I once went almost five days without sleep in 1996 just to see 1)
if I could make a week (I couldn’t), and 2) what the side-effects would
be.
I was a new neuroscience major at Princeton at the time and hoped to do research with famed serotonin pioneer, Barry Jacobs.
Hallucinations cut my sleep deprivation trial short, but I’ve
continued to experiment with sleep optimization and variation as a means
of improving performance.
Here are a few effective techniques and hacks I’ve picked up over the
last five years from sources ranging from biochemistry PhDs to
biologists at Stanford University…
1. Consume 150-250 calories of low-glycemic index foods in small quantities (low glycemic load) prior to bed.
Morning fatigue and headache isn’t just from sleep debt or poor
sleep. Low blood sugar following overnight fasting is often a
contributing factor. Just prior to bed, have a small snack such as: a
few sticks of celery with almond butter, a mandarin orange and 5-8
almonds, or plain low-fat (not fat-free) yoghurt and an apple. Ever
wonder how you can sleep 8-10 hours and feel tired? This is part of the
explanation. Make a pre-bed snack part of your nutritional program.
1-2 tablespoons of flaxseed oil (120-240 calories) can be used in
combination with the above to further increase cell repair during sleep
and thus decrease fatigue. It tastes like a mixture of cat urine and
asparagus, so I recommend pinching your nose while consuming it — thanks
Seth Roberts, PhD. for this tip — or using capsules.
2. Use ice baths to provoke sleep.
Japanese have longer lifespans that do most other ethnicities. One theory has been that regular ofuro
or hot baths at bedtime increase melatonin release, which extends
lifespan. Paradoxically, according to the Stanford professors who
taught Bio 50, cold is actually a more effective signaller for sleep
onset, but it could have no relation to melatonin production.
I decided to test the effect of combining 10-minute ice baths, timed
with a countdown kitchen timer, one hour prior to bed (closer to bed and
the adrenergic response of noradrenalin, etc. won’t allow you to sleep)
with low-dose melatonin (1.5 – 3 mg) on regulating both sleep
regularity and speed to sleep. The icebath is simple: 2-3 bags of ice
from a convenience store ($3-6 USD) put into a half-full bath until the
ice is about 80% melted. Beginners should start with immersing the
lower body only and progress to spending the second five minutes with
the upper torso submerged (fold your legs Indian-style at the end of the
tub if you don’t have room). I’ll talk about the fat-loss and
sperm-count benefits of this in future post.
The result: it’s like getting hit with an elephant tranquilizer. Don’t expect it to be pleasant at first.
3. Eating your meals at set times can be as important as sleeping on a schedule.
People talk a lot about circadian (circa dia = approximately one day) rhythms
and establishing a regular sleep schedule, but bedtime timing is just
one “zeitgeber” (lit: time giver), or stimulus that synchronizes this
biorhythm (like pheromones and menstrual cycle). Eating meals at set
times helps regulate melatonin, ghrelin, leptin, and other hormones that
affect sleep cycles. Other “zeitgebers” for sleep include melatonin,
light, and temperature. Parting suggestion: Get a sleep mask if you have any degree of light in your bedroom.
4. Embrace 20-minute caffeine naps and ultradian multiples.
Test “caffeine naps” between 1-3 pm. Down an espresso and set your
alarm for no more than 20 minutes, which prevents awakening in the
middle of a restorative sleep cycle. Interrupting cycles often leaves
you feeling worse than no sleep (though some researchers assert your
performance will still improve in comparison with deprivation).
For longer naps, test multiples of 90 minutes, which is called an
“ultradian” rhythm in some papers, though the proper term should be
“infradian” since it’s less than 24 hours. Thomas Edison, despite his
vocal disdain for sleep and claim to sleep only four hours per night, is
reported to have taken two three-hour naps daily.
Don’t forget to factor in your time-to-sleep. It often takes me up
to an hour to fall asleep, so I’ll set my alarm for seven hours ((4 x 90
minutes) + 60-minute time-to-sleep).
5. Turn off preoccupation with afternoon closure and present-state training.
I have — as do most males in my family — what is called “onset
insomnia.” I don’t have trouble staying asleep, but I have a difficult
time falling asleep, sometime laying awake in bed for 1-2 hours. There
are two approaches that I’ve used with good effect without medications
to address this: 1) Determine and set a top priorities to-do list that
afternoon for the following day to avoid late-night planning, 2) Do
not read non-fiction prior to bed, which encourages projection into the
future and preoccupation/planning. Read fiction that engages the
imagination and demands present-state attention. Recommendations for
compulsive non-fiction readers include Motherless Brooklyn and Stranger in a Strange Land.
—
From fat-loss (leptin release decreases with sleep debt) to memory
consolidation, sleep is the currency of high-performance living.
Have you taken time to master it like a skill?
Here are a few questions for the researchers among you:
-What is the fastest way to pay off sleep debt?
-Can you eat more food — or protein specfically — to compensate for sleep deprivation? To what degree?
-How do side-effects of ongoing melatonin use compare to drugs like Ambien?
-What is the interplay of the hypothalamus and RAS (reticular activating system)?
-Does insulin sensitivity change between waking and sleep cycles? How?
-Can coffee and its effects on adenosine affect sleep depth or length?
Sweet dreams.
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