springfox – white paper sleep salvation€¦ · 3. 24/7 screen culture 4. sleep deficit is...

SPRINGFOX – WHITE PAPER

SLEEP SALVATION

By Sven Hansen and Peta Sigley

In May 2014, BBC’s Day of the Body Clock (Gallagher, 2014) reported Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Manchester and Surrey scientists saying that we have become “supremely arrogant” in ignoring the importance of sleep. The more we learn about sleep through research, we know sub optimal sleep has physical, emotional and cognitive impacts. The current expert text is 1766 pages. (Kryger, 2016). Your life is seriously diminished without good sleep discipline. Sleep is a key action point for resilience.

Given the pandemic of diet books and the angst over physical exercise, it is curious that sleep has received little attention. In fact, it has been a blind spot in our society. Challenges include: 1. The dominant paradigm of productivity is that “sleep = lazy” 2. The evening is a frenzy of alcohol, food, music, light and entertainments. 3. 24/7 screen culture 4. Sleep deficit is neither visible nor explicitly experienced. In short, when compared to the many initiatives we might take to improve our health, lives and society, sleep is low hanging fruit. We can abuse nutrition and exercise far more than we can afford to abuse sleep. Short-term sleep disruption has immediate effects on our physical, emotional and cognitive performance. Long-term disruption can have a significant impact on our well-being, with serious consequences.

“It’s time for organizations to find ways of countering the employee churn, lost productivity, and increased

health care costs resulting from insufficient sleep.” - (Harvard Business Review, 2016)

As an exercise, let’s assume that optimal sleep might be the first, rather than the last step in being a better person and creating a better society. Experts encourage approximately 30 minutes of exercise, 1.5 hours of eating and 10 minutes of relaxation per day; a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Sleep experts tell us that we need 7 to 8 hours of well-structured sleep per night. Any less and the impact is quickly measurable. In terms of time, sleep requires three times more investment than the rest of your well-being program.

According to an Australian survey (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research, 2016), poorer sleep highly correlates with poorer general health, mental health and lower life satisfaction.

In contrast, the return on investment for improving sleep practices are significant. If we take just a sampling of sleep research and map it against our Resilience Model, we see the benefits of sleeping well.

www.springfox.com Sven Hansen and Peta Sigley

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Resilience Assets Sleep Inputs

• Critical to team performance • Supports ethical behaviour • Restores insight and self-awareness • Enables self-control

• Restores concentration • Increases test performance • Facilitates memory formation • Removes toxins from brain

• Allows facial recognition and empathy • Increases facial expressiveness • Improves mood • Supports impulse control

• Optimises hormones for growth and repair • Prevents metabolic disease – craving,

obesity, diabetes, heart disease • Immune system optimized

• Enables optimal performance states • Reduces anxiety (deep or slow wave sleep) • Facilitates calm, focused attention • Foundation of bounce back practices

The Science of Sleep There are three scientific concepts to understand when considering our sleep: how much SLEEP we need (S), the timing of our sleep - our body CLOCK (C) and our ULTRADIAN rhythm which governs the quality of our sleep (U); or “SCU”. S - Sleep need In today’s modern society, humans need somewhere between 6 and 8 hours sleep per night. Experts estimate that many people are sleeping less than ideal and some sleep too much. Health (in particular, obesity and mood disorders) and performance risk is clearly measurable when sleep is suboptimal. Consistent, inadequate sleep i.e. less than 6 hours per night results in reduced leptin. The costs to the individual of being consistently deprived of quality sleep include the following:

- Concentration decreases - Memory deteriorates - Poor decision making and risk taking behaviours - Increased risk of cv disease and diabetes - Fatigue, sleepiness and fall in performance

Consistently more than 9 hours indicates increase in mortality rates. Inadequate sleep disrupts human function at many levels. As in all of nature we are distributed on a normal curve. Each individual’s needs will differ by genetics, age and other factors. A few get by with less than 6 hours or more than 8, however most of us would benefit from consistent 7-8 hours/night.

Small sleep deficits can be recouped with minimum risk but sleep debt must be repaid ASAP.

Assets

Liabilities


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“People who sa id they were very or extremely motiva ted to get enough sleep reported sleeping 36 more

minutes per night a cross the week compared to those were not tha t motiva ted or not motiva ted a t a ll (7.3 vs. 6 .7 hours)”

- (National Sleep Foundation, 2015)

Prioritise sleep in your life, and incorporate 10-30 minutes “siestas” or power naps in the afternoon to avoid negative impacts of sleep disruption. Latest research shows a 10-20 minute power nap has the greatest gains of alertness lasting from 2-3 hours. Longer naps - more, than 20 or 30 mins - do not provide greater benefit than a 10 minute nap. In fact, can be followed by a period of impairment of alertness called ‘sleep inertia’. (Lack, 2006) C - Clocks rule biology (the circadian biorhythm)

Adapted from (Spivey, 2010)

Equally important to your resilience (health and performance) is to sleep through the right period of the day. The timing of sleep patterns is governed by person’s biological clock or circadian rhythm (C), determined by a handful of genes.

When your circadian system operates efficiently the phases of sleep, hormone production and release, immune regulation, digestion, repair, emotion and cognition are optimised. The circadian rhythm aligns with the daylight hours of your location. It adapts slowly to time zone change (our ancestors did not fly), hence can be easily disturbed to produce sleep phase delay - jet lag.

The circadian rhythm is just over 24 hrs and is reset each day by the blue light of dawn. For larks (early risers) it is more like 24.2 hours and owls 24.9 hours. Without natural light in the morning the reset fails and sleep is disrupted.

In short, when we disturb the timing of sleep we risk profound and lasting effects. Starting with the trivial – hunger, craving, libido loss, weakness, memory loss, anxiety, infertility and illness – the risks progress to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

As evidenced with studies on shift-workers and aircrew, we know that frequent disruption to the circadian rhythm may lead to cancer, diabetes and heart disease. (BMJ Clinical Review, 2016). Even sleeping-in a couple of hours through a weekend or a holiday causes massive biological disruption. Growth hormone, testosterone, melatonin, thyroid hormones, glucose, insulin, and appetite hormones de-synchronise and those that don’t (cortisol) may spike at the wrong time.

Stop for a moment and consider how many people, young and old, are going to bed too late and stimulated by screens, pressure and noise. We have an epidemic of “bedtime curtailment”. Put another way most of us are permanently jet lagged. This has serious consequences for productivity, learning, relationships, substance abuse, road accidents and violence.


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Even two nights of going to bed late can increase ghrelin (greed) by 28% and reduce leptin (fullness) by 19% (Morselli, Leproult, Balbo, & Spiegel, 2010). With a 70% disruption of appetite, you eat more the next day, crave sugar, and lose your ability to regulate sugar. Over 40 long-term studies show that short sleep is associated with weight gain and diabetes.

As a society, we have been unable to crack the obesity and diabetes pandemic with exercise or diet. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. Studies suggest that if we can synchronise our clocks, we would reverse obesity, metabolic disease and diabetes. We must strive to go to bed early and wake up early.

As stated in Nature

…the clock may be the “conductor of the orchestra” that keeps all the body’s behavioral and physiological functions working in harmony…

- (Turek, 2008)

Addressing your body clock and building in practices to synchronise your circadian rhythm is fundamental to building your resilience. U - Ultradian Architecture (our second biorhythm) with deep and dream sleep stages

The third system to master is the Ultradian rhythm (U) and is related to the quality of our sleep. Our second biorhythm runs in 90-110 minute cycles. During the day, it cycles between active (focus and peak performance) and quiet (where we are relaxed and reflective) phases. At night, the ultradian rhythm governs our sleep phases between deep and REM or dreaming sleep.

The first two sleep cycles (between 10pm and 2am) are predominantly deep (slow wave) sleep and the next three are REM (dreaming sleep). When sleep deprived we repay deep sleep debt (slow wave) first suggesting that the hormonal, brain, immune and rest/recovery functions are primary. REM sleep is

associated with consolidation of memory and emotion regulation.

Both S and C are keys to U. We need enough (S) of good quality sleep (U) at the right time (C). Those who go to bed late miss out on deep sleep and get too much REM sleep. When stimulated by blue light (screens) in the evening we deplete deep sleep. Missing blue light in the morning causes the clock to shift west disrupting daytime function and the next night’s sleep - sleep phase delay (C) - resulting in disruption to our sleep architecture (U).

Sleep architecture requires that we bring all these systems together. The two critical points are wake time and sleep time. Wakefulness and deep sleep interact through a precisely timed combination of factors.

Enough sleep of the right type at the right times - production of growth hormone, testosterone, cortisol combines with a temperature increase and the blue light of dawn to bring us into an alert and functional state.

Exposure to daylight, work and exercise (adenosine increase) and activity during the day, followed in the evening by melatonin secretion, temperature decrease, and fatigue allow us to wind down into deep sleep. If we check messages, worry about tomorrow, watch TV in bed, turn lights on at night, we break this mechanism that accesses deep sleep.


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Anxiety, worry, depression, obstructed breathing, medication and life stages such as menopause can all disturb the ultradian architecture, hormonal function and resilience.

Sleep in society

We are “arrogant” in neglecting sleep. Human sleep evolved over millions of years and is embedded in our genes. We are scripted to run to strict rhythms (SCU) paced by natural light cycles. Disruption to these systems causes biology to collapse.

Think of all those transfixed by screens and stimulation late into the night. What about our children? Consider shift work. How about the mass of drunken revelry that continues into the early morning – surrounded by adverts, fast food, stimulants and bright lights? We know that weekend sleep ins cause sleep phase delay and are strongly correlated with the peak of road accidents, suicides, heart attacks and strokes on Monday morning (BMJ Clinical Review, 2016).

Sleep in America poll (National Sleep Foundation, 2008) showed:

• Working adults need 7 hours and 18 minutes to function best • 44% sleep less than 7 hours and 16% sleep less than 6 hours • Cumulative sleep loss per week is a full night lost for most adults (i.e. 7-8 hours) In Australia, the latest Sleep Health Foundation Survey (University of Adelaide, 2016):

Use internet before bed

Inadequate Sleep

Sleep less than 5½ hours/night

Sleep problems

Our own Resilience Institute data of 26099 people (2011-2016) shows the following correlations to sleep issues:

• Not exercising most days of the week • Multitasking and high activity days • Boredom, worry and overactive mind • Hostility and hypervigilance A wise society would take action immediately. This may well be more effective than smoking, nutrition and exercise interventions. Leaders pay attention.

Sleep slows Ageing

Studies show that change in sleep quality disrupts brain and hormones in a way that may drive ageing. Deep sleep, growth hormone and testosterone in men and women drop steadily from peak levels in young adulthood. Deep sleep is the time when we produce growth hormone and a good sleep time of 7.5 hours drives a clinically meaningful increase in testosterone.

REM sleep, waking and evening cortisol are maintained until midlife and then change rapidly. This combination of reduced REM, disturbed nights and raised cortisol at night combine to impair cognition, memory and metabolism.

Consider warming about 30 minutes before bedtime with a hot bath or warm clothing and then allowing the body to cool in the lead up to sleep. This prepares the body for sleep as we naturally cool down as we


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descend into sleep.

This combination appears to combine with melatonin release to deepen and lengthen sleep. As you begin to feel less alert, melatonin is released and levels stay elevated throughout the night. Bright light inhibits the release of melatonin. Many older adults now take 1 – 3 mg of melatonin before bed.

We should all strive to optimise sleep as early as possible; but this research encourages a special effort in middle age. Sleep may be a revolutionary approach to resilient ageing – no drugs required.

Specific actions for improving your sleep

1. Prioritise Make sleep a priority

2. Find your circadian/ultradian rhythm ¨ Aim for 7.5 hours with a consistent wake-up time. Owl or Lark? ¨ Explore the optimal clock rhythm for your genes and location. Larks tend to need to be in bed before

10 while owls may be better at 11pm. ¨ Avoid ‘sleep-ins’ and aim for the same wake up time each day (dawn blue light)

3. Catch up on your sleep Recoup sleep deficit by going to bed 90 minutes early to repay sleep debt at least once per week.

4. Power Nap Use power naps (10-20mins) to maintain afternoon productivity and alertness for up to 2-3 hours

5. Sleep Quality ¨ Avoid all screens, bright lights and technology for two hours before sleep. ¨ Manage your environment – try to keep your bedroom dark, quiet, cool and comfortable. ¨ Stay active - Exercise early in the day increases the speed of falling asleep and deepens the structure

(U). Include strength/cardio. ¨ Eat well - Eat smaller evening meals, no caffeine after 2pm, limit alcohol and protein ¨ Cool down phase - Create a wind down routine before bed. Try warming the body about 30 minutes

before bed and then encouraging cooling. A cool shower, cool room, feet and hands outside duvet, and no electric blankets might help. Ideal room temperature is 18 degrees.

6. Manage your travel Travel causes profound SCU disruption. Smart management of time zone change is complex and needs expert, individual fine-tuning. Some ideas:

¨ Plan and prepare - excessive travel will disrupt your biology ¨ Travel westwards if possible as the Clock (C) shifts this way ¨ Give yourself time - adjustment to the new zone is slow ¨ Sleep early, get up early and exercise - if your clock advances (travelling West) ¨ Avoid bright blue light in morning - if your clock retreats (travelling East) ¨ Melatonin (1-3mg) 30 minutes before bed helps you adjust to the new cycle ¨ If working or competing plan your travel very carefully ¨ Avoid sleeping pills, alcohol and excessive food.

A call for leadership Sleep disturbance has become a lead factor affecting our: • health: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hormone function and immunity • productivity: social skills, empathy, concentration, memory and creativity • society: health care costs, accidents, violence, and antisocial behaviour


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Our research tells us that business leadership must shape, promote and model resilience. Sleep is the cornerstone to building resilience. It is time to act. The action must start with leadership. Ideally, this begins with politicians and public sector leaders taking a firm, public stance and funding the necessary communication and action groups to drive change. In business, leaders and human capital experts must factor sleep monitoring, education and promotion into their organisations. Educational institutions must understand sleep issues in their student population and set about establishing good habits from an early age. It is a foundation of positive education outcomes.

For a complementary view, The Centre for Creative Leadership has produced a White Paper on Sleep Well, Lead Well. (Connolly, 2015)

In conclusion, start with yourself and enjoy the benefits that rapidly accrue. Be curious about the sleep habits of those you love. Introduce them to the material and simple practices of improving sleep – how much sleep is needed, the timing of sleep and the quality of sleep (S, C and U).

Improving the way we sleep will have profound impacts on our lives, our families, our society and our businesses. All that is required is common sense, a little planning and some firm self-discipline.

Sleep well!

References BMJ Clinical Review. (2016, November 1). Health consequences of shift work and insufficient sleep. BMJ. Connolly, C. ,. (2015, April). Sleep Well Lead Well. Retrieved from Centre for Creative Leadership: http://www.ccl.org/wp-

content/uploads/2015/04/SleepWell.pdf?_ga=1.144269813.1183936202.1488175924 Gallagher, J. (2014, May 16). Body Clock: Six things we learned. Retrieved from BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27406987 Hansen, S. (2015). Inside Out: The Practice of Resilience. Auckland: Dr Sven Hansen. Harvard Business Review. (2016, February). There’s a Proven Link Between Effective Leadership and Getting Enough Sleep. Retrieved

from hbr.org: https://hbr.org/2016/02/theres-a-proven-link-between-effective-leadership-and-getting-enough-sleep Kryger, M. R. (2016). Principles and Practices of Sleep Medicine (6th ed.). St Louis, USA: Elsevier. Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research. (2016). The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia

(HILDA) Survey: Selected findings from waves; 1:14. Morselli, L., Leproult, R., Balbo, M., & Spiegel, K. (2010, October). Role of sleep deration in the regulation of glucose metabolism and

appetite. Best Practice and Research: Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 24(5), 687-702. National Sleep Foundation. (2008). Sleep in America Poll 2008: Sleep performance in the workplace - Sleep Summary of findings.

Washington. National Sleep Foundation. (2015). Sleep in America Poll 2015: Sleep and pain - Summary of findings. Arlington. Spivey, A. (2010, January). Lose Sleep, Gain Weight: another piece of the obesity puzzle. Retrieved from Environmental Health

Persepectives. The Resilience Institute. (2016). Resilience Delivers. Auckland: The Resilience Institute. Turek, F. (2008, December). Circadian clocks: Tips from the tip of the iceberg. Nature(456), 289-290. University of Adelaide. (2016). Sleep Health Foundation: 2016 Sleep Health Survey of Australian Adults. University of Adelaide.


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About The Authors

As CKO at Springfox, Peta ensures our blended learning Springfox Solutions deliver relevant, evidence-based information, facts and insights in a way that is practical, enjoyable and effective. Peta has an extensive grounding in business management with a focus on human resources. Her academic credentials include economics, psychology and counselling.

Over the last decade Peta has put her own resilience to the test supporting her chronically ill partner whilst maintaining her career and family cohesion.

Peta is in demand as a speaker, facilitator and coach. Peta’s facilitation style is open, authentic and empathy-based, with a key focus on client-driven solution development and provision for individual and team discussion and interaction.

Peta works extensively with individuals, teams and organisations in the banking and finance, transport, education and not-for-profit sectors.

Peta Sigley Chief Knowledge Officer, Springfox e: [email protected] w: www.springfox.com

Dr Sven Hansen is the founder of The Resilience Institute. From a medical family, Sven joined Pathfinders, a special forces team in South Africa, before completing medicine. His passion for sport and flow took him into sports medicine and a personal practice in resilience.

Sven began a corporate health business in 1988. He completed his MBA in 1993 and set about building an evidence-based, integral and practical solution to sustainable performance in life, sport and business.

Over 20 years Sven has worked extensively with High Performance Sport, professional firms, banks, corporates, government, entrepreneurship, universities, and schools. He leads the development of The Resilience Institute’s methodology and is an experienced executive coach, keynote speaker and leadership trainer.

He has a specific interest in developing leadership teams and the application of biological principles to leadership, strategy and resilience in the community.

Dr Sven Hansen Founder, The Resilience Institute (Global)

springfox – white paper sleep salvation€¦ · 3. 24/7 screen culture 4. sleep deficit is...

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