Previously on my sleep adventures, we left off with me discovering the joys of the mattress topper – a fantastic option for those on a budget. My sleep remained consistently good for the years following that, but a few things interfered with that in 2020: First, I learned that just because sleep feels adequate, doesn’t mean that it is. With the start of my full-time working career and a pandemic forcing us to stay home, however, my sleep felt like shit anyway, so I had very good reason to try and improve it.
Investing in a quality mattress and pillows
Having graduated and finally moved into my own place (from staying on campus), it was time to upgrade my bed. My trusty mattress topper served me well. In fact, my partner and her family (who stayed in my old room while I was away) raved about it too – that could be a testament to its awesomeness, or a sign of their own shitty mattresses. As with a lot of things, the answer is likely somewhere in between.
If a few inches of memory foam can improve my sleep by that much, I can’t even begin to imagine what an actual, full bed made of a similar material could do. About to be equipped with a full-time income, and wanting to do well in my first weeks at the new job, I looked up what sort of mattresses to invest in. I started looking for Tempur ones, because that’s what dad swore by ever since we first spoke about sleep. Seeing an “inquire now” button in place of a price on their website was a little off-putting, but inquire I did.
Turns out, one full-time income wasn’t sufficient – I’d need at least three to afford one of those. I don’t remember their response, but it was in the multiple thousands of Aussie dollars range. Part of me was terrified that other mattresses of that quality would cost the same, but the search went on.
I remembered hearing about Casper in sponsored segments from some of my favourite podcasts. It’s a fairly new company that sends a quality mattress straight to your door. By skipping the middle-man, you get it way cheaper than most brands you’d find at department stores – that’s the promise, anyway. Now that I had a reason to get one, I did some research.
As I feared, it wasn’t available in Australia. Thankfully, I learned that there’s a more generic name for that sort of service – “mattress-in-a-box”. Equipped with that, I honed in on such companies in Australia. After being terrified of missing out, I now had several to choose from. I dreaded the extra work needed to compare them and decide, but given the wonder-drug that sleep is, the effort would pay off forever.
The first bit of good news was that all of them were in a similar, and much lower, price range. Depending on the size and company, it went from the high hundreds to just over a grand. Not cheap, far from astronomical – and just like the time invested in the research, this would be money well spent.
Each competitor’s offerings were made from slightly different materials, which reviewers said resulted in slightly different scores on criteria like firmness, bounciness, and more. It soon became clear that there wasn’t just one “best” that fits all; each one was tailored to different preferences. That would be helpful if I knew my preferences. I never took much note of the different qualities of my mattresses over the years, and I didn’t vary them much anyway. The only variety would come from the odd night spent away (whether at a sleepover or on holiday) – but that was never for long enough to fairly judge. Sure, you can test mattresses at a department store, but is it really a natural/accurate “test” if you’re there in bright lights, with no covers, and being observed by the sales person?
Thankfully, all that was no big problem due to one thing the mattresses-in-a-box (“mattress-in-a-boxes”?) all had in common – you could use them for up to 90 days, and send them back for a full refund if not happy (and they’d come pick them up, so no effort for you!). With nothing to lose, I just went with one that seemed to vaguely match my not-very-well-thought-out sleeping preferences, and seemed more eco-friendly than the rest: The Koala (I was too brain-dead to verify).
By the time I actually reached that decision, I’d already spent a few nights sleeping on only my mattress topper (I was in a new apartment). Boy, did that make obvious the importance of quality sleep. The topper alone was better than nothing, but not by much. I can’t recall exactly how deep or interrupted my sleep was compared to normal, but I can tell you I felt far from refreshed the next day. Multiply that by a couple days, and I was a zombie.
I add that point because maybe any mattress would have felt like a godsend after that. But my god, my first night of sleep in my new Koala was a revelation. I still had some catching up to do, but by two or three nights in, I felt way more functional than the days before, even if I had a strong coffee. Socialising was more fun and meaningful (and I sought it more than before in the first place), reading and researching things felt like way less of an effort, and my mood shot up drastically.
A few more weeks of similarly good sleep cemented this baby as a quality mattress. Is it better than the other mattress-in-a-box offerings? Fuck if I know, but it’s too late to trade it back in and I’m very happy with it. Perhaps one day I’ll experiment with others to aim for perfection. But for now, I’m very satisfied.
I haven’t said much about pillows because I didn’t focus on them as much. I was pretty happy with the ones I had, and dad bought some more, giving me a range of low to medium profile memory foam ones to choose from. I mention them anyway, however, because they’re also vitally important. One day I might look more into them, but I’m fairly satisfied for now. Unfortunately, other things soon interfered with my newfound slumber superpower, as the pandemic reached Australia. So how did I get back on track otherwise?
Acceptance and exercise
The first thing keeping me up was my constant desire to read about the latest COVID developments around the world – particularly in countries I’ve been in or have friends or family. It wasn’t unusual for me to get up before my alarm, but I’d usually manage to sleep or at least rest again until it was time to get up. But with the pandemic still fresh, exciting, and scary, at the soonest sign of consciousness, I’d immediately check my phone for the latest state of the virus in Germany, Singapore, or the UK. It was too early for any exciting local news compared to last night, but the rest of the world was awake as I slept down under, so I had a lot of news form elsewhere to get up to.
Whatever I read, it was hard to go back to sleep again. The news was either higher case numbers, which worried me, or news about lockdowns taking effect, which was exciting back when it was new. It didn’t help that, with Melbourne also in lockdown, I moved a lot less – no more walks to the office or gym and back, shopping only occasionally to supplement all the HelloFresh and similar boxes I ordered. While I continued going for runs and working out from home, it wasn’t the same.
It took me a while to make the exercise-sleep connection. It had been years since the last time I exercised so little, it affected my sleep. In high school, I slept like a baby during the intense school football season. But after those glorious four months, with no team sports motivating me to do cardio, I sat on my ass. After some time, I’d find it harder to fall asleep. Not until mum pointed out the connection did I start doing some more push-ups and pull-ups on some days, and used our cross-trainer the other days. Boy, did that make a difference. As I’ve learned in the intervening years, the science backs it up! Just make sure you don’t exercise in the 3-4 hours before bed, or you’ll stay up longer.
Long story short, that same lesson applied during the pandemic (it always applies). It doesn’t even have to be super intense – I just started walking after clocking off work every day, for about one to one and a half hours. That moderate exercise was enough to make a big difference in my sleep quality.
It helped that I also soon learned to not check the news as soon as I approach wakefulness. To some degree, I probably felt naturally somewhat jaded. But I also consciously told myself that ultimately, the news would be more or less the same for a long time. Plus, the news abroad had little direct bearing on my life, so there was no need to obsessively check it first thing. It wasn’t instant, but I eventually slept through the morning hours without feeling the pressure to check my phone. As a result, I felt that much better rested. Working out more intensely with resistance bands and a new chin-up bar was just the icing on top.
Reading a whole book about sleep
For most health-related things, I used to do a quick Google to find out, for example, how to eat healthier or how much exercise to do. I’d follow the advice from the first link (avoid fats), only to be frustrated when later, the second link might say the exact opposite (fats are your friends). I’d then give up, not really having made much progress.
With more time on my hands during lockdown, I started reading more. Curious about the same questions I used to ask but couldn’t find a quality answer for, and with an extra dose of patience, I’d now read entire books in those subjects. Not only would the effort pay off with improvements to my life, but if I chose well-written books, I could even slow down and enjoy the process of learning. One such book that I’d heard nothing but good things about is Why We Sleep, a very recent book by sleep researcher Matthew Walker, which summarises all the research findings to date and what they tell us about the functions of sleep and, more interestingly, how to improve it.
Changing my sleepy-time habits
What if you could take a drug that’s guaranteed to improve your memory, focus, mood, and performance at most of your everyday tasks? What if, on top of that, it were free? With no side effects whatsoever? Most of us would say yes in a heartbeat, and yet such a wonder-drug exists: Sleep. Most of us fail to prioritise it nearly as much as we should – that’s the premise of the Why We Sleep, a book I believe should be required reading for anyone that doesn’t already happen to study sleep for a living.
It goes both broad and deep, reviewing all the available evidence we have to date of what sleep can do for us. To date, almost nothing has been found which sleep can’t improve. I knew that sleep was important before reading this book, but man, did this change my outlook – the fact that even slight shortages of sleep cause way more car accidents than drunk driving says it all. Maybe you don’t need to read a whole book to get that improving sleep can do wonders for your life, but I found that the numerous and concrete examples of just what it does for us made me feel that much more accountable to improve it. Thankfully, the very same book also has tips on improving sleep, and what better source than to follow a researcher studying it for a living?
Basically, it boils down to 11 or 12 surprisingly simple rules known as “sleep hygiene“. Following as many of these as you can (ideally all, of course) will drastically improve your sleep – and thus, your life. I won’t touch on them all here (I’ll tackle those in a dedicated post) – just the ones that I followed, as it turns out I was doing a few of them already. I’ll cover the ones I do already too, as not everyone follows them and they can truly help.
Dimming the lights in the evening
It’s hard to imagine life without artificial lights. And yet, on the scale of human history, we’ve only been living with them for a fraction of a blip in time. In other words, we didn’t evolve to sleep with a lot of light, so the excess of artificial lights we have on, particularly blue light, are wreaking havoc on our sleep. I’m massively paraphrasing and oversimplifying here, but our circadian rhythms are influenced by the rising and setting of the sun; for most of human history, when the sun was down, it was bed time. Perhaps you’d have a fire nearby, but nothing making so much light that you can still comfortably see. However, certain wavelengths of light from light bulbs also influence our circadian rhythm the same way.
The amount of light that reaches our eyes can be measured in lux. I don’t recall the exact number, but even a surprisingly low amount of light past sunset can keep you up, tricking your brain into thinking it’s still day. With that in mind, I was glad to already have dimmable bulbs. I have several Philips Hue lights, which I’m very happy with, but I’ve seen other, cheaper brands too. I haven’t looked into them so I can’t speak for their quality, but you have options if you’re interested in dimming on a budget. Then there’s always the option of second hand. Either way, since reading Why We Sleep, I’d have only dimmable lights on in the evening, and make them both dimmer and more orange (i.e. less of the blue light that keeps us up).
Napping earlier
For most of my university life, naps were a rare emergency. If I was truly too tired to do anything productive, or had a big night out, I’d treat myself to one, but that was about it. Since working from home due to the pandemic, however, napping became a regular thing. At first, I’d feel a bit guilty, but I soon thought it’s better for the business too if I spend time resting, and then do better quality work than if I drag myself along at a snail’s pace.
My sleep being shit before I improved it played into my felt need for naps, and even when my night sleep improved, naps had become a habit. At some point, I began to wonder whether me napping had anything to do with not sleeping as well at night. I didn’t nap every day, and I don’t recall my night sleep improving on those days without a nap, but perhaps there’d be more to it. Indeed, according to Why We Sleep, there was! Sort of. While the exact time differs across people, a general rule of thumb is that naps past 3pm have a much higher chance of influencing your night sleep.
Before that, my naps were whatever time of day happened to be free of meetings. Sometimes, that’d be 2pm, other times 4. After, I’d do what I could to squeeze it in before 3. If I didn’t have the time, I’d just suck it up and skip the nap.
There are also less obvious naps to be aware of. If you fall asleep on the couch while watching TV before bed, that counts as a nap. And I’m sorry to say, but it will decrease your night-time sleep quality. I watch stuff on my laptop in bed, so the distance to bed when I get too tired is 0. Unfortunately, by the time I realise how tired I am, I notice I don’t remember how I got from minute 20 to minute 26 of the latest episode of Succession. It may not be long, but it’s a long enough nap to do damage. Now, I try to shut down my laptop and try falling asleep at the first sign of tiredness. It’s not an exact science, but I do feel like it helps.
Sleeping earlier on weekends
Finally, that book changed the way I view sleep on weekends. Before, it felt like a waste if I didn’t stay up late watching a good show or movie, or playing games. Now, if I’m having a night in, I go to bed more or less the same time as during the week. Of course, there’s the occasional night out, and I don’t avoid those just for the sake of getting my sleep. But if it’s just me, I prioritise sleep, given that you can never recover lost sleep. It may mean a bit less “fun” the night before, but I feel great the next day. Even after a night out, I’ll only nap past 3 if I plan to stay up late for some other night out – otherwise, I’ll have a shorter nap and then take it easy until bed time.
Any fellow soccer fans based in Australia can relate to the annoyance of the time zone difference with where the best games are actually played. I used to stay up late or get up super early to catch some live games, but since reading Why We Sleep (and finding a website that lets you watch recordings of entire games), I just save my sleep and watch it the next day.
With all these changes combined, my sleep did feel better, if subtly. A few weeks in, however, it suddenly got a lot less consistent. I was quite frustrated, but eventually discovered a possible explanation by happenstance:
Glycine
Roughly at the time I made those changes to my sleep habits, I also made a major dietary change: I reintroduced meat into my diet, after discovering that you can get quality cuts from supermarkets that would otherwise go to waste – those with a quick-sale sticker. Apparently, people who eat meet need more of a certain substance, called glycine, to sleep soundly (among several other benefits. After a bit of digging, I discovered that it’s abundant in gelatin powder.
So I added a couple of tablespoons of unsweetened gelatin to some kind of liquid, whether milk or coconut cream, every night for a while. While I can’t rule out the placebo effect, I swear I feel noticeably more refreshed in the morning. It’s been shown in lab studies that 3g taken before bed improves objective markers of sleep quality (link). Specifically, it’s good against fragmented sleep, which was exactly my problem. I fell asleep beatifully every night, but woke up way before my alarm, struggling to get back to sleep.
After a few days of taking glycine, I still woke up at night to pee, or in the morning, but I felt I was far better at falling back asleep. Before, I might feel energetic upon getting up but then notice myself get tired even mid-morning, looking forward to that nap. (a classic marker of poor sleep). Now, I feel almost consistently refreshed until lunch. A slight sleepiness after eating does still occur, but that’s a natural part of any circadian rhythm. Sometimes, if I have time, I may treat myself to a nap anyway, but it no longer feels like an overpowering urge. Even on days without one, I feel perfectly capable of working, walking or socialising, cooking, and blogging until the mid-evening, before I get tired and read.
Just like the difference between a mattress topper without a mattress and a quality mattress, this stuff almost feels like cheating. It’s like a superpower! I haven’t just returned to my baseline good sleep – I feel like now, it’s among the most consistently good sleep I’ve ever had, and my mood and energy has shot right up. You can also find glycine in bone broth, if you happen to have a lot of spare bones. As good as gelatin has been, I swear the few nights I’ve had bone broth were yet a further step above.
Combined benefit
It may have taken until I started taking glycine to feel my sleep improving drastically, but it would be naive to think the glycine alone is doing the trick. Perhaps it makes the biggest difference, especially since I started eating more meat again and needed more of it, but it may not have worked to quite the same beautiful effect without the quality mattress, more well-timed naps, or exercise. Even if the effects are subtle, they’re additive, and even subtle improvements to something as wonderful and life-improving as sleep are well worth pursuing.
All that said, I believe I can do better. While I’m thrilled to npt consider it a top priority, because I’m finally back at a consistently good level, there are still things I could eventually try out, based on the book:
Areas I can still improve in
First of all, while I dim the lights more than I used to, I have yet to measure their exact brightness at night. Given that even miniscule luminosities can affect sleep, it would be worth knowing what exact brightness to aim for, and making sure I stay under that. While the fact that I fall asleep very well might be a sign that brightness is less of a problem, I just don’t know for sure. One self-experiment I’ve been meaning to do is not use my phone or laptop for at least an hour before bed. Given that I use a blue-light filter on both devices and turn the brightness all the way down, I’m not sure what a difference this would make – but I suppose that’s the point of the experiment. Maybe even that bit of light is too much.
I’ve also gotten a lot more consistent with my sleep and wake times over the years, kick-started by a Summer internship after which I never looked back. I do think that’s helped improve my sleep, which makes sense given that a consistent sleep-wake time is one of the top sleep hygiene tips from sleep researchers. Nevertheless, while I get up at a consistent 7:17 (don’t ask, it looks cool and provides a good balance of sleep and time in the morning to exercise before work) most weekdays, I get up earlier on days where I run before work, or “sleep in” on rest days and weekends (which sometimes still means around 7:00, other times 8:00 – anything beyond that’s been a rarity for me since my undergrad degree, unless I come home from a rave at like 5:00.
In other words, I should either get up earlier every day to match my run time (it’s not a massive difference, being 7:07), or run later and just start work a bit later on those days. I could also use a weekend alarm whenever I’m not going out. Then of course, there’s the matter of my bedtime. It’s consistent within boundaries, but I could experiment with tightening those boundaries. Obviously it would suck at first to go to bed before I’m tired, or to stay up longer when I am, but it’s meant to improve sleep overall, not straight away. Again, not a top priority for me, but worth a try.
Finally, I write this with the luxury of lots of darkness in our Victorian Winter, which makes sleep a lot easier (plus the cold). I’ve tried a few sleeping masks for Summer, but they all slip off my face by the time the sun rises. I either need a better mask, or to install some kind of blinds that block out all sunlight completely. My A/C is also not particularly effective, so I’ll have to get creative there.
What about you, dear reader? Any sleeping tricks that work for you? Has anyone tried an ultra-consistent sleep-wake schedule before?