SLEEP

What follows is an email I wrote to a good friend who has to deal with crazy shift schedules and has been plagued by sleep issues. I was in the same boat for years before I recently FIRE’d (or min-retirement?) ,and my sleep was shit. Hell, I’m still recovering.

 I was able to claw myself out of sleep deprivation by combining a bunch of stuff I’d heard on podcasts, read in books, and read in blogs. My friend asked me to forward him what I learned, and it turned into a pretty long email that took more time than I intended to put together. I was never able to find a guide specifically for shift workers that combined all of the information I came across into one source. Figured I’d post my version of that resource here in case someone else can use it.

Obviously I’m not an expert, but through research and trial and error this is what got me to a place where I was at least functional despite working late shift and having to regularly flip my schedule. I’m sure I’ve got some stuff wrong below, especially the direction of causality between hormones and body temperature. The hours I’ve listed are a general range, and there’s tons of individual variability. I’m not a doctor, a shaman, or a lawyer, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Hope it helps someone out there.

Hey dude, sorry it’s taken me forever to get this sleep stuff together.

The two best references I’ve come across are:

The last one by Huberman was like when I found JL Collins ‘s stuff after already reading a dozen or so books on investing. I probably could have skipped a whole lot of research and just did what Huberman talked about in the temp. minimum podcast had I found it earlier.

Anywho, what follows is me prattling on for quite awhile about what I’ve learned. Totally understand if you want to skip all of this and just look at the above two links. Probably get hours of your life back.

Here goes. If you don’t get sleep, you will die and then get AIDs. 100%, in that order. Well maybe not quite, but it’s pretty bad. Like if you don’t get at least 7 hours of sleep on a consistent basis, you will definitely shorten your lifespan because you’re way more at risk for all the bad health stuff like alzheimers, heart disease, cancer, whatever.

Also everyone be like “I’m good on six hours”. Yeah, probably not. According to that first link, some Docs did a study, and the people who could function consistently on 6 hours of sleep were less than 1% of the population. It’s much more likely you need 9-7 hours of sleep, hence the always recommended average of 8. But that’s actual time spent sleeping, not the total time laying in bed. So you probably need to spend more than 7 hours in bed to get a total of the minimum of 7 hours of sleep if you account for how long it takes you to get to bed, getting up in the middle of the night, etc.

I learned all of that stuff from Joe Rogan interviewing this medical doctor who focuses on sleep named Matt Walker. Think he’s related to Walker, Texas Ranger, so it’s probably legit. Here’s the notes from that interview, which is also the first link above: 

And here’s the original episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

The Huberman guy who I also referenced kind of minimizes the risk of sleep loss, but I think that’s because most of his audience are normal people who have normal schedules, and while his listeners may be intelligent, some may tend to be neurotic. That means they are more likely to develop sleep anxiety(“Fuck, I only got 6 hours and 57 minutes of sleep last night!! Now I’m going to die!!”), whereas guys like us who’ve had legit crazy work schedules and shifts should probably fully understand the consequences of shitty sleep so we can mitigate stuff in the future.

It’s good to understand signaling hormones, as they drive when we sleep and wake. If you understand how they’re triggered, you can minimize them getting all screwed up and try to make sure they signal when you want them to.

Best I can tell there’s two primary hormones that effect sleep; cortisol and melatonin. In a perfect world, you’d get a slow release of cortisol which would wake you up and eventually make you alert. This dump of cortisol also starts a timer for the release of melatonin somewhere around 12-13 hours later. That melatonin release then triggers you falling asleep like 3-4 hours later. These signaling hormones are coordinated by our bodies changing temperature cycle. Our body’s temperature goes up and down like clockwork. Literally, like on a 24 hour cycle. It’s at its coldest 1.5-2 hours before our average wake time, then increases until about the late morning, stays constant, then starts to go down before we go to sleep. The increase in temperature triggers the cortisol and wakes us up, the drop triggers the melatonin to make us sleepy( not absolutely sure of the direction of causality between temp. and the hormones, but for simplicity sake let’s just say one triggers the other somehow).

The temperature change occurs across all cells in our body, and does a whole lot more intricate wake or sleep signaling that is beyond my understanding, but to simplify it basically syncs up our wakefulness or sleepiness with all our organs. This is a two way relationship, so if one part of our body is getting warm while the rest is getting cooler, shit gets fucked up and our body defaults to survival mode because it doesn’t know what’s going on. I’m sure you can guess that in survival mode, our body defaults to keeping us awake. Because, you know, survival. So what you want to do is make sure everything is synched up, and the signaling hormones are triggered when you want them to.

We were evolutionarily adapted to wake up with the sun, do some stuff on a regularish schedule, eat stuff that would be considered super healthy by today’s standards, then go to sleep when the sun goes down. Evolution hasn’t had enough time to adapt to screens, bright lights, multiple fight or flight stress responses from normal shit like driving or playing candy crush, and eating and drinking comparably like shit. All of these modern day things mess up the temperature coordination, which then defaults us into survival mode and then you can’t get to sleep. Here’s what fucks it up, and some stuff to do which may mitigate the fuckery:

1. Light. This Huberman guy is big about saying that the tissue making up our eyes is actually an extrusion of our brain matter and not a separate organ. This is important, because light exposure has the biggest impact on coordinating the temperature cycle. Especially bright, blue light. If you don’t get bright light within the first few hours of waking, your body won’t signal the cortisol and you’ll feel tired all day. For the rest of the morning and day(I think 6-8 hours?), if you get bright light your body won’t care. It’s essentially in neutral, more light won’t make you more awake and less won’t make you more sleepy after those first few hours.

But after the neutral period of time, if you get bright blue light exposure, your body defaults to survival and wakes you back up. Remember, we were adapted to short term survival over long term health. So our body is like “Fuck! A phone with blue light! Something might be trying to kill us! Wake the fuck up and to hell with giving a shit about cancer in 10 years.”

Huberman recommends 2-10 minutes of sunlight within 30-60 minutes of waking. This triggers cortisol activation, and starts the timer for the release of melatonin later in the day. It’s very hard to trigger the cortisol release by blue light early in the day, and very easy to trigger it later in the day (because survival I guess). So you can’t just look at your computer first thing in the morning, it’s not enough light. You need sunlight, not filtered by a window or sunglasses. Have to be outside. Huberman talks about how 10 minutes of outside viewing would be optimal on a clear day, and 30-60 minutes depending on how overcast it is. But it seems like 2 minutes is the minimum effective dose according to this: https://tim.blog/2021/07/08/andrew-huberman-transcript/

I can’t remember where, but I’ve heard that a TV is ok to watch a few hours before bed as long as it’s at least 5-10 feet away.

On the flip side, when you’re 3-4 hours away from sleep, you have to minimize light exposure. Your body has adapted to see dim light close to the skyline a few hours before bed, so viewing the sky at sunset can help reinforce that melatonin release.

2. Routine: Our bodies like routine, and you can program your body to expect stuff after certain stimuli. Kind of like training a dog. Give command, dog does something, dog gets treat. Same with sleep and routine. Wake up, have coffee, get light, body knows it’s time to get to wake up. Dim lights, read some light fiction, meditate, your body knows sleep is coming. Having a specific routine for waking and sleeping has helped me to get to sleep quicker on days when I know I’m going to work late. Basically I lie to my body by waiting to do my morning routine on my shifted schedule, and then do the wind down routine before the later bedtime. It also helps to use your bedroom, or at least your bed, for just sleep. That way your brain associates your bed with going to sleep. Obviously there’s some exceptions to this. Reading seems to be ok, as long as it’s not on a backlit tablet(side lit kindle seems ok), and if reading is a consistent part of your bedtime routine.

3. Caffeine: Yeah, it’s a stimulant. Generally accepted to not have it after whenever your lunch time is; even better to not have it after breakfast. Best is probably to not have it at all but fuck that. The half life of caffeine is 5-6 hours, so even 5 hours after ingestion half of it is still working.

4. Food: Your digestive system may heat up if you eat something. If you do this too close to when you want to sleep, you’ve unsynced everything, and now your body doesn’t know what’s going on. Defaults to survival mode and now you’re awake. I think the general recommendation is try to stop eating 3-4 hours before sleep.

I think that applies to a big meal though. Heard on a Tim Ferriss podcast that if you’re really hungry before sleep, get some high fat/protein, like a spoonful of peanut butter. This has helped me get to sleep when I’ve worked longer than planned and work made me miss a meal, and then I finally notice I’m hungry when I get home 5 minutes before I’m trying to get to sleep. Conversely, if I’m hungry and I feel wired before sleep because of a crazy night at work, I’ve had success using a carb crash to induce sleep. Eating half a cup of white rice before going to bed seems to be right for me, as it induces the carb crash, but isn’t so heavy that I have to digest a lot.

5. Exercise. Science or whatever says people who regularly exercise sleep better, so do that. On the other hand, if you work out right before bed, you’re heating up a good portion of your body and screwing up your chances of getting sleep. I’ve heard somewhere that if the only time you can regularly exercise is a few hours before bed, that’s probably ok, as long as it’s a part of your routine, and you use a hot shower to cool down afterwards(more on showers below). I think I’ve heard that any closer than two hours to sleep will mess it up. A therapist told me there’s some good research that light stretching before bed can help induce sleep.

6. Showers. Hot showers make your body try to cool itself because of an endothermic reaction or something. So you can make your body go into cooling mode by taking a hot shower before bed. On the flip side, if you’re having a hard time getting to sleep because your brain won’t shut off, a cold shower might help. I heard this from a friend(who’s had sleep issues and worked lates for years as a cop), who read it somewhere. So who knows, but it works for me. He said cold showers can be a shock to your system, and act like flipping a switch in your brain to change modes. That said, extended cold showers have the opposite effect of a hot shower; they make your body go into warming mode and wake you up. On nights where my brain won’t stop running, I’ve had success in turning it off by jumping in a cold shower for 30 seconds or a minute.

7. Meditation. Works for me to settle my brain down, and can be a part of your sleep routine. This has helped me a lot. I’ve tried a bunch of apps, but the paid ones don’t seem much better than what you can get for free. Tara Brach has a podcast with a whole bunch of guided meditations. I like her 14 minute going to sleep one. The VA has a free mindfulness app, and that’s got some good stuff too. According to that Huberman guy above, Non Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) protocols work well. They’re what mindfulness meditation would call a body scan. If you have access to the down dog app that your wife has, they have an option for yoga nidra, which is just a fancy version with a NSDR/body scan with calm music. They seem good too.

8. Drugs. That Huberman guy seems pretty against melatonin use on the regular. My experience has been in line with what he says about becoming dependent on it. Went through some sleepless nights when I stopped taking it after using it regularly. I’ve had the best experience with melatonin if I need to switch my sleep schedule just for one day, and if I make sure to take it 2-3 hours before I want to go to sleep. That Huberman guy recommends some other supplements, some of which are in that Genius Sleep Aid supplement that your wife recommended to me(it also has melatonin, but a much smaller amount than normally found in other OTC forms, so maybe you have less risk of being dependent on it). I’ve had success with the Genius Sleep Aid, but found it works best if I only use it on nights I’m having issues sleeping, or know I need to get to bed early. It seems to lose its effect after a few months of continued use.

Alcohol can help you get to sleep, but it’s generally not worth it because it causes you to have very poor quality sleep, and you’ll likely wake up a bunch. Nyquill is similar, in that it will make you go to sleep, but it’s more of a tranquilizer and inhibits your body’s ability to get to a more restorative REM sleep. So you’ll be out, but still feel tired when you wake up.

9. Fiction. If your mind keeps running, light fiction can help distract it. Conversely, deep non fiction or super intense fiction(like a very stressful thriller or horror) can keep you awake. Heard this on Tim Ferriss. His observations are in line with mine. Having a few go to light fiction books on the nightstand helps.

10. Shotgun. Totally effective, but permanent. But seriously, if I’m having a real hard time getting to sleep I’ll shotgun blast a bunch of these methods at the same time. Read some light fiction, stretch, take a cold shower, take the genius sleep aid, and then do a meditation. That usually does the trick.

11. Post critical incident protocol. I think I got this from Grossman or Gilmartin. I imagine in your new position you’re still going to have the occasional thing go down where you’ll get a major adrenaline dump a few hours before the end of your shift. For this you’re pretty much screwed. Light cardio like a 20-30 minute run helps to purge the adrenaline from your system. Keep in mind that adrenaline sort of rubs down the tips of the receptors in your brain, so any substance you take will have a greater effect. So just a little bit of coffee can make you hyper and a few beers will get you drunk. Best to avoid or minimize substance intake for 24-48 hours after a significant adrenaline dump. Sleep will help you recover, but you’ll just have to take it when you can get it.

12. Naps. Multiple sources, to include that Huberman guy, have said that anything over 45 minutes are going to fuck you up. And really you should keep it to about 15-20 minutes unless you’re trying to recover from a sleep debt from the night before. Even if you’ve got a bad sleep debt, you should keep a nap limited to 45 minutes, then try to go to bed at your normal time. However, when you have multiple days of screwed up sleep and you know you’re not going to have a regular sleep schedule for some time (first few months of an infant, or period of high optempo), all bets are off. Get what you can, when you can. But once you can get close to a normal schedule, cut them off at 45 minutes.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that. 

Good luck!