The art of sleep (and how I've been doing it wrong)

I am exceptional at sleeping. Never have I given myself such high praise in an area other than sleep. I’m just so good at it. People (mainly my dad) keep telling me I’ll grow out of it, like I’m harboring some weird penchant for kids TV or soft toys. But I’m pleased to say, at 28, I have not. 

Having suffered from anxiety at various points throughout my life I’m used to seeing insomnia at the top of any list of symptoms, but I’ve always swerved it. I take a strange pride in my ability to get to sleep and stay asleep. I can fall asleep in cars and on trains, in fact I can nap successfully in any number of locations. 

However, it’s not all sunshine. Anyone with insomnia, stop reading now as this may seem gratuitous and something of a non-problem, but I actually think I have started to binge on sleep. For years now, I have had a solid theory that if I don’t get enough sleep in the week, I can ‘make up for it’ at the weekend. This leads to me only making plans from the afternoon onwards so I can sleep until midday on at least one day over the weekend, if not both. And if I know I'm not going to have the opportunity to do this, it causes me substantial anxiety, like a sense that I will just feel exhausted and unwell all weekend and crucially, not prepared for the week ahead.

Basically, I’m treating sleep like the be all and end all. However, what I’ve realised is that I actually feel exhausted and unwell a lot anyway, no matter how many midday lie ins I get. And herein lies the problem.

A few weeks ago we had a number of talks for Mental Health Awareness Week at the agency, one of which was all about sleep; specifically how it works and how we can do it better. It was run by Dr. Guy Meadows, co-founder of The Sleep School and expert in sleep, and there were lots of gems of wisdom I’d love to share. 

One thing that really stuck with me was that we really do need routine, as boring as that sounds. Ideally, we should be going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. And that includes weekends. He did say we could have an extra hour or two in bed, so if I get up at 6.30 on weekdays, that’s a maximum lie in of 8.30 on weekends. Which in my book, is not a lie in. Not even close. 

He also said it’s actually impossible to ‘catch up’ on sleep. If you don’t get it in the first place, you’re not going to. So rather than bingeing, it’s much better to stay regular. To explain this, I'm going get all scientific for just a second. Sleep is made up from three stages – light, deep and REM (rapid eye movement) and we cycle between all three every 1.5-2 hours. We only really get 4 or 5 sleep cycles a night – which is about 8 hours. Any more than this, we just aren’t benefitting from the sleep; it’s actually detrimental. 

Plus, deep sleep is where all the repair and the good stuff happens – and this only occurs in the first third of the night. So again, that ‘extra’ sleep isn’t helping. Dr Meadows actually made an excellent analogy at this point which stuck in my mind – a good 7/8 hour sleep is like a meal in a five star restaurant, and by tagging a period of extra sleep or snoozing on, it’s like going to McDonalds for desert (which actually sounds great to me, I like McFlurrys a lot). But I get his point.

On the food theme, he also made the point that lying in means messing up your meal routine, which isn’t great for feeling your best either. But the most overwhelming point was that over sleeping is linked to anxiety. And that really made me listen.

So as you can imagine, I left the session feeling enlightened but also a little disheartened. My precious sleep! My one skill! How could I feel relaxed and satisfied of a weekend without lying in? The two things in my mind were one and the same. 

Since then, I’ve been trying it out with varying degrees of success. I went to stay with my mum in Norfolk a couple of weeks ago and both days I set my alarm for 9.30. I opened the curtains, let the natural light stream in and read my book for an hour. By which point it was 10.30, and I would still have at least an hour of sleep to go on a normal saturday. But I was already downstairs having relaxed and breakfasted. It felt good. And crucially, I didn’t feel exhausted all day. 

I had a little afternoon nap just for fun and because I could. Incidentally, naps are very much fine according to Dr. Guy, but only allowed between 12pm and 3pm for a maximum of 20 minutes. Not brilliantly convenient for weekdays, but a good rule of thumb for weekends. As an aside, Dr. Guy can nap on demand and wake up after exactly 20 minutes, no alarm needed. Spooky. 

I think sleep bingeing was making me lazy in lots of ways. If I felt tired or ill, I just thought I’d sleep it off. Without that attitude as a crutch, I’m thinking about what else I can do to make myself feel better. My diet, exercise, reading and writing. Just being awake and in the sunlight is beneficial. And mentally, I would never feel good about myself after a midday wake up. Half the day gone and all that jazz. I’m slowly starting to reprogram 28 years of an unhealthy attitude to sleep.

I’ve got loads more about sleep that I want to share from the talk, and I’m going to experiment with going to bed earlier (I’m just too much fun) so I shall follow up with another post. Plus, you can follow Dr Meadows on Twitter here if you so wish.