How to sleep like your relationships depend on it (with Wendy Troxel)
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How did you sleep last night? Whether you sleep next to someone or not, in today’s episode Wendy Troxel offers tips on how to catch better z’s. Wendy is a Senior Behavioral and Social Scientist at RAND who explores how sleep affects our relationships, well-being and society at large. As a licensed clinical psychologist, she specializes in behavioral treatments for insomnia and other sleep disorders. Wendy has received several awards and honors for her research from national and international scientific societies, and her work has been published in top-tier medical and psychological journals. Her research on sleep was featured in two best-selling books: Arianna Huffington's “Sleep Revolution” and David Randall's “Dreamland”, and she recently was one of the co-organizers and presenters at the first-ever national conference on Adolescent Sleep, Health, and School Start Times. Her latest book “Sharing the Covers: Every Couple's Guide to Better Sleep” comes out on April 20th. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective. Is that okay? You're listening to how to be a better human. |
| 0:14.0 | I am your host Chris Duffy, and on today's show we're going to be answering that question and so many more. |
| 0:19.0 | We are talking all about sleep. |
| 0:21.0 | Personally, I have always thought that there are two kinds of sleepers. |
| 0:24.4 | There's light switchers like me, which are the people where we turn off the |
| 0:28.1 | light switch and then we instantly go to sleep. And then there are the people |
| 0:31.6 | like my wife who I call |
| 0:32.7 | Doomsday Preppers because they have to spend hours before bedtime |
| 0:36.0 | preparing for the apocalypse that is the night. |
| 0:38.7 | Do either of those sound familiar to you? |
| 0:40.4 | Well, whether you have an easy time falling asleep, or it is a constant struggle, we've got some serious insights for you on today's episode. |
| 0:48.0 | We're going to talk about how to sleep like your relationship depends on it, because it very well might. We're going to talk about how |
| 0:54.0 | sleep affects our relationships and we are going to be asking that big question that I started with at the top. |
| 0:59.5 | Is it okay if couples sleep apart? Sleep doesn't just affect romantic relationships. It also has |
| 1:05.2 | major impacts on society. So there's going to be useful information for everybody |
| 1:09.2 | whether you are currently single and sleeping alone or not. We're also going to be exploring what the most |
| 1:13.9 | effective bedtime habits are to make it so you can actually fall asleep in the first place. |
| 1:18.2 | And we're going to talk about why sleep has all of a sudden become such a hot topic. |
| 1:23.2 | To get started, here's a clip from sleep scientist Wendy Troxel's TEDx talk. |
| 1:28.2 | Is it bad if my partner and I sleep apart? |
| 1:32.4 | The answer is no, not necessarily. Just as sleeping together doesn't |
| 1:40.5 | guarantee a successful relationship. |
... |
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