Watch John Medina share three surprises in sleep research, as discussed in the new book, Brain Rules for Aging Well.
Here’s the bottom line: you need to get between six and
eight hours of sleep every night, no more and no less. If you get
less than six hours, mortality risk rises 21 percent in women, 26 percent
in men. If you get more than eight hours, mortality risk rises 17
percent in women, 24 percent for men. You have to have the “just right”
amount of sleep to optimize both quality and quantity of life.
Watch the video It turns out we need a nap during the afternoon. And historically, it seems we've always needed one. There is the Spanish concept of siesta. Italians call it riposo. If you go to China, you are likely many businesses shut down between 11:30 - 2:00 pm. They take a combination lunch and siesta before going back to work. Americans used to call it a power nap, but the research world calls this a nap zone.
We now know that a nap can profoundly influence productivity during the day. Mark Rosekind, a researcher who used to work for NASA - his job was training pilots - actually did an experiment. He allowed his pilots to take a 26-minute nap, then measured their productivity. He found that productivity increased 34% if he allowed his charges to take a nap. He has a really great quote "What other management strategy will improve people's performance 34% in just 26 minutes?" he is famous for saying.
The research world calls this the nap zone. Other benefits have been found, mostly related to changes in memory performance. Both declarative and procedural memory tasks improve if you take a regular nap. One paper has the delightful title - and remember, this is a research paper "Good sleep, bad sleep! The role of daytime naps in healthy adults.
I have personal experience with this, and I bet you do too. When I don't take a nap in the mid-afternoon, I typically fight being drowsy from about 1:30 on. If I do take a nap in the mid-afternoon, just a small one, I suddenly get a burst of energy and an alertness that allows me to be productive the entire day. I am pleased to say this anecdotal information has strong empirical support.
Learn more about the importance of sleep Get the updated and expanded edition of John Medina's NYT bestseller Brain Rules
Brain Rules for Baby has grown! The book now features a chapter on the science of sleep -- the No. 1 question parents ask Dr. Medina. sleepy baby - new chapter "How do I get my baby to sleep through the night?"
John Medina introduces the new sleep chapter: video
A note from John Medina
I was hesitant, I admit, about adding a sleep chapter to Brain Rules for Baby. The science about getting your child to go to sleep is fairly wobbly.
But you keep asking me about it. Whenever I lecture, whenever you write me, the question “How do I get my child to go to sleep?” keeps reappearing like a public-television fund-raiser.
I do understand your need for junior to get regular sleep. I know one couple who decided not to have any more children because of the toll their first-born’s sleep habits took on their marriage. The issue can’t get much more important than that.
So I get it. Here is your chapter.
Besides, the professor in me can’t help but want to show you how weak-kneed science can be when it’s yoked to real-world problems. Infant sleep is a terrific illustration of science’s strengths and limitations.
In the Sleepy Baby chapter, you will discover two powerful, opposing ideas about how to get your baby to go to sleep. They’re not mutually exclusive, but they don’t tolerate each other very well. Which one you end up believing depends more on personal preference than peer review. It would be nice if the data were better behaved, but they’re not.
I do provide a solution, however. If you are having trouble getting your child to go to sleep, you will find this chapter useful. And if it solves your problem, feelings of love for your child will once again expand in your heart, like a second Big Bang. That’s the most compelling reason for me to add a new chapter on sleep. Get the book! eBook (PDF) Brain Rules for Baby Audiobook
I am often asked why Brain Rules for Baby doesn't include advice on how to get your child to sleep through the night. The omission is deliberate, and my recent answer to one reader's question via e-mail explains the reasoning. I thought you would like to see the answer, too. Thanks for all of your interest in the book. It means a great deal. -- John
Dear Reader;
You raise an important issue regarding sleep, one of the most critical in the early months of child-rearing. Unfortunately, I cannot give a response equal to its criticality.
If you are having problems with getting your child to sleep through the night, you have probably read everything you could on the issue. In that journey, you might have noticed there are many different opinions about how to get kids to sleep through the night - often by experts in the field. You might further have noticed that these well-established researchers and clinicians often appear to say contradictory things. The advice can almost be put into a continuum. On one end, there are researchers like Dr. Richard Ferber, interpreted as saying draconian things like “let your kid tough it out at night” (that’s hardly a fair characterization, by the way). On the other end is pediatrician William Sears and family who is interpreted as saying “respond to every demand at night” (also hardly a fair characterization). Here are the two references from these seasoned medical professionals, which make great comparative reading for the views they hold:
Why the contradiction? BECAUSE NOBODY REALLY KNOWS HOW TO ADDRESS THE SLEEP ISSUE. There does not appear to be a one-size-fits-all answer, which is why any advice which claims to be THE ANSWER does not pass my “grump factor”, as a scientist. My standard response, therefore, is to appeal to the wisdom of the real expert, the parent – YOU – and say something like “Every brain is wired differently from every other brain. Go out and buy both of these books and expose yourself to the various recommendations. Then determine which strategies (or combinations of strategies) your child – based on your knowledge – is most likely to respond. Try these strategies in a systematic fashion, and progressively design new ones until you find the strategy that does work.”
I have an example of this flexible, deliberate approach in my own child-rearing experience.
It was almost seven months before my eldest child slept successfully through the night. What worked for me was to give him a “modified” Ferber protocol – a gentler version of his recommendation, which took almost a week to execute successfully (I literally took off time from work to do it, relieving my poor exhausted wife).
My youngest child also had trouble getting to sleep. But when I tried my “modified” Ferber strategy, it did not work for him. What did the trick was a modified “Sears” strategy. And it also took about a week to become successful too. Living proof for the fact there is no over-arching strategy that will work for every child.
I wish you well. Solving this riddle is one of the toughest tasks in the early years of child-rearing.
It must have taken some getting used to, if you were a staffer in the socially conservative early 1960s. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president of the United States and leader of the free world, routinely closed the door to his office in the midafternoon and put on his pajamas. He then proceeded to take a 30-minute nap. Rising refreshed, he would tell aides that such a nap gave him the stamina to work the long hours required of the U.S. commander-in-chief during the Cold War. Such presidential behavior might seem downright weird. But if you ask sleep researchers like William Dement, his response might surprise you: It was LBJ who was acting normally; the rest of us, who refuse to bring our pajamas to work, are the abnormal ones. And Dement has a fair amount of data to back him up.
Above: watch the Symphony of Yawns video clip from the Brain Rules DVD.
LBJ was responding to something experienced by nearly everyone on the planet. It goes by many names-the midday yawn, the post-lunch dip, the afternoon "sleepies." We'll call it the nap zone, a period of time in the midafternoon when we experience transient sleepiness. It can be nearly impossible to get anything done during this time, and if you attempt to push through, which is what most of us do, you can spend much of your afternoon fighting a gnawing tiredness. It's a fight because the brain really wants to take a nap and doesn't care what its owner is doing. The concept of "siesta," institutionalized in many other cultures, may have come as an explicit reaction to the nap zone.
At first, scientists didn't believe the nap zone existed except as an artifact of sleep deprivation. That has changed. We now know that some people feel it more intensely than others. We know it is not related to a big lunch (although a big lunch, especially one loaded with carbs, can greatly increase its intensity). It appears, rather, to be a part of our evolutionary history. Some scientists think that a long sleep at night and a short nap during the midday represent human sleep behavior at its most natural.
When you chart the process S curve and process C curve, you can see that they flat-line in the same place-in the afternoon. Remember that these curves are plotting the progress of a war between two opposed groups of cells and biochemicals. The battle clearly has reached a climactic stalemate. An equal tension now exists between the two drives, which extracts a great deal of energy to maintain. Some researchers, though not all, think this equanimity in tension drives the nap zone. Regardless, the nap zone matters, because our brains don't work as well during it. If you are a public speaker, you already know it is darn near fatal to give a talk in the midafternoon. The nap zone also is literally fatal: More traffic accidents occur during it than at any other time of the day.
On the flip side, one NASA study showed that a 26-minute nap improved a pilot's performance by more than 34 percent. Another study showed that a 45-minute nap produced a similar boost in cognitive performance, lasting more than six hours. Still other researchers demonstrated that a 30-minute nap taken prior to staying up all night can prevent a significant loss of performance during that night. If that's what a nap can do, imagine the benefits of a full night's sleep.
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