Why Sleep Matters

Sleep: Where it all begins for our body, brain and mind

Sufficient quality sleep is my number 1 priority for two reasons.

#1. The Essential 3Rs: Rest, Repair and Restore processes for the body and mind.

#2. Unlocking Potential: Every other aspiration becomes more doable!

We cannot sleep our way out of poor nutrition or lack of movement and meaningful connections but sleep can help us follow through on our goals for better nutrition, movement, and the motivation to connect!

Sleep is a superpower that unlocks our potential. It makes everything else more doable!

---

Sleep's Nightly Rest, Repair and Restore Functions

• Energy renewal for both the brain and the body.

• Mind-state renewal for managing our mood, impulse control, and perceptions (ability to accurately read our environment)

• Emotional therapy for working through difficult experiences to restore emotional balance, for protecting one's capacity for empathy.

• Memory management to solidify and capture new memories, to connect new and old memories for learning and problem solving.

• Cognition protection by flushing the metabolic waste from our brains and reducing brain inflammation!

• Immune system maintenance and restoration to protect against infection, cancers, and chronic conditions.

• Metabolism regulation and protection for health - think blood sugar, insulin, fat burning and blood pressure management plus all the interconnected systems influenced by metabolism!

Sleep does more than this, but I find these few examples are enough to compel me to prioritize sleep!

---

Risk Factors of Poor Sleep - A Few Examples

Poor sleep has both short term and cumulative long term impacts. Some are obvious. Others, like the long term impacts of chronic sleep deprivation, are stealthy, less obvious than the immediate tired feelings we have all experienced. It may be decades before the cumulative effects associated with aging and chronic disease are noticed.

Examples of dysregulated processes due to poor sleep include:

• Low energy renewal - mental and physical - needed to engage with life

• Increased Hormone dysregulation such as Ghrelin signaling the brain to eating, even when full

• Less impulse control

• Less empathy

• Loss of therapeutic dream state sleep - increased risk of depression or anxiety

• Lost time for brain detox increasing future cognition challenges (e.g., dementia).

• Lost time for memory processing - transfer of the day's new memories and creating space to capture new memories.

• Increased brain inflammation - associated with brain fog, dementia, other neurological disorders.

• Lost benefits of strength building exercise (up to 30% reduced muscle adaptation from your strength building session)

ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Arianna Huffington gives women a laugh while sharing yet one more great reason to prioritize sleep in her short TED Talk "How to succeed? Get more sleep."

---

QQRT for A Good Night's Sleep

Applying my favorite definition from Matt Walker, good sleep is QQRT: Quantity and Quality grounded by a regular Routine that is Timed to align with your natural Circadian Schedule.

Quantity (Duration)

7 to 8 hours sleep for most adults

+/- 30 minutes buffer time in bed for falling asleep & wakeups

9 hours sleep for some, a little less may work for others

Quality

Minimal disruptions (wakeups) during the night.

Good electrical quality of sleep (Hard to measure outside a lab but lack of energy if you only recall a full night of sleep)

Routine (Regular Schedule)

Go to bed and get up at the same time (most of the time), including weekends

+/- 30 minutes of regular schedule ideal

Timing

Aligned with your natural Circadian Rhythm & Chronotype.

Ideally following the day/night cycle

Strategies for shift workers and new parents will be addressed separately

---

Next Steps

See an opportunity to improve your QQRT? Explore our Sleep Playbook Portal for JC's Notes, worksheets to help build new habits, and links to more detail from the experts.

Wishing you well,

Janice

---

If you struggle with insomnia, consider talking with your doctor about finding a sleep professional trained in CBT-I (Cognitive Behavior Therapy - Insomnia), the international gold standard recommended as first line of treatment in Canada, the United States, and England.