Why Am I Always Tired?
Today, we talk to Professor Frank Scheer from Harvard University all about one of the most important things that we do every day: sleep. For many of us, sleep may seem like a waste of time or an inconvenience. In fact, sleep is one of the most vital ways to maintain our health. Today, we learn why sleep quality is just as important as sleep quantity. What are the different phases of sleep and their functions? How do caffeine, alcohol, and sleeping pills affect our slumber? Are alarms good or bad? Should we be taking naps? If you feel tired all day, or can't seem to get a good night's rest, this is the episode for you!
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Juna You guys know we get a lot of topic suggestions from all of y'all.
Eddie In fact, most of our episode ideas come from our listeners because, well, you just got a lot of great ideas. But at the end of the day, this show is for you, our listeners.
Juna What are you saying? This show is for me? I guys, I'm joking. I hope everybody knows when I say stuff like this. It's a joke. You guys is a joke.
Eddie Well, but then you select from what the listeners. Well that's true.
Juna I get final, I get final pick on what we choose. But okay, we had a couple people ask for an episode on sleep, so I posted in our Patreon. I said, hey guys, does anybody have any questions about sleep? The flood of questions I got. I don't think we've ever gotten this many questions for a single episode ever before.
Eddie You know, maybe we've been sleeping on sleep, don't you guys?
Juna Yes. Actually. Wait. Sorry, guys. Not to plug ourselves again, but remember when we were writing the book? Well, yeah. I am so obsessed with sleep.
Eddie I could have been a sleeper.
Juna It could have been. I would have loved right off focus on sleep. But we wrote a chapter on sleep, and then our editor was like, we have to cut this down. This book is getting too long. And I was like, not the sleep chapter. I was so.
Eddie So there's lots on sleep, but today you'll hear even more.
Juna We spend a third of our lives asleep, right? Like a third of our lives. Clearly, it is very, very important to human health.
Eddie It almost seemed. And when I was growing up, that sleep was like an inconvenience. Yeah, maybe people still feel like that's something that took precious time away from other things. Yeah, but that has changed. But, you know, a little, trivia question for you. Yeah. Who sang the song? I'll sleep when I'm dead.
Juna Oh, God.
Eddie It's only. It's only a singer from.
Juna What you say. Can you sing it? No, no, you have to be an actor singer. Next year. I know.
Eddie I'll sleep well. Saturday night. I like to raise a little harm. I'll see when I'm. All right. We will put that into the feed so people can hear it. I'm Warren Zevon from the 1970s and had a song, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. And that's kind of like an attitude that some people have about sleep.
Juna Oh, yeah. Totally. I can't believe you won't sing us an excerpt. You won't sing us the chorus. How does it go?
Eddie I if I knew I would sing.
Juna Oh my goodness. Okay, well, today we're talking to a Harvard sleep scientist all about catching up on the Z's and why it matters so much. What are the sleep phases? Does timing of your sleep matter? How do we optimize our sleep and the science of naps, sleeping pills, alcohol, caffeine, and how it all affects our sleep? I'm Juna Gjata
Eddie And I'm Doctor Eddie Phillips, associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Juna And you're listening to food. We need to talk. The only health podcast guaranteed to not put you to sleep unless it's nighttime and you're supposed to go to sleep, in which case it's the only one guaranteed to put you to sleep.
Eddie Am I right? Don't you hate when you hear people listen to podcasts to go to sleep?
Juna You better be right now. Wake up, wake up. I'm just kidding. Go to sleep if you need to sleep. And now let's take a moment to shout out one of our favorite reviews of the week.
Eddie Oh, wallflower. Oh. Thank you. It's a vintage.
Juna My mom was born.
Eddie It's a it's a vintage wallflower.
Juna Are you calling my mom vintage?
Eddie I'm. I'm taking.
Juna Down guys pretty.
Eddie Quick. It's a it's a kind of word that antiques. So. So why are you.
Juna Born Edward and Phyllis.
Eddie Before that? So I'm into the antique phase. Educational and fun. If there were one podcast that every single person could benefit from, it would be food. We need to talk. Exclamation point. I learned something from every episode. Yoona and Edie have a very easy way to communicate about food, health, and related issues. I have been a listener since day one. Wow. Thank you. Wallflower 1968.
Juna Wow. Edie, do you think that our easy way of communicating is the fact that I threaten you like I'm good? Is that what you're talking about? Wallflower, 1968. Anyway, thank you so much. As you guys know, all the reviews help us out so much. So if you haven't already, please go to whatever podcast platform you're listening to us on. Hopefully it's apples you can actually review and leave us a five star rating, guys, and tell us why you like it. Because it makes us feel good. And also it helps other people find the podcast. And we're almost at 2000 reviews, so if we could get to the 2000, we would just be so happy. And now on to the episode. Welcome to another episode. Today we are talking to Frank Hsieh, who is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital. So thank you so much, Frank, for joining us.
Speaker 3 Thank you for having me.
Juna I want to start by saying something. I took a class that Frank was or you called directing it.
Speaker 3 Yes.
Juna Yeah. Frank was course director. This was maybe seven years ago or something. And I think this is actually the most influential class that I took in my entire undergraduate time at Harvard, because it was the class on sleep and circadian rhythms. It is by far the class. Eddie, you can testify to this. It is by far the class that I cite the most in our class. Right. Yeah. I always bring it up, I say in my sleep class, in my sleep class. And it's just become one of my most favorite topics is talking about sleep, because I feel like it's just so not talked about enough. So it's so cool and such a full circle moment for me to be interviewing Frank because I'm like, wow, we've come full circle. So let's just begin with the most important question, which is, what is the purpose of sleep? If we're spending a third of our lives asleep, why are we spending so much time doing it?
Frank Yeah. Thanks, Joan and Eddie, for for having me. And, it is great. I should say this. I was really lucky, first of all, to, have been able to course directors together with Charles Sisler, a pioneer in human circadian biology and, my former mentor. So I'm quite pleased and happy that you you got all of this from the course, and it stuck with you and it changed your life. So thank you for having me again. So regarding the question about why do we sleep a third of our lives? And many people, may feel that this is a waste of time. So in a, in 24 seven society people, are almost aiming to get as little sleep as they possibly can.
Juna Yeah.
Frank When I hear this question, I always have to think about one of the pioneers in sleep research, Alan Richardson, who very nicely summarized his thoughts about this, which is that, you know, unless sleep serves some absolutely essential function, it's the biggest mistake in the evolutionary process ever, right? Right. And because you know that by itself should tell us something, it should suggest that maybe sleep is actually very, very important if in the evolutionary process, so much time has been allocated to this behavior, it kind of, goes back to your initial thoughts. People thought, well, sleep is maybe just to keep you out of trouble. You're not running around in the dark and getting yourself into trouble. But then again, that doesn't make sense if you think about it. Because if that were true, stay conscious, right? Because you're in a very vulnerable state. When you're asleep, you're unconscious. Your perception of your environment is is down. You know, your eyes are closed. You you don't hear, sound as well. And you certainly don't respond as rapidly as you would do. But also you're not engaging in other activities that are so essential in evolution looking for food, looking for mates, defending your territory. And so because the evolutionary process apparently has. Protected this behavior despite increased vulnerability and despite missing out, if you like, on other essential behaviors. It's very suggestive and supportive of the idea that sleep is serving some critical function. Now then the next logical question is then if sleep observed such an important function, what is that function? And that has eluded scientists for hundreds of years. When you investigate the function of sleep, you actually find out it affects virtually all aspects over our bodily function and our mental function.
Eddie So a minute ago, Frank, you mentioned the phases of sleep, and I think I could maybe answer this question correctly on a medical board exam, but more than just sort of reciting them, pick up on the theme of the evolution in our understanding of our sleep and the importance of the different phases of sleep.
Frank Yeah, that's an excellent question. And so the main changes that occur if you enter into a sleep stage are a slowing of the brain activity, the waveforms that you can pick up with electrodes on the scalp. And the other thing you see simultaneously occurring is that the amplitude actually increases. And so when people think about falling asleep, you think, oh, the amplitude must go down, right? So the activity must become less. And so that's actually not the case. If you look at the amplitude or the size of the waves, if you like. And then if you look within sleep there are two main different stages. One most people will have heard about. It's called REM sleep which stands for rapid eye movement sleep. And that's exactly what characterizes this stage of sleep. So the eyes move quite rapidly. There are many examples where people would have been woken up from sleep and after experiencing these rapid eye movements, and oftentimes they might be able to be linked to the particular content of dreams people had at that time. For example, if you watch a tennis match in your dream, that may relate to that specific eye movement if you can measure while that person was asleep. So the other stage is, you know, maybe not very creative. This is called non-REM sleep. And so this non-REM sleep is, you know, these rapid eye movements are not occurring. But there is a number of other big differences between those two sleep stages, one of which is that, interestingly, during REM sleep and you also see something very interesting happening, which is a loss of muscle tone, meaning your skeletal muscles are relaxing, so you're still breathing and your heart is still beating, so those muscles still work, but your skin, the muscles that regulate your bodily movements or your movements of your limbs and your torso, etc., they relax. And so one of the ideas there is that this actually is protective, and it helps you not to engage in these dreamlike activities, not to act out if you like these behaviors you might have during dreams. The other interesting thing about REM sleep is that initially it was pulled or referred to as paradoxical sleep. And why is that? Well, because the brain activity actually looks surprisingly like the waking brain. Indeed, when this was first discovered, people were surprised. Investigators were surprised to find that the person was actually asleep. Well, when you were looking at the brain activity, looked like this person was awake. Now regaining function. What's been understood is that, the different stages, play an important role in different parts of cognitive function. For example, if you look at REM sleep, this seems to link a lot to associative insights. So if you are, for example, Bob Stickgold, who was a professor here at Harvard Medical School when he gave people a weather forecast test where they were looking at particular cards with symbols of squares and circles and triangles, etc. based on this, they needed to predict whether it was going to rain the next day or was going to. The sun was going to shine in this example, and there were no clear rules in this game that were immediately apparent. But what he found was that the people who had most REM sleep had the best insight into this subconscious sense of what the gist was of these cards and were best at predicting whether. Whereas if you look at non-REM sleep, this links very well to. For example, learning word pairs or learning a particular motor skills. And so of course this is very important in athletic performance or in academic performance.
Juna Before we go on, I just want to say throughout our sleep we cycle through both these things, right. Like we do non-REM, REM, non-REM over and over throughout the whole sleeping period. Correct?
Frank Correct. Yes. And that's that's indeed a key feature of of sleep. If you record sleep, you can see, as you said, these alternations between these two sleep stages. And in the beginning of the night you will have more non-REM sleep. And your sleep during non-REM will be the deepest you ever sleep. And then as the night progresses, your sleep becomes less deep or more shallow, and at the same time you will get more and more REM sleep. So your REM bouts or REM episodes become longer and longer, such that right before you wake up, you have the longest REM sleep of the night.
Juna And do you think that's because evolutionarily, the non-REM sleep is further kind of like concrete learning of physical things that you need to do immediately, whereas the more just based learning is kind of like it's a nice to have, but not a necessity necessarily. So it can be closer to the end of sleep where like, you might be interrupted and woken up.
Frank Yeah, I think we can only speculate about that what the true evolutionary reasons were for that. But one aspect of this is really key, I think, which is that each of these processes are regulated by different biological mechanisms. And so what did I mean with that is that if you look at the deepest stages of sleep, so slow wave sleep where the waves are, of largest amplitude and are really slow, they are occurring at the beginning of your night when your the pressure for sleep is at its highest. And what you're doing to have happened at that time is a competition between that slow wave sleep. With REM sleep, it perfectly works out. And that REM sleep is driven by the circadian process. And we can talk about that a little bit later, such that it peaks at the end of your sleep episode. So what it does, in essence, it pulls apart these two processes that otherwise would compete with each other and gives them their, their independent, dedicated time to occur. And so that's one big reason why these are regulated by two different processes.
Juna So we've mentioned learning a few times, which for me when I was in undergrad, that was the thing that really convinced me to change my sleep behavior is because I wanted to be a pianist. So I was practicing all day, but I didn't care about my sleep. And so when we did the, we learned about the motor experiments and how people would learn the things that they had practiced during the day, their brain would keep rehearsing, yet while they were sleeping, and they would wake up and they would be so much better at it after they had slept. That's what convinced me to actually change my sleeping schedule. So I was wondering if you could talk about some of the other kind of concrete things that our sleep helps us with? Because I know we mentioned sleep is implicated in, like, literally every biological process the human body does seems to be happening while you're sleeping. But if you could just give some of the most important, like maybe a top 3 to 5 purposes of sleep in your mind for people so that they are convinced to actually care about their sleep. Because I know when I heard something I actually cared about, that's what made me actually care about my sleep.
Frank Right? Yeah. No, that's a great, great question. So what are the main consequences, for example, of short sleep. And we can test this experimentally. Right. And so what most people are consciously aware of is well you feel more tired and you may not be as sharp. And many people think oh that's about it. Well, there's a whole list of consequences with short or poor sleep. And this spans the spectrum from impairment of your blood sugar regulation. Think about diabetes risk, changes in your immune function and think about less effective response to vaccinations. Think about Covid vaccinations. It includes a function of sleep in detoxifying the brain. So the discovery of the lymphatic system, which is basically the lymph system. But then for your brain, which flushes out, toxins with relevance for dementia and Alzheimer's disease, think about when you're sleep depriving people. There is an increase in hunger and appetite. There is an increase in the hunger hormone ghrelin, a drop in the satiety hormone leptin. And if people are permitted, they will overeat when sleep deprived. There's also. Emotional instability. So more irritability, your ability to cope with with stressful situations goes down, etc. etc. adds wound healing, its impacts on growth hormone and testosterone going down, etc. etc. so the list goes on and on.
Eddie Can I just corroborate what we just heard scientifically? When I don't sleep, I'm cranky. That's the mood. I know you can't get between me and the chocolate because the satiety hormones are just going nuts. I can't find the energy to exercise. Yeah, I get I get sick. Yeah. And to me, it's just sort of like, okay, if I just get into bed early enough and get sufficient sleep. And that's my next question coming up, Frank and I get sufficient sleep. All of those things magically disappear. I'm in a better mood. I can choose my foods better, I exercise, you know, I don't get sick as much. I can withstand same environment. I'm still seeing patients and I'm still getting being coughed on. And so people used to really focus. And maybe they still do on sleep quantity reference. Your watch, your, you know, like any sort of device that may be near your bed, even your iPhone. But the question for you is really about sleep quality. How do we measure that? And, is that back to the phases of sleep or like what what what makes for a good night?
Juna And why does it matter? Yeah. More than quantity or as much as quantity.
Frank Right, right. Yeah. I maybe just to give a perspective on why the focus has been so much on duration. And I think, simply speaking, it's just that it's first of all easier to measure, to quantify. And second, it's also easier to disturb experimentally in a standardized way. So it lends itself well to asking these questions about what is the impact of good or bad sleep. From a duration point of view, the importance of the quality of the sleep is a more complicated question, just by the nature of already what you were just alluding to, which is that what does that actually reflect? And so you can think about this from a sleep stage point of view. For example, do you have as long of a sleep episode, but maybe you have less slow wave sleep, or maybe you have less REM sleep. And so what you're left with is then stages and one and two as they're referred to, which are shallower stages of non-REM sleep. But it could also be, well, maybe you have equal amounts of those, but maybe your sleep is fragmented. So meaning maybe you're awakening repeatedly throughout a night. And in fact, if you do do that, then typically you don't enter into these deeper stages of sleep. What are some very elegant work that has been done, for example, by the laboratory of F Encounter in Chicago, specifically disrupting this slow wave sleep, these deeper stages of sleep, and finding that glucose control is disrupted even though the duration is maintained. And so there are many studies like that similar findings have been found.
Juna On that note, this is specifically a question I want to ask because I get people that tell me all the time things like, oh, it's okay, I can have coffee really late because I still fall asleep, or oh, alcohol helps me sleep, or these sleeping pills help me sleep. And what I keep having to, like, yell at people about over and over and nobody believes me is I say like, guys, even if you think you're sleeping, these things are affecting your sleep quality. Like sleeping pills change the quality of your sleep. They've messed with the sleep stages in the sleep architecture, and same with caffeine and alcohol. Even if you think you're falling asleep when you're waking up, it is affecting your sleep quality. And I think the idea that it's not really subjectively obvious to people when your sleep quality is not as good is one of the biggest problems. And one of the reasons I feel like nobody believes me. I tell them that these things are not good for their sleep.
Frank Yeah, and I think it's a it's a good point you mentioned is that, you know, people are often not aware of the impact that their behaviors, including their intake of, let's say, caffeine or alcohol has on their sleep. Because when we are unconscious or even when we briefly awaken, we often don't have a recollection of that. The issue is caffeine is that it's used up by such a tremendously large proportion of the population, in part because there's probably a deficit in sleep duration or quality. And so people are self-medicating in that in that way. And the problem is that if you indeed would consume excessive amounts of caffeine or consume it later towards your sleep episode, then that will disrupt your sleep, making you need it more the next morning. And so. And people are more receptive to this than others. Based on genetics. But you know, in general, I would not recommend people consuming coffee after lunch or certainly not in the evening hours, although many people still do. Of course, with alcohol, it's interesting because there are quite some people who consume alcohol to try to help them fall asleep, but not realizing that even though that may help them fall asleep. Did the sleep is disrupted? Certainly in the second half of the sleep episode. And so the net effect is actually negative then. And so also alcohol is not recommended from that point of view regarding sleeping aids, as you said. It's, it's an ongoing debate. I think in the field there are very strong opinions. Here, it's good to just point out that in addition to pharmacological approaches to aid sleep, there are actual behavioral approaches as well, cognitive behavioral approaches. So especially if one talks about insomnia problems sleeping, either initiating sleep or maintaining sleep or early awakenings, CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is the first line defense. So before stepping to, medication use, ideally people will get cognitive behavioral therapy of insomnia to help them.
Eddie And we'll be right back. Food We Need to Talk is funded by a grant from the Ardmore Institute of Health. The home of Full plate Living. Full Plate living helps you add more whole plant based foods to meals you're already eating. These are foods you're already familiar with apples being strawberries and avocados. It's a small step approach that can lead to big health outcomes. Full Plate Living includes weekly recipes and programs for weight loss, meal makeovers, and better blood sugar management. Best of all, Full Plate Living is a free service of the Ardmore Institute of Health. Sign up for free at Full Plate Living Dawg. Let me take this a little bit. What you're going into sort of the clinical realm of people taking care of their insomnia. I'm hoping that you can advise me whether some of the advice I've given patients is helpful or not. In the world of lifestyle medicine, in which we talk about not just sleep, but everything from your relationships to your food and your exercise and beyond. We look for small changes that people can make. And one of the ones that seems easy is the recommendation. Why don't you try to go to bed 15 minutes earlier? So I've got several questions from listeners that I will, put together. So one of them is, does it really matter exactly what time you go to sleep if you're going to be in bed for the same time? So if my patient goes to bed at 1145 instead of midnight, is that better, or do they need to? Move it all the way up to 10 a.m.. And then on the flip side. You wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off and you hit snooze, and you get your extra 15 minutes.
Juna Is it helpful or not helpful?
Eddie Is this malpractice or am I giving good advice to about trying to go to bed earlier?
Frank Right, right. So let's first address the first main question, which is the timing of sleep. I really love this question. I think there was one question by Sarah.
Juna Yes.
Frank And so the example she gave, which is nice, a nice extreme case of somebody sleeping either at night or during the day. And let's say you get your eight hours in. Does it really matter? The theoretical answer would be no in certain circumstances, but yes, in most circumstances. Let me try to unpack that. So if we look at somebody who might be sleeping some days at night and some days during the day, we might think of a chronic night working person, right? And even a permanent night worker. Most of the permanent night workers during their time off, during their free days, most of them will revert back to a normal sleep wake cycle, meaning sleeping during the night and being awake during the day. Why? Well, in part because they want to spend time with friends and family and maybe go out to stores that are open restaurants, etc. the other reason is that when even permanent night workers commute back home after the night shift, they're exposed to light, even on a clouded day. If you look up at the sky, it's about 10,000 lux of light. So it's it's very impactful on your circadian system. And what it does, it basically prevents your circadian system from adapting to your night work because you're resetting your clock every morning. So because of that, even in permanent light work is the most extreme case. If you like, they will not be able to sleep well during the day. And so if we, look at the mechanisms that are underlying the timing, regulating the timing of sleep and the propensity of sleep, there are two main processes involved. One is homeostatic regulation and the other is the influence of the circadian system. What do I mean with both? Well, homeostatic regulation is like the thermostat in your room. Imagine on a cold winter day, heat is irradiating away from the room, and if the temperature drops below a certain threshold, the heating kicks in. And you can think about regulation of sleep in the same way. So if you're awake for a long time, there are changes in the brain that happen. And if they cross a certain threshold of homeostatic sleep pressure, the pressure becomes so large that you will fall asleep and you repay the sleep debt. That's homeostatic regulation. The circadian regulation is referring to the influence of our body clock, if you like. So our 24 hour clock in our brain, and in fact throughout all the organs and tissues throughout our body. But the clock in the brain, a master clock in the brain, a super charismatic nucleus regulates the timing of sleep as well as many other physiological functions. And so these two processes collaborate to optimize your sleep if you're normally and trained, if you do day work or you do school during the day and you sleep at night and you're nice and regular, you optimize your sleep. Because when your homeostatic sleep pressure is high, that helps you fall asleep. But it's the circadian system that helps you stay asleep towards the end of the waking episode in the evening hours. Surprisingly, most people don't feel all that sleepy. Why? Well, that's because the circadian system kicks in and keeps you awake so that you can have a consolidated 16 hours of wakefulness. And so that's how do you still process this work. And so going back to the question at hand, if you now try to sleep during the daytime your homeostatic sleep pressure might be high. But your circadian sleep pressure is low towards the end. And so you'll have a shortened and disrupted sleep during the day.
Eddie What about if it's just a couple of hours? So, for instance, I could speak from personal experience if I get to bed before 11:00, 1030, hopefully I could have a full night's sleep if the lights are out after 11. It just seems bizarre to me that I wake up earlier in the morning less rested.
Juna And on that note, I have a tracker thing like a fitness tracker. And one of the things. Is always telling me is that I should try to sleep consistently within a half hour window of my regular sleep time. I don't know if that has to do with sleep quality, or maybe just with setting your circadian rhythm like it's important to have your sleep be at consistent times every day.
Frank Yeah. So consistency is really helpful. So this again goes back to this collaboration between these two processes and especially the circadian system. Now the biggest effect you'll see experimentally of. Worsening your sleep. If you change, the timing of sleep is if you actually try to sleep earlier. And why is that? Well, that's what I just mentioned before, is towards the end of your wake episode, your circadian system is sending out the maximum wake drive. So even though you may think, oh, let let's be a good citizen, let's go to bed early tonight, I hear sleep is important. Let's, you know, prioritize that. That's a great goal. The challenge is that if you do this too abruptly, your circadian system hasn't adapted yet. And so you're now fighting with your circadian system. And you may lie awake in bed, unable to fall asleep until maybe your habitual bedtime anyway. And then you think, oh, okay, I wasted that time for nothing. The good thing is that because we know that the circadian system is involved in how we can actually leverage that and use our knowledge about how, for example, light affects the circadian system to help us adapt to a new schedule. And of course, that's what happens, for example, with jetlag, how you overcome jetlag.
Juna So, for example, if you wanted to start going to bed earlier, getting off computer screens and your phone earlier, or dimming the lights, using blue light blocking glasses. So like the red glasses would be ways to try to shift your schedule earlier.
Frank Exactly right. So that's one of the two things that you can do. The other and you should do them both ideally, is to increase your light exposure in the morning hours, because what you just described, limiting the light exposure in the evening, is preventing your circadian system from pushed later. And by adding morning light, you're helping the circadian system to move earlier. So if you combine both, you'll be able to move your sleep wake cycle earlier because you're moving your circadian system earlier, right.
Juna So this is why a lot of people give the advice now of like as soon as you wake up, go outside and look at the sky, look at the sun so that you can get as much light exposure early in the morning as possible.
Frank Yeah, but don't look directly at the sun.
Juna Thank you. Good point. Yes. We don't want an eclipse situation happening. Right. Okay. Can we move on to the other question of does snoozing your alarm help or hurt you? I think from what I remember in the class, I think I remember after taking the class, deciding never just use my alarm because, it would increase your sleep inertia or something and make it worse. I don't remember, but I don't even use an alarm just to say. After taking this class, I stopped using alarms forever. Unless I have a flight or something. I just don't use alarms. But, can you talk about. Yeah. Just using your alarm. Help or hurt?
Frank Yeah, by building in a snooze moment. What you're doing is really. You're depriving yourself from an uninterrupted sleep episode. If you would have known, you could have stayed asleep anyway for, let's say, ten minutes. Right. So. So do that to wake yourself up in the interim, the added value of ten minutes of additional time to hopefully get some Z's. It's going to be very limited, if at all, any benefit because, well, first of all will take you some time to fall asleep again if you do at all. And second, your sleep will be very shallow. So, yeah, I don't think snooze buttons, are helpful at all. And so if you know, you're going to be able to wake up ten minutes later, just set your alarm ten minutes later.
Eddie So as we start to wrap up, I'll ask this question. I'm defending my own behavior, so I, I will I will not ask, are naps good or bad? I will ask you, what is the optimal length of a nap? Ha ha ha ha.
Frank Yeah yeah yeah. Right, right. I like your the way you phrase that question. So, yeah. So the suggestion has been and there's a lot of work been on that and still ongoing is that shorter naps are good. So in the order of maybe 20 or 30 minutes. But longer naps might be more challenging in part, to what you said, you know, just before is that this then may have the negative effect of sleep inertia. Now, sleep inertia is the grogginess you experience when your brain is trying to transition from a sleeping to a waking state. And so the idea is that if you're sleeping longer during this nap, then your sleep inertia is going to be more severe. And so if you then wake up out of that nap, you actually don't feel more rested and your brain is actually slower. When you have a full overnight sleep, you don't have that effect as much, because by that time you've paid back a lot of the homeostatic sleep debt that you have built up. And so your home you. Pressure is really low. And, the other interesting thing about naps, of course. Oftentimes is, is socially, integrated. Think about, the siesta in many countries where it's warm and where being very alert and active is a challenge in the afternoon. And oftentimes that's culturally embedded in countries also where they have, large lunches. The reason I say this is that, naps per se are not necessarily bad. What I would say is that if you need a nap, it suggests that your nighttime sleep is not sufficient. If you need a nap because you are unable to get the amount of sleep you need at night. Let's say because of work or school or family, demands, then. And that might be advisable, but probably ideal if possible. You get, all your sleep at night or at maximum have one nap. And during the day.
Juna I'm just going to ask two final questions. One of the questions was about what I alluded to earlier about alarms. I don't think people understand why alarms are negative, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I remember, it was like, because you're always cycling through your sleep phases when you naturally wake up is when you're in your lightest sleep so that you don't have a lot of sleep inertia. When you wake up, you don't feel as groggy, but alarms obviously don't care. They just wake you up whenever. And so that's why you can feel like really tired, if you're woken up by an alarm. So I just wanna give you a moment to respond to that first.
Frank So that may be one reason indeed, that when you are waking up naturally, you may be in a, you know, per se in a state where, your sleep wasn't as deep in the last few minutes because you woke up. Actually, the other point regarding not having an alarm in the morning would be that this is a good gauge, that you had sufficient sleep. If you are needing an alarm. It suggests that the amount of sleep you got. Is insufficient. But if you don't set an alarm and you wake up naturally, at least your body and your brain had the opportunity to sleep as much as they should.
Juna Right? And then the last question I had for you was, if you had a magic wand that could change people's behavior, what would be the three biggest things people should change that would improve their sleep?
Frank Well, first prioritize sleep. And I think that's a mindset, right? So don't think sleep as a waste of time. Think of sleep as almost a superpower that you could leverage to improve your mind and your body. Second, we spoke about this a little bit regularity. So the more regular your sleep is, the better your sleep quality will be as well. And then third I would say think about sleep hygiene and maybe fourth. Go see a sleep physician if you are really struggling with a sleep disorder. And regarding sleep hygiene. We spoke a little bit about caffeine and alcohol. Think about a dark, quiet, comfortable and safe sleeping environment.
Juna And. Cool. Right?
Frank Right. And cool. Yeah, I did, I noticed it. Okay. Also, as part of the sleep hygiene, it's good to wind down. You know, don't try to go from 6 to 0 in one minute. It's good to wind down, do something relaxing, especially if you struggle with falling asleep.
Juna Thank you. I've been trying to tell my mom to stop watching loud or like crazy TV shows before bed for so long, not just because of the light, but I'm just like, this is like ramping up your brain to like 600 miles an hour and then you expect yourself to fall asleep. It's just, you know. Anyways, mom. So this is for you, mom. Don't watch those TV shows before bed. Anyways, thank you so much, Frank. We're going to ask you a bunch more questions on our membership episode about sleep, divorce and having the TV on, etc. etc. but for this episode, thank you so much for coming on. This was so fun.
Eddie Thank you so.
Frank Much. Thank you both for having me.
Juna Thank you so much to Frank Hsieh for joining us on today's podcast. We will link to his work on our website. If you want to hear our bonus episode with Frank where we talked all about topics like sleep, divorce, okay, sleeping in different rooms in your partner because they disturb your sleep at home. I'll be in Miami and not talking to you. If you want to hear about sleeping with the TV on tonight, if you fall asleep with a TV on. Is that good? Is that bad? If you want to hear about insomnia, we're going to talk about all those things. Guys, you can go to food. We need to talk.com/membership or click the link in our show notes. You can find us on Instagram at food. We need to talk. You can find me on Instagram at the official unit, our unit data on YouTube and TikTok so we can be buddies. You can find Eddie napping.
Eddie But but for scientific purposes.
Juna Food We Need to Talk is produced by me and distributed by.
Eddie Our mix engineer is Rebecca Seidel.
Juna We were created by Kerry Goldberg, George Hicks, Eddie Phelps, and me.
Eddie For any personal health questions, please consult your health provider. To find out more, go to food. We need to talk.com. Thanks for listening.
Juna Hopefully you're asleep by now. Goodnight.
Eddie Wake up.
Juna Let them sleep.
