably my one of my favourite childhood hacks. But like, whatever you need to do is sleep in the conditions of a cave is gonna be the best thing you can do. And another thing as well, like I actually have an app called Opal here, but like it kind of blocks out any form of social media use between 9:30 pm and 9am. Usually speaking, the weekends we kind of push it a little bit uh earlier just because you know we might as well don't mind. Um so yeah, if you want to kind of use Opal, which is great, uh that's actually kind of handy as well because you kind of just have times where you use apps and have it where blocked off as well and make it harder, so you have to like literally play a game to like unlock the app, it's pretty good. But to bring it together, sleep is not passive recovery, it's not optional. There's a lot of arguments around six hours, five hours, seven hours, eight hours, you need eight hours. There's two different big types of sleep you need to look at, and you obviously guys will know now which ones contribute towards what, and you'll kind of just be able to connect the dots now. But for your body, your brain, your longevity, your health, your hormones, your metabolism, it's everything. Like it's generally everything. And I'm fine now in the days I actually don't sleep as well. I'm on my phone a lot. Same task take twice as much time. I'm not present. I'm kind of just somewhere else, which is where it comes back to the overall REM sleep and non-REM sleep. You've got disproportionately less of it, and you'll realize that. But to summarize it, overall, you need eight hours where you can, non-negotiable. REM sleep and non-REM sleep, they both matter for different reasons. Sleep is probably the most underrated fat loss lack you'll ever get. Caffeine is generally masking sleep debt, helping with energy. Like a credit card, you'll have to pay back eventually. Alcohol suppression, even when quality is feels good, it generally doesn't help because of the stages of sleep you miss out on. Consistency of your schedule beats the duration of sleep alone. And then finally, the last hour is everything that will make the biggest dent in your sleep. But like, rather than going and powering through every single thing and going for all seven of it tonight, pick one, implement it, use it, it'll change your life. And then go crack the next list as well. So if you find it useful, click subscribe. I cover training, nutrition, hormones, metabolism, life on things like personal development, mental health, mental health, and things that's gonna move the needle forward for you guys in life. And appreciate you all being in. Thanks for continuing with me. Hope you took some value. See you in the next one.