It’s no secret that sleep is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Mountains of research over the past decade prove, time and time again, that a decent night’s rest is essential for everything from cognitive function to heart health to mood and more. Not sleeping well or not getting enough sleep is associated with increased risk heart diseaseType 2 diabetes, stroke and high blood pressure, not to mention your success cognitive function.
For many of us, however, getting a good night’s sleep is often easier said than done. And many of the tips out there today are probably familiar, if generic: get 8 hours of sleep, avoid bright light and anything stressful before bed, and so on.
In reality, life is more complicated. For starters, we don’t all need the same amount of sleep; our age, sex, personal habits and tolerance all have an impact on what we individually need. We all also have different lifestyles, including work and travel, which can mean that our sleep schedules need to be adjusted from time to time. Getting a good night’s sleep is more than just measuring the amount of time spent in bed, but we’re not great judges of sleep quality, which is a result of being unconscious while doing the thing we’re trying to assess.
All of this means that following the mandated messages about getting more sleep can be frustrating. The good news, as we explore in this special issue dedicated to the topic, is that new research is revealing the benefits of a more holistic approach: some of the most important things you can do to improve sleep don’t happen in bed. no matter how comfortable that bed can be.
Your sleep is affected by what happens the rest of the day, such as what and when you eat, as well as your gut microbiome and hormone production. Your personal chronotype (not only when you prefer to sleep, but also when you are most active during the day) plays a role in the quality and quantity of sleep you get.
What we need, then, is a 24-hour view of sleep. None of this changes how crucial our unconscious hours are, but it does give us new opportunities to improve them before our minds break.
Explore the top sleep questions in our latest special series:
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