Sleep Worship
I’m a believer in sleep; I think it’s an underrated wonder that deserves our reverence and devotion, our worship. I mean, think about it: Sleep is foundational to our health and well-being. It impacts nearly every system of our bodies. And a good sleep makes just about everything better, including our anxiety (Simon, 2020), mood, mental functioning, and physical health.
Prior to my sleep “awakening,” I spent many years getting crap sleep. I was aware of the importance of good “sleep hygiene”. But when I’d try to up my sleep game, I’d limit my efforts to easy recommendations (e.g., creating a cool/dark/quiet sleep environment) while ignoring those that challenged my consumption habits. The hard truth that I was avoiding is that, to get quality sleep, we need to be mindful about what we put in our bodies. To meaningfully improve my sleep, I had to reassess my relationship with our society’s top three drugs of choice, namely, caffeine, alcohol, and sugar, which all take a toll on our sleep.
Caffeine is a stimulant that can make it harder both to fall asleep and to get good quality sleep (Gardiner, 2023). The issue with caffeine is that it lingers in our bodies for a long time. While the rate of caffeine metabolism varies widely from person to person, on average, caffeine has a half-life of 5-6 hours and a quarter-life of 10-12 hours. This means that half of the caffeine that Average Joe consumed at 2 pm will still be in his system at 7 pm and a quarter of it will still be there come midnight.
Alcohol is a sedative, and it’s true that it can help you fall asleep faster, but it seriously fucks with sleep quality. Early in the night, it messes with “sleep architecture,” delaying the onset of REM sleep and thereby reducing the total amount of it that you get; and later in the night, it increases sleep disruption (Colrain, 2014; Roehrs, 2001).
Sugar is a carbohydrate that can also wreak havoc on your sleep, especially when it's consumed in large amounts or shortly before bed. Studies have shown that people who eat a lot of sugar get lighter, more disrupted sleep (St-Onge, 2016; Alahmary, 2022). This makes sense intuitively: Sugar boosts your energy. So when you load up on it before laying down for bed, you’re left overstimulated and may have a rough time falling and/or staying asleep.
Caffeine, alcohol, and sugar are all addictive and have the potential to create vicious cycles of dependency. It could all start one sluggish afternoon when you decide to pep yourself up with a hit of caffeine. The caffeine may leave your mind buzzing come bedtime, which could lead you to reach for some alcohol to take the edge off. The next day, you may be tired, foggy, and have an insatiable sweet tooth. Consequently, you may find yourself relying on caffeine/sugar to push through the haze and then on alcohol to power down at night, all of which could fuel another night of subpar sleep and another day of exhaustion and substance use thereafter.
Unfortunately, in our society, it’s normal to be sleep deprived and chemically dependent (which is part of the reason why it’s also normal to be stressed, sick, and overweight). After all, in capitalism, “time is money,” and sleep is a waste of it.
But who says that you have to be normal? If you’re ready to take back your health (and stick it to our capitalist overlords), start making sleep a top priority. Begin by carving out plenty of time (8+ hours) for sleep each night and establishing a regular sleep schedule. Then, with some solid sleep in the bank to boost your willpower, you can start making additional lifestyle changes that further improve your sleep. My top recs are to:
Eat healthy (whole) foods throughout the day. Fill up on protein/fiber-rich foods rather than sweet/starchy ones to keep your blood sugar stable and avoid hellish cravings.
Practice “sugar awareness” (more on this in a future post).
Avoid eating within two hours of going to bed. Or, at a minimum, avoid consuming anything that contains caffeine, alcohol, and/or sugar in that time frame.
Cut off your caffeine consumption as early in the day as possible.
Save alcohol for special occasions.
I understand that you may find these suggestions unpalatable. I certainly did pre-IC. But my IC pain made me desperate and gave me the motivation I needed to make these changes. Now, after experiencing the difference that they’ve made on how I sleep and feel, I am unwilling to go back.
If you are curious but skeptical, I challenge you to run the experiment yourself. Track your consumption of caffeine/alcohol/sugar along with some sleep stats and observations about how you feel the next day using a spreadsheet (example below) to identify any changes that make a difference in your body. To get your sleep stats, you can:
Manually keep a record of your approximate sleep time and any issues that you had falling or staying asleep (e.g., how many times you wake up in the night); or
Use a fancy watch/activity tracker with a sleep tracking function. Note: The sleep data produced by such devices are imperfect, but it should be accurate enough to help you see significant patterns, such as how your daytime choices affect your sleep. For a detailed analysis of specific devices, check out The Quantified Scientist’s Youtube Channel.
Sometimes “seeing is believing,” and I’d like to think that tracking your sleep and witnessing how much better you feel when you make it a priority might just make a believer out of you. The doors to the temple of sleep are always open. Why not peek inside?
