#126 – Matthew Walker, Ph.D.: Sleep and immune function, chronotypes, hygiene tips, and addressing questions about his book

The Peter Attia Drive

Peter Attia, MD

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Fitness

4.7 • 7.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 102 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, sleep expert Matthew Walker returns by popular demand to dive deeper into many sleep-related topics, starting with what we’ve learned about sleep through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic and how sleep impacts the immune system. He then covers topics such as how dreaming affects emotional health, the different sleep chronotypes, the best sleep hygiene tips, and the pros and cons of napping. Matthew finishes by addressing several of the errors that readers have pointed out in his book, Why We Sleep.

We discuss:

Three ways the coronavirus pandemic impacts sleep [3:30];
The importance of dreaming for emotional health, and how the coronavirus pandemic increases dreaming [11:45];
The impact of alcohol consumption on sleep quality and stress levels [20:00];
Sleep’s impact on the immune system and implications for a future COVID-19 vaccine [27:45];
What determines how much deep sleep and REM sleep you need? [36:30];
Pros and cons of napping, and insights from the sleep habits of hunter-gatherer tribes [42:15];
Sleep hygiene, wind-down routine, and tips for better sleep [56:45];
Understanding sleep chronotypes and how knowing yours can help you [1:06:00];
Night terrors in kids—what they are and why they happen [1:16:30];
Addressing errors found in Matt’s book, Why We Sleep [1:20:45]; and
More.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive Podcast.
0:13.0	I'm your host, Peter Atia.
0:14.8	This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter, all focus on the goal of translating
0:18.7	the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone.
0:22.4	Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've
0:26.6	assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen.
0:29.4	If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more
0:33.2	in-depth content if you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level.
0:37.3	At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you want to learn
0:41.0	more now, head over to peteratiamd.com forward slash subscribe.
0:46.3	Now without further delay, here's today's episode.
0:49.0	I guess this week is Matthew Walker.
0:52.5	Many of you are probably familiar with Matthew as back in, I think April 2019 or so, we released
0:58.1	a three-part series on sleep and then did a two-part follow-up of AMAs in June and October
1:05.3	of that year.
1:06.3	If you're a listener of this podcast, you've spent a lot of time listening to Matthew
1:09.1	Walker.
1:10.1	That said, the demand to have Matthew back on has been overwhelming, and there's always
1:14.7	a lot of stuff to talk about with Matthew.
1:16.1	He's such an eloquent speaker on the topic of sleep.
1:19.1	We just continue to get a lot of questions on this, and so we figured there was no better
1:22.9	time and place to do this than here and now.
	...

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