Category: Sleep

Half the people in the study, though, slept about an hour less than the recommended amount.

Sleeping between 7 and 8 hours a night is best for the brain, research concludes.

More or less sleep than this is linked to lower cognitive performance.

Half the people in the study, though, slept about an hour less than the recommended amount.

The brains of people who slept four hours or less were nine years older, cognitively.

Over-sleeping was also linked to worse cognitive performance.

Professor Adrian Owen, the study’s first author, said:

“We really wanted to capture the sleeping habits of people around the entire globe.

Obviously, there have been many smaller sleep studies of people in laboratories but we wanted to find out what sleep is like in the real world.

People who logged in gave us a lot of information about themselves.

We had a fairly extensive questionnaire and they told us things like which medications they were on, how old they were, where they were in the world and what kind of education they’d received because these are all factors that might have contributed to some of the results.”

The results come from over 40,000 people around the world who completed a survey and cognitive tests.

Lack of sleep — or too much — was bad for the brains of young and old just the same.

Dr Conor Wild, study co-author, said:

“We found that the optimum amount of sleep to keep your brain performing its best is 7 to 8 hours every night and that corresponds to what the doctors will tell you need to keep your body in tip-top shape, as well.

We also found that people that slept more than that amount were equally impaired as those who slept too little.”

The study was published in the journal Sleep (Wild et al., 2018).

Around 40% of US adults say they have trouble falling asleep.

Writing a to-do list for the next day before bedtime helps people fall asleep faster, research finds.

The more specific the list, the faster people fall asleep.

Use this tip in concert with those described here: How To Fall Asleep Fast.

Dr Michael K. Scullin, who led the study, said:

“We live in a 24/7 culture in which our to-do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime.

Most people just cycle through their to-do lists in their heads, and so we wanted to explore whether the act of writing them down could counteract nighttime difficulties with falling asleep.”

The 57 people in the study wrote for just five minutes before sleeping.

The study compared writing a to-do list with writing a list of completed activities before bedtime.

Dr Scullin said:

“There are two schools of thought about this.

One is that writing about the future would lead to increased worry about unfinished tasks and delay sleep, while journaling about completed activities should not trigger worry.

The alternative hypothesis is that writing a to-do list will ‘offload’ those thoughts and reduce worry,”

The research was conducted in a sleep lab and people had their electrical brain activity monitored overnight.

Dr Scullin was cautious about the results:

“Measures of personality, anxiety and depression might moderate the effects of writing on falling asleep, and that could be explored in an investigation with a larger sample.

We recruited healthy young adults, and so we don’t know whether our findings would generalize to patients with insomnia, though some writing activities have previously been suggested to benefit such patients.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (Scullin et al., 2018).

Around two-thirds of adults report talking in their sleep at some point in their lives.

Most talk during sleep involves a lot of arguments and swearing, research finds.

While dreaming, people seem to be having very tense conversations involving multiple f-words.

One theory about the purpose of dreams is that it is how the brain processes threats.

This could help explain why sleep-talk is so negative.

Why do people talk in their sleep?

The French research monitored 230 people while they slept in the lab.

Most people did not speak that often while asleep, the researchers found.

However, when they did, it was usually to say something negative, like “no” or to swear.

The f-word was recorded 800 times more frequently than while people were awake.

The authors write:

“…sleep talking may correspond to the “punch line” of a conversation, i.e., the emergent, most violent part of the iceberg of covert speech, increasing the negativity of the language and verbal abuse.”

Talking in your sleep is common

Almost two-thirds of sleep-talk was not decipherable — there was a lot of mumbling.

Utterances that could be understood were generally in grammatically correct form.

This suggests the brain is working at a high level during sleep — perhaps similarly to the waking brain.

Certainly, brain scans of people sleeping show high levels of activity during dreaming.

The study’s authors conclude:

“Sleep talking parallels awake talking for syntax, semantics, and turn-taking in conversation, suggesting that the sleeping brain can function at a high level.

Language during sleep is mostly a familiar, tensed conversation with inaudible others, suggestive of conflicts.”

Sleep talking, which is known as ‘somniloquy’, is relatively common, the authors write:

“In epidemiological studies, as many as 66.8% of adults
report having ever talked during their sleep, but only 6.3% of adults speak at least once a week.

Most adults experiencing sleep talking already sleep talked as children.

Sleep talking is equally distributed among girls and boys and is mostly familial.”

The study was published in the journal Sleep (Arnulf et al., 2017).

Digital detox includes changing bedtime habits and adjusting smartphone settings, which helps improve sleep.

Digital devices have become the scourge of sleep.

Around half of all teenagers check their phones after they have gone to bed, according to one survey.

One in ten admit to checking their phones 10 times during the night.

In response the survey’s authors have come up with 10 rules for digital detox that can help both teenagers and adults alike to get more sleep.

1. Avoid screens before bedtime

Do not use any screens in the 90 minutes before bed.

2. Change pre-bedtime habits

Instead, in the 90 minutes before bedtime, try reading a book, meditating or having a bath.

Social media tends to get you worked up and excited.

For sleep you want the opposite feeling.

3. Reduce exposure to blue light in the evening

Some devices have a “night shift mode” — use it.

Avoid any devices that shine blue light into your eyes in the lead up to bedtime.

4. Set the phone to “airplane mode”

…or similar so that it does not disturb you in the evening.

Some devices can be set to automatically go silent during certain hours.

5. Digital detox: break the habit

Try to break the habit of checking the device in the evening — especially closer to bedtime and for no reason other than boredom.

6. Phone out of easy reach

Put the phone somewhere that makes it difficult to check.

For example, next to your bed or in the bed makes the temptation all the greater.

Across the room is not so tempting.

7. Is social media more important than your health?

Have a think about why you are looking at your phone late at night.

Is it really important?

Is it really worth disturbing your sleep over?

Usually it’s not: much better to improve your health by getting more quality sleep.

8. Curb usage in general for digital detox

Try to cut down on non-essential phone usage at all times.

That will make it easier to cut down in the evening as well.

9. How much are you using the phone?

Use apps that tell you how long you have been using the phone.

One example is ‘RealizD’.

10. Reward for digital detox

Reward yourself for following these digital detox rules.

You will reinforce your own improving behaviour.

The survey was conducted for the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference by Digital Awareness UK.