Do This Today To Sleep Well Tonight

Life Kit

NPR

Self-improvement, Kids & Family, Education, Health & Fitness, Business

4.5 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From the moment you wake up, your body starts to prepare for sleep. We show you how to adjust your daytime habits to get the best possible night of rest.

Here's what to remember:
- Start the day with natural light — from an east-facing window, or even better, go outside — to put the brakes on melatonin.
- Cut the caffeine off by late morning. Even if it doesn't keep you up, caffeine impacts how much deep sleep you're getting.
- Get moving during the day. Exercise can increase the quantity and quality of your sleep.
- Avoid the nightcap. Alcohol makes you feel sleepy but disrupts deep sleep.
- Ban the smartphone and TV from the bedroom. Too stimulating, when you should be letting go.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You know the downside of not getting enough sleep?
0:03.0	Let me tell you, it is a scary long list.
0:05.6	I'm a health reporter, and every week I see a new study.
0:08.8	Lack of sleep, it's linked to anxiety, depression, weight gain, type 2 diabetes, even certain
0:14.4	kinds of cancer.
0:15.6	If you understood the damage that insufficient sleep has on the brain and the body as I do,
0:21.3	you would choose to do nothing else.
0:22.8	It's purely a selfish act on my behalf that I give myself that ate our sleep.
0:28.4	What is sleep guru Matthew Walker?
0:30.5	He's a sleep researcher at UC Berkeley, and the author of Why We Sleep.
0:34.5	He has made it his mission to convince the world that sleep is important.
0:39.4	What is it that you found over the years that really gets people's attention?
0:46.0	I think it's different facts for different populations.
0:48.6	You know, for example, sometimes I'll go and speak to a lot of Fortune 500 companies
0:52.2	where there is a large dominance of type e-mails in the audience.
0:56.9	One of the first things I usually say in those speeches is regarding testicles that
1:01.6	men who sleep five to six hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those
1:05.6	who sleep seven hours or more.
1:07.3	I'm not sure that gets their attention.
1:10.3	Yeah, it's the best opening that I've found yet.
1:13.7	Testicles is probably one of the best hooks for maintaining people's attention.
1:17.2	I welcome with small testicles.
	...

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