TED Talks · Listen with Dr Jen Gunter

8 Hours of Sleep Every Night

Sleep is so important. We need it to live.

Level: C1 · 70 sentences

Transcript

  1. Sleep is so important.
  2. We need it to live.
  3. And when we can't sleep, we're desperate for help.
  4. But lately, our fascination with sleep feels
  5. as if it's taken on an urgency.
  6. Do a quick internet search for sleep,
  7. and you'll find a slew of articles about how to make your sleep perfect.
  8. New gadgets, fancy alarm clocks, stay away from blue light.
  9. There are lots of services, products,
  10. and advice columns that tell us we're sleeping wrong.
  11. Not enough, not quality sleep, wrong position.
  12. Even worse, you might find scary messaging claiming
  13. that if you're not sleeping right,
  14. your life is gonna be shorter.
  15. You're gonna get all kinds of diseases.
  16. One of the biggest worries we have about our sleep
  17. is that we're not getting enough
  18. and that anything less than seven hours a night means
  19. that we're doomed to bad health.
  20. Everything from high blood pressure to Alzheimer's disease
  21. but there are two flaws with this kind of messaging
  22. the first flaw is that it's not completely accurate
  23. seven to eight hours of sleep
  24. while recommended for adults is just an average
  25. and while messages have to be simplified for health communication to the public
  26. sometimes important nuances get lost. So yes,
  27. It's true that not getting enough sleep in the long term
  28. is associated with health problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes,
  29. and depression, but fixating solely on seven to eight hours
  30. ignores the fact that there's a range of sleep that people need.
  31. The duration of a good night's sleep can be different for different people.
  32. Some adults need eight, but some are just fine on six.
  33. The second flaw with this kind of doomsday messaging
  34. is that it can be counterproductive,
  35. especially for people who do have trouble sleeping.
  36. For instance, in 2019, it was estimated that 21%
  37. of adults in the US were wearing sleep tracking devices,
  38. and that number's probably growing.
  39. And I get it.
  40. It's fascinating to see how much sleep you've gotten each night
  41. and to know what part of your night was spent in deep sleep or dreaming.
  42. But having all of that sleep data
  43. is causing some people to become obsessed with it.
  44. So much so that it's leading to a condition some call orthosomnia,
  45. a preoccupation with the constant need to achieve perfect sleep.
  46. And this condition, ironically, is causing more sleep problems.
  47. Now, orthosomnia might be an extreme example,
  48. but the anxiety of not getting enough sleep
  49. is keeping some of us up at night.
  50. So here's what some experts are saying.
  51. Stop fixating on the number
  52. because that can lead to unrealistic expectations of sleep.
  53. According to Dr. Colleen Carney,
  54. a psychologist and the head of the Ryerson University Sleep Lab,
  55. the basic questions you should ask yourself
  56. are, do I feel reasonably well rested during the day?
  57. Do I generally sleep through the night without disturbances?
  58. Or if I wake, I fall back asleep easily?
  59. Can I stay awake through the day without involuntarily falling asleep?
  60. If your answers are yes to all three,
  61. you probably don't need to worry about your sleep
  62. And if you're struggling with your sleep
  63. instead of buying expensive blue light filters or fancy sleep trackers
  64. try talking with your doctor to make sure there aren't any
  65. medical conditions that need to be explored first.
  66. Then try evidence-based recommendations laid out by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
  67. What's really cool is that there's a highly effective therapy
  68. called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia or CBT-I.
  69. It doesn't have any medications involved
  70. and it has a really low failure rate.