Investing in Health: Sleep

More powerful than you can possibly imagine?


The third installment in our investing in health series. We previously talked about diet and exercise.

Today we are going to talk about a powerful factor that many people overlook: sleep.

You may think sleep is important to keep alert, but it is possibly as if not more important than anything else you can do for your health.

Insufficient sleep can result in disease, weight gain, problems concentrating, mood issues, depression, and even death.

Japan is one of the worst places in the world for sleep. The fact that Japanese has a word for ‘death from working too much’ tells us a lot about the culture here, and karoshi is almost always linked to sleep deprivation. School children are almost encouraged to trade sleep for activity, and this continues into university and working life.

The elderly get to sleep when they want, but as I am discovering as I get older, in a cruel ironic twist often are not physically able to.

Studies seem to show that successful applicants to prestigious universities sleep more than their unsuccessful peers.

I certainly find that I can’t concentrate, feel crappy, and am extremely irritable when I haven’t slept enough.

Being sleep deprived is worse than being drunk in terms of making decisions and reaction time -makes you think about getting behind the wheel, eh?

As if that weren’t enough, it seems as though lack of sleep drastically increases hormones that promote weight gain. And sleep deprivation is linked to increased risk of cancer and heart attacks. Eeek.

So what can we do?

I find that when I get into a good sleep routine I feel great, and when I get thrown out of one I feel much worse. Like any habit it needs to be triggered, maintained, and supported. Things that help me are:

  1. not using a computer in the evening
  2. setting a time to stop doing things and start getting ready for bed
  3. waking up at the same time every day
  4. making sure my bedroom is dark enough
  5. keeping the room cool(ish)

How about you? Any hints to maintain good sleep? Are you one of the freakish few that can get by on substantially less sleep than the rest of us?

12 Responses

  1. It is incredibly important and it drives me nuts that so many students here (never mind their parents) are chronically sleep deprived. I have high school students who have so much homework, club stuff, juku etc that they rarely get to bed before 1 or 2 am. Then they are up by 6.
    Stress or having a lot on my mind is the one thing thats seems to interrupt my sleep at night. But I have a short daily nap after lunch and it sets me up nicely for the rest of the day!

    1. I’ve never been a nap person but I might try to develop that habit.
      Right now my biggest problem is finishing work late at night (22:00) and having to be up early (6:00).

      1. Yes, that’s kind of a problem with me, too. Finish about 9:30 and try to be up at 6:30, which doesn’t leave much time to wind down or do anything in the evenings

  2. Personal experience with sleep dovetails with everything that has been written.
    One thing that I personally go to great lengths to do is reducing or completely eliminating all background noise.
    The usual culprits are the refrigerator, nearby traffic, neighbours coming home late, the neighbourhood cat/dog, that clock ticking sound etc.
    Just by isolating my bedroom both in terms of ambient light and background sound worked wonders in getting quality sleep! =)

    1. That’s a great point. My personal bugbear is clocks that tick. I have to hunt them down and kill them in hotel rooms 😉

  4. I like an early start (05:30), and I always find it easy to get out of bed, but two days a week I get home from playing table tennis at 10:00 pm and also when family are around (usually there is just the DW and myself) sleep deprivation is inevitable so I try to lie in for a short while a couple of times a week, otherwise I get by on 6 hours a night, though 7 might be better. Your list of “things that help” are similar to my own and I think that #2 “setting a time to stop doing things and start getting ready for bed” is of prime importance, though you need to be well disciplined to succeed with this one.

  5. I do my damndest to avoid working from home. This means starting work on the train in before 7am some days, and unquestionably costs me money in potential salary unearned, but does help with sleep. I also can’t nap.

  6. Early to bed, early to rise… I’ll add that if you’re having trouble falling asleep, check the lighting where you live. You need to dim the lights 2 hours before you want to sleep (same idea with not using a computer or other screen). A hot bath with a drop of Lavender also helps, as does warm milk with nutmeg. As your body temperature goes down, you’ll fall asleep more easily.
    When We moved to our new place, the new bedroom had shutters so that the room is pitch black. I could definitely sleep better. I noticed that my fingernails started growing a different color and were stronger.
    I always make a big deal about getting 7+ hours of sleep to my students!!