Sleepy course 😴 Day 24

Look, it’s day 24 already. We are on the finish line! And I saved for you an important and interesting topic which I promised to discuss back in the beginning.

Timing⌚️

Timing means two things:

• Sleeping schedule (going to bed and waking up at the same time)
• Nightly sleep

Remember at the very beginning of the course we set two alarms to stay on schedule. I wrote a guide for you in case it didn’t work and you keep turning off the alarm automatically without stopping and putting away your daily activities. You can find it here, please do read it.

When you have the schedule worked out, we can move to the second point. Let’s start going to bed earlier and sleep during the night.

Why it’s important for health?

By default, the circadian rhythms set to wakefulness during the day and sleep during the night. This basic configuration was formed by millions of years of evolution.

The human body tries to adjust to nightly work, parties and, late evening Netflix binges. It’s even somewhat successful at it, but not entirely.

As we always do here, let’s consult science.

People who go to sleep late at night have an increased risk of many diseases: primarily, diabetes and depression followed by cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, and oncological conditions. All in all, their cumulative risk of dying is 10% higher than for hypothetical early risers.

This is demonstrated in the systematic review of several studies, with a total sample size of 433 thousand people over an average period of 6.5 years. These are the same types of studies as my Caffeine day, so no need to panic just yet.

However, the benefits of being a morning person are confirmed in other studies as well. One of them compared two groups of people. One group went to bed at 10 pm, and the other at 1 am. In the end, the second group experienced a half-hour delay in melatonin secretion which led to a shift in their circadian rhythms.

Mental health and productivity

An excellent randomized study showed that night birds, who managed to switch to early birds’ regime, became more productive. Their stress levels and risk of depression have also plummeted.

How to change your regime

Do not try to immediately and rapidly change your regime. Even if it is a change for the better, it’s still stressful for the body. Besides, there’s a risk you simply won’t be able to fall asleep much earlier.

If currently you go to bed at midnight or later, and you are convinced you need to start falling asleep earlier, let’s do the task below.

Task:

1. Set a goal time when you want to go to bed. But be honest, pick a time that you can stick to realistically. 11 pm or even midnight could be a good first step.
2. Calculate the difference between your current bedtime and the new one in minutes. Divide that number into 5 or 6 equal chunks.
3. As a result, you’ll get the number of minutes to move your bedtime earlier each day until the end of the course.
4. And of course, don’t forget about the evening ritual.

Good luck and see you tomorrow! 🙌

The studies:

• Early versus late bedtimes phase shift the human dim light melatonin rhythm despite a fixed morning lights on time
• Resetting the late timing of ‘night owls’ has a positive impact on mental health and performance
• Effects of sleep and circadian rhythm on human circulating immune cells.
• Associations between chronotype, morbidity and mortality in the UK Biobank cohort