Sleep is so important.
We need it to live.
And when we can't sleep,
we're desperate for help.
[Body Stuff with Dr. Jen Gunter]
But lately, our fascination with sleep
feels as if it's taken on an urgency.
Do a quick internet search for sleep
and you'll find a slew of articles
about how to make your sleep perfect.
New gadgets, fancy alarm clocks,
stay away from blue light.
There are lots of services, products
and advice columns
that tell us we're sleeping wrong.
Not enough,
not quality sleep, wrong position.
Even worse, you might find
scary messaging
claiming that if you're not sleeping right
your life is going to be shorter,
you're going to get all kinds of diseases.
One of the biggest worries
we have about our sleep
is that we're not getting enough
and that anything less
than seven hours a night
means that we’re doomed to bad health,
everything from high blood pressure
to Alzheimer’s disease.
But there are two flaws
with this kind of messaging.
The first flaw is that it's not
completely accurate.
Seven to eight hours of sleep,
while recommended for adults,
is just an average.
And while messages have to be simplified
for health communication to the public,
sometimes important nuances get lost.
So yes, it's true that not getting
enough sleep in the long term
is associated with health problems
like cardiovascular disease,
diabetes and depression.
But fixating solely
on seven to eight hours
ignores the fact that there's a range
of sleep that people need.
The duration of a good night's sleep
can be different for different people.
Some adults need eight,
but some are just fine on six.
The second flaw with this kind
of doomsday messaging
is that it can be counterproductive,
especially for people
who do have trouble sleeping.
For instance, in 2019,
it was estimated that 21 percent
of adults in the US
were wearing sleep tracking devices.
And that number is probably growing.
And I get it.
It's fascinating to see how much sleep
you've gotten each night
and to know what part of your night
was spent in deep sleep or dreaming.
But having all of that sleep data
is causing some people
to become obsessed with it,
so much so that it’s leading
to a condition some call orthosomnia:
a preoccupation with the constant need
to achieve perfect sleep.
And this condition, ironically,
is causing more sleep problems.
Now orthosomnia might be
an extreme example,
but the anxiety of not
getting enough sleep
is keeping some of us up at night.
So here's what some experts are saying.
Stop fixating on the number
because that can lead to unrealistic
expectations of sleep.
According to Dr. Colleen Carney,
a psychologist and the head
of the Ryerson University Sleep Lab,
the basic questions
you should ask yourself are:
Do I feel reasonably
well-rested during the day?
Do I generally sleep through
the night without disturbances?
Or, if I wake, do I fall
back asleep easily?
Can I stay awake through the day
without involuntarily falling asleep?
If your answers are yes to all three,
you probably don't need
to worry about your sleep.
And if you're struggling with your sleep,
instead of buying
expensive blue light filters
or fancy sleep trackers,
try talking with your doctor to make sure
there aren't any medical conditions
that need to be explored first.
Then try evidence-based recommendations
laid out by the American
Academy of Sleep Medicine.
What's really cool is that there's
a highly effective therapy
called cognitive behavioral therapy
for insomnia, or CBT-I,
It doesn’t have
any medications involved.
And it has a really low failure rate.