Sleep Management: The Most Important Of All!

I suppose this blog post about sleep is convenient timing. At the time of writing, our son is 5.5 weeks old. As with any newborn, sleep management is tricky; Eliza and I are lucky to sleep for three consecutive hours, but of course this is temporary and will get better! We’ll get back to normal soon.

As your 2023 comes to a close, take a moment and reflect on how your sleep management has been this past year. Have you been getting your eight hours per night? What has the quality of your sleep been like? For example, sleeping eight consecutive hours affords you the ability to go through multiple cycles of REM sleep (“dreaming”) and stages 1-4 (“lighter to deeper sleep”). The opposite would be waking up every couple hours to go to the bathroom or feed your newborn, preventing consistent, deep sleep into stage 4. This interrupted pattern can be detrimental to your health.

Speaking of health, I hear fairly often the toxic sentiment: “I don’t need sleep. I only get four hours per night and I’m fine. You should do the same.” Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, they have a point; if sleep is “time-wasted” and you could be more efficient using that time to work or learn a new language, then aren’t you better off sleeping their bare minimum of four hours per night?

But this argument FAILS because sleep is not time-wasted, of course! A 2020 research-driven epidemiological study by Hale et al found that more than 80% of older adults with inadequate sleep have at least one major mental or physical disorder, including depression, heart disease, pain, and memory disturbances. And if more than 35% of us are sleeping less than the CDC-recommended 7 hours of sleep per night minimum, that spells bad news for our individual and population health.

Moral of the story: if you’re an adult and not sleeping more than 7 hours per night (for kids, at least 8-9+ hours per night), please take a moment and reflect on your sleep health. Maybe you need to go to sleep earlier or avoid screen time 30+ minutes before bed. Maybe you need to get eyeshades or a white noise machine. Whatever your solution is, make sure that your 2024 gets off to a great start with great, consistent sleep.