The Sleep Solution Review + Abridged
Review
The Sleep Solution by Chris Winter is a book about how to fix your sleep. The Author ran a sleep clinic for many years, and after having similar odd experiences happen frequently, such as people claiming they haven’t slept in years, he published a book to clear up common misconceptions about sleep and offer solutions that will work for most people. It was a fun read; the humour is entertaining and well mixed in. Concepts build on each other nicely, and the chapters are not so long to get boring, but are enough to cover everything in sufficient depth.
One thing that impressed me about the book was its navigation around hard sleep issues, soft sleep issues, and non-sleep issues. There are extremely few people with hard sleep issues, actual disorders that prevent you from sleeping even when you are asleep. Those people will need a sleep study. He says this right at the start, but says to read the book first, because almost all sleep issues are soft issues, which doesn’t mean nothing is wrong, but it just means you can probably fix it on your own with a bit of effort. There are also some non sleep issues, where he outlines people who think they have poor quality sleep, but there is nothing wrong with it. It’s just an attitude problem. There is lots of information for each of these groups, and I would recommend giving the first half a read if you want to understand sleep better. It's just good advice on setting up and improving your own sleep. Don’t have time? Fear not, I’m back at it talking about this book to yet another victim (you).
Abridged
Before Getting Into It
There is a lot of advice in this book. If not following it works for you and you feel good, don’t fix what isn’t broken. There is no reason to make changes if you think it would harm your sleep.
Different people need different amounts of sleep. They say the average is 8 hours, but depending on age, activity level, body type, etc, it can vary. If you stay awake and function during the day, you get enough sleep. You may read about sleep cycles that people say are 90 minutes. You don’t need to time these. Your body can do that for you if you’re consistent.
Poor sleep is bad, but it’s not that bad. Old doctors used to work two straight days, sleep 6 hours, then do it again for weeks on end. They survived, and they did OK. They could have done better, but they did OK. If you have poor sleep, try to improve it, but it’s not the end of the world. Everyone sleeps. It is a primary drive, like eating and breathing. If you don’t do it, your body will force you to or it's joever. The issue is never that people don’t sleep; the issue is that they are dissatisfied with their sleep. That is an important distinction to make, because if someone claims they don’t sleep, they don’t understand what the problem is, and won’t be able to find a solution.
Sleepiness is when you want to fall asleep. Exhaustion is physical exhaustion. These are different, but often grouped into being tired. Similar, but not quite the same. If you are not sleepy and are trying to sleep, it’s like being full and forcing yourself to eat. Sure, sometimes you have to do it, but your body is saying you don’t need it. Listen to your body.
There are many reasons you may be sleepy or exhausted. If you’re tired but your sleep is fine, it may be something else. Could be diet, exercise, thyroid, burnout, or anything. Focus not only on sleep as the source of all your issues. If you are experiencing a temporary disruption in your everyday life, or if you have had a brief bout of poor sleep, that’s normal. Don’t make mountains out of molehills.
Setting Up Better Sleep (If You Need To)
First is the place where you sleep. Your bedroom should be for sleep: as dark as possible and as quiet as possible. White noise and night lights are unnecessary and often harm sleep. Your bedroom should be a colour that is calming and gentle on the eyes, and should be set up to be as comfy as possible for sleeping. You spend 1/3 of your life sleeping and it helps with everything, treat it like such. Your bedroom is for sleeping and clapping cheeks/getting cheeks clapped. Some of you may be in university, so you can’t have a purpose-built bedroom, but that’s how it’s best done. If you use your bedroom for more, like work, try to come up with a clear separation of spaces and don’t spend time in bed unless you are sleeping or smashing.
Wake up at the same time EVERY morning. If you got blasted at the Toucan, had a fire, watched a movie, stayed up late, etc you may need a nap, but do your best to wake up at the same time. This helps your body time everything, and not doing that messes up your body’s rhythm. Go to sleep at the same time too based on how much sleep you need. If you don’t know, go to bed 6 hours before you wake up. No napping. Stay up the whole day, then keep that schedule for a week or 2. If you are sleepy every day still, move your bedtime 20 minutes earlier and repeat. The goal is to be tired to guarantee efficient sleep, but if you are exhausted, it is not enough sleep, and you should adjust your schedule for more. There’s a whole popular thing about sleep debt, don’t worry about it. A few days of regular sleep and you’ll be back to normal.
No phones. zoomers and millennials, I swear to god, this is one of the biggest issues. Fast-paced content keeps your brain awake and wired, and bedtime is when you want your brain to be slow and sleepy. Blue light also signals to our brain it’s time to be awake, which you don’t want when it’s time to be sleepy either. E-readers have some light but to a much lesser degree. Turn off all screens ~1 – 1.5 hours before bed (well, ideally 2, but I know you won’t do that). Commit to it, and trust me, it is worth it. There will be nothing worth seeing on social media. There never is. If some piece of content is that worth it, it will stick around to the next day. Need to do something productive like work? Tomorrow’s problem. If it is 100% necessary, fine, don’t sweat it, but just do your best to make sure that situation is uncommon. You can almost always postpone midnight work to the next day. Before bed you can read, journal, plan, meditate, etc. There’s a lot to do that’s healthy, but note that indirect soft lighting is the softest on the eyes and best for the brain as you get closer to bedtime if you pick reading.
Stress is a real killer. You don’t want poor sleep, so you stress about doing things right, only for that stress to keep you up, giving you another poor sleep. This is a negative spiral that can single-handedly create all of your poor sleep. Do you sleep way better in motels or unfamiliar places? Chances are you’ve had this spiral and, in a trauma-like way, your brain now has associated your bedroom with poor sleep and anxiety. If this is the case, switch things up in your room: repaint it, move things around, get some new pillows (I recommend a pregnancy pillow, they are a game changer), and just try to break some of that negative association. If you know you are still stressing, just realize that your sleep is OK. You are still getting through the days. Even if you are more sleepy than you want to be. Improvement is a slow process that comes with setbacks. Bad sleep one night? Try again the next night. Just keep putting in that extra effort, keep to good habits, and it will pay off in the long run.
This leads to one of the last big points: identity. Some people are complainers or poor sleepers who make sure someone knows it. A study found that how people express their sleep has a bigger impact on how they feel during the day than the actual quality of their sleep. Fake it till you make it. Someone asks how you slept but you had your 7th poor sleep in a row? You actually slept fairly well last night! Woke up feeling like death? You actually had a cool dream! Can’t remember it well though :/ just that it was cool. Keep working on your sleep, but also try to create a more positive image of your sleep. You might kick some of those anxieties, and you might seem like a happier person as a bonus.
With that, I think you have the tools you need. Consistent schedule, no screens, and just keep at it. If none of these can help you, get a sleep study. A real in-person sleep study, not a fake at-home one or an app.
Extra Snippets
Resting, just lying down but staying awake, is great in the absence of sleep. Sometimes it is even equivalent. If you really need sleep but can't quite fall asleep, a bit of rest is better than stressing that you can't sleep.
No research has confirmed any sleeping pills help you perform better the next day and most do have negative health effects over long-term use. They have some role with jet lag, but there is no major benefit to them. If you use them as a placebo, maybe try replacing them with a caffeine-free tea with honey, which is connected to some slight benefit (potentially, he said it but I didn’t look it up). You should not be relying on anything to help you sleep.
Modern society is the root cause of so many sleep issues, and they sell pills to us to fix them even though they are ineffective. It’s literally the “feed us poison” meme.
Narcolepsy. If you constantly feel the urge to sleep and just curl up and sleep just about anywhere, even after a good night’s sleep, get it checked out. The vast majority of people with narcolepsy just think it’s normal and never seek help.
Shift workers have negative health consequences from having no internal consistent time. The negative health consequences are worse than some diseases or even parasites. Society does not need shift workers, but by using shift work, capital can have fewer workers and a more precarious workforce at their disposal. That’s kind of messed up. Also, capitalists people spend so much optimizing their sleep it’s unreal. They do all that just to avoid what they demand others do every day.
Think of what I said at the start: People sleep and sleep is a primary drive. These rich fucks who say they get a 4-hour sleep and work hard all day every day are lying. When people have slept that poorly, as the doctors mentioned earlier, their body forces them to sleep, they pass out on the job, and some even fall asleep while doing tasks.
We went from childhood dreams And end up just like ‘em I’m finna catch some Zs
Oncle Spencer