Why didn’t anyone tell me this?
Welcome to season 2 of Why didn’t anyone tell me this?
This podcast is about health education with an emphasis on reproductive health. We do not cover these topics enough in school or beyond. Joyce Harper and her guests want to give you the tools to empower you to live a healthy, happy and fulfilled life. And on the way, we will debunk some of the myths around our health.
This podcast will include a wide range of amazing guests, discussing topics such as nutrition, exercise, sleep, mental health, happiness, cancer, periods, fertility, infertility, fertility treatment, preconception health, pregnancy, miscarriage, PCOS, endometriosis, menopause and much more. Joyce is a cold-water swimmer so expect some episodes about swimming! They will tell you about their work and life journey, what are the key messages they want you to know, their motivation, what makes them happy and their advice to their younger self.
Joyce Harper is an International, award-winning author, educator, academic, and scientist with over 30 years’ experience in reproductive health. She is Professor of Reproductive Science at the Institute for Women’s Health at University College London where she heads the Reproductive Science and Society group. Her latest book, Your Fertile Years, is published by Sheldon Press, 2021. She is chair of the International Reproductive Health Education Collaboration (www.eshre.eu/IRHEC) and co-chair of the UK Fertility Education Initiative. She is founder of Reproductive Health at Work. Further information at www.joyceharper.com.
Dr Neil Stanley started working on sleep when he was 16 – working at the neurosciences division of the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine in Farnborough. Since then he has been involved in numerous research studies, a notable one being a study in Pakistan where the team recorded sleep in 8 people for 6 nights at 18500 feet.
In 1993 Neil took up a position in the human psychopharmacology research unit, university of Surrey, where he became the director of sleep research. There he created and ran a 24 bed trials sleep laboratory, primarily doing clinical trials into the effects of medications on sleep. He also set up and developed the sleep service at the London Clinic.
If Neil is not talking about sleep, he is writing about sleep, if he is not writing about it, he is reading about it, and if not reading about it – he is probably asleep.
He is author of the book – How to sleep well. The science of sleeping smarter, living better and being more productive which I highly recommend – as well as being full of evidence-based information about sleep – it is very funny. His latest book is coming out on 24th Feb ‘Sleep Divorce: How to Sleep Apart, Not Fall Apart’.
Everyone needs to sleep. Virtually every major disease has been linked to sleep. Sleep affects our work, school performance, relationships, emotional wellbeing and our health. But in today’s society we take in so much information – the need for good quality sleep is key to our wellbeing. In this podcast we discuss what happens when we sleep and how much sleep we should get – 8 hours a night is a myth. We are all individual and what works for us is what is important. What is your sleeping environment like and what do you do before you go to bed? How can coffee, alcohol and tech affect our sleep? Neil says that the issue with blue light is a myth. What about sleep during the life course? Should babies cry themselves to sleep? Are teenagers nocturnal? What about the perimenopause? And do we need less sleep as we age? There were so many questions to discuss, this is my longest podcast to date. Sleep well.
Welcome to my podcast why didn’t anyone tell me this with my guests we are discussing health issues questions you may have about your health and debunking some of the many myths around our health and today it’s a real pleasure to speak to Dr Neil Stanley and he’s written a
Book called How to sleep well and we’ve just been discussing before we came on sleep is something that we all do so hopefully it’s something you’ll all be very interested in so sleep is very important to all of us and I’m so excited I’ve been wanting to talk about
Sleep for a long time it’s something that I’ve talked about a lot as a pillar of our well-being I think it’s so important for us for our health and well-being so Neil today we’re going to be talking about very many things let me tell you a little bit about Neil he
Started working on sleep when he was 16 he has been working at the Neuroscience division of the RAF Institute of Aviation medicine in farra and since then he has been involved in numerous research studies a notable one being a study in Pakistan where the team recorded sleep in eight people for six
Nights at 18,500 FT you’re almost in the moon there um in 1993 Neil took up a position in the human psychopharmacology Research Unit at the University of su where he became the director of sleep research then he created and ran TW a 24 bed trial sleep laboratory primarily during
Clinical trials into the effects of medications on sleep he has also set up and developed the Sleep service at the London clinic now Neil in his book said if he’s not talking about sleep he is writing about sleep and if he is not writing about it he’s reading about it
And if not reading about it he is probably asleep so welcome Neil thank you for having me and your book is called how to sleep well the science of sleeping smarter living better and being more productive which are all things I highly recommend obviously and as well as being evidence-based information about sleep
It’s also very funny I did laugh out loud a few times which was always good so tell us a little bit more about your career and your passion from the age of 16 for sleep well it was by accident essentially um I was a relatively good student at a decidedly average
Comprehensive School in farmor um the idea was to go to Six form do math physics and chemistry and then study chemistry at Strath Clyde that was my dream um um but when I went to six form I absolutely hated it I I was 16 I thought I was an adult and they taught
Me like a child still so the first week I was at six form I looked in the local paper saw there was this job uh that was vaguely scientific as an assistant scientific officer in the scientific Civil Service working at The Institute of Aviation medicine NS station and back in
1982 uh it had a three bed sleep lab which worldwide was probably one of the biggest uh and that’s it uh 42 years later all I’ve ever done really is watch other people fall asleep uh which when you say out loud sounds a bit creepy but
Uh so there was no real there was no real passion it’s something that as the old mtown song says if you can’t be with the one you love Love the One You’re With um and so I’m I’m now I mean behind me you can see that there are
Well there’s just over 500 books about sleep and they’re just the ones I’ve bought in the last three years my personal library of sleep books is over 3,000 books long first book or the earliest book I’ve got is from 1547 and I’d probably buy you know a hundred or so books a
Year about sleep from you usually early books I’m very fascinated on the history of sleep so it’s become my all consuming passion and the quote you gave in your introduction is is pretty true I I have very little life outside of Reading Writing or talking about sleep so it’s a passion that I’ve
Developed I’m very glad we’re talking to you about this today now in your book you say excuse me you say that virtually every major disease has been linked to sleep and you say that sleep affects our work our school performance our our relationships our emotional well-being
And our health so tell us a bit more about that before we dive into the specifics well interestingly in your introduction you used the the phrase uh that sleep is a pillar of our well-being um and I don’t see it like that because pillars are
Separate and for me um sleep is the very Foundation of good physical mental and emotional Health it it’s it’s the it’s the basis on which we build everything up from and that’s the point of sleep sleep has been in the evolutionary record for about 450 million years it’s a universal phenomenon basically
Anything with something that resembles a brain will sleep and we even believe that uh organisms that don’t have a brain also have a period maybe not of sleep as we know it but of rest um and the fact that it’s persisted through all species across such a long period of
Time shows that it is absolutely vital so you’ll actually die of complete lack of sleep not long after you die from complete lack of water and about six times quicker than you die from lack of food so that just shows you how fundamentally important sleep is and so
Yes it has been associated with increased risk of pretty much every disorder there is no good thing about poor sleep and we fool ourselves and we believe that we can cheat sleep and our society uh is a great example of how we believe we can chit cheat sleep but as I
Say it is a time for repair and recuperation just to give you a very very simple example if you have one poor night sleep tonight tomorrow you’re four times more likely to catch the common cold it’s as simple as that so yes it’s not a it’s I
Say I don’t believe it’s a column or a pillar it is a foundation it’s what we build everything we do upon and we we injure it uh at our Peril very Sound Advice there and one thing you said in your book and I’ve read this and so many other books about
Various aspects of Health we are all very individual and what we need to do for our sleep is going to vary from from the next person and the first question you ask in your book is how do you feel during the day on a scale of not to 10
Where not is that you have an irresistible desire to fall asleep and 10 you are most awake than you have ever been and I want to tell you some good news I would actually put myself at nine um my friends call sleeping my superpower I’m I’m very very good at
Sleeping and I’ll tell you more about that in a moment but but tell us more about how most people would rate themselves on a scale of not to 10 well you’re a very rare beast in my experience um I if I’m doing a lecture I’ll ask this question of the audience
Very rarely would I ever get somebody saying a 10 maybe one or two people will say the nines but most people are sixes or sevens and that just depresses me because we live in a society where people are trying to be healthy they’re trying to do what’s right um you know
People are eating better they’re exercising more often they’re uh you know looking after themselves in right drinking smoking all these sorts of things have dropped um but they’re not doing the one thing that will actually make them feel better so you have people oh you know I’ll have a glass of wine
With my meal or you know I I’ll go for a spa day or I need a weekend away I need to relax I need to do this um and if they got a good night sleep every night they wouldn’t need to do half of these things because they would feel good um
And we’ve we’ve rather sort of settled should we say on feeling a bit rubbish each day and we think that’s you know probably all that we can we can hope for and okay it’s it’s raining and very windy as we record this and it is
Miserable and you maybe uh on a you know late on a Wednesday afternoon it’s not the best time of of life but as I say I think we should be asking ourselves this question why are we going through life at you know less than our potential can you imagine if
Everybody was a 10 every every day it would be scary uh but in a good way I think um and I think that’s that’s the the problem we’re looking for solutions to make us happier and healthier but the one thing that is guaranteed to do that
And the one that actually we have to do whether we like it or not um is is is sleep and we we neglect it when we we we’ve we’ve become a we’ve become uh we had this idea that we can get by I mean that’s what people are doing
They’re getting by uh rather than thriving and that that that seems to be such a shame yes I I I I think it does reflect in my life that I’m an i because I am very very full of energy all the time um quite annoying I think to some
People but they often say to me how are you so energetic and I do think it’s absolutely uh majorly related to to how much I sleep and I I found in your book you said something really interesting about how our lives now are so full of information data you know you know when
When I was young our lives were much simpler and we might have watched the OD thing on TV but we spent a lot of time with a a less busy life and now we’re saturated by the amount of information that we take in on a daily basis and and
How this can increase our stress and how we sleep we’re going to talk about how we sleep and why we sleep in a moment but sleep is so important to process information so how do you feel about modern society and the needs the importance of sleep well one of one of the questions
That you as a sleep expert always gets asked is why do we sleep and the answer is we really don’t know we know what happens during sleep but we don’t know why we have to do it for eight hours a night or roughly eight hours a night
Every single night but one of the things we do know that is vitally important uh about sleep is it’s the time you process information and you lay down memories so essentially what’s happening is everything about today that you experience you’ll keep in your mind uh until tonight until your deep sleep and
Then you’ll sort the information out some of the information you receive today is unimportant you can get rid of it but other is is important and you need to one recognize it’s important two decide to keep it three put it somewhere where you know where you’ve put it because there’s no point having
Information if you can’t retrieve it but more importantly during the sleep is the time that you connect that new piece of information with all the pre-existing information that you already have and as you say in the past and it’s not too distant a past you would be born in a a
Village and you would not move more than 5 miles from that Village for the vast majority of your life um and so life was simple you recognized nature you knew when the sun come up and when it went down and you knew when the summer Soler
Was at Solstice and when you planted the crops but it was all very simple information um and now I mean there was there’s the great statistic that 95% of all information that has ever been created was created in the last three years because if you think about
It when I was young you went on holiday you had three rols of film that took 24 exposures and that was it now you take thousands of photographs and there was a startling uh examination in the New York time the New York Times on Sunday in the
US is a huge thick book-sized newspaper and it was reckoned that there’s more information in one edition of The New York Times on Sunday than some 150 years ago had to learn an entire lifetime so we need sleep more than we have ever done if if not just for its information
Processing whatever else sleep does for us we need sleep is more important now to deal with this barage of information and of course if we don’t do it with that information that leads to what we call stress the inability to cope and to function uh correctly in the world that
We live in and that I think is is the problem that we’re faced we are bombarded with information in a way that we never have been uh before and and so as I say whatever sleep is about um we should be really optimizing sleep now uh
In this day and age great advice and the million dooll question how much sleep should we get and in your book you said that the eight hours a night is a myth tell us more it is a myth and and it has always been a myth nobody in the last
600 years has ever advocated eight hours a night so uh as I say I’ve read extensively uh as much as I possibly can on this issue and I can find no reason why it became this totemic idea that we all need 8 hours it just doesn’t exist in the literature um you
Know back to Andrew bour back in 1547 he you know he basically says the time needed to sleep is between six and nine hours which is exactly what the latest recommendations from the uh scientific bodies in America say 6 to 9 hours 8 hours is an average it is not an
Ideal the thing about sleep need is we are individual and in a way it’s like shoe size or height it’s genetically determined um and uh so it’s about getting the right amount of sleep for you as an individual so how much is that well anywhere between four and 10 hours
Um there are some people very very few but they do exist who can absolutely thrive on for 4 hours sleep there are other people who need to have 11 hours sleep to thrive I personally know that I need nine and a half hours sleep uh a
Night to feel at my best and if I were to only get eight hours sleep I’d actually feel pretty ropey so sleep deprivation is classed as one hour less sleep than you need as an individual so how much sleep do you as an individual need well essentially it’s the amount
That allows you to feel awake alert and focused during the day going back to the question you asked earlier about whether you’re a zero or a 10 if you feel awake alert focused during the day you’ve had enough sleep doesn’t matter how much sleep you’ve had you’ve had enough if
You say you feel tired during the day well that actually tells me nothing tired is what I like to call having a bit of a rubbish life tired is to do with you know it it’s it’s dull and miserable I didn’t win the 62 million on
The Euro million on Tuesday so you know I’m probably going to have to carry on working for the rest of my life you know it’s just life’s just not great but that doesn’t tell us anything about your sleep if you have a problem with your sleep you will be sleepy and some people
Will say well what’s the difference between being tired and being sleeper it’s very simple if you walk up three flights of stairs when you get to the top do you need a sit down or do you need a sleep if you need a Sit down you’re tired fatigued knacked exhausted
If you need a sleep you are sleepy and I think we often confuse uh the the two things so we we you know just put put the way we feel down to to life you know uh rather than looking at the actual cause of it which is probably that we’re not getting the
Sleep we need so I wanted to talk now about sleep environments and um many years ago I realized that in my bedroom I had my desk I had a notice board with all the things I needed to do the next day often before I went to sleep the last thing I
Saw was my laptop and then I was I was reading some things about our environment and I realized I needed to change that so now I’m lucky in my house I just in my bedroom have my bed it’s got my bed Sometimes some cats but it’s got my
Bed and um so our bedtime routine um I I personally so I we eat very early I’ve got kids so they like eating they’re always hungry so we eat it about 6 I often do some more work um if I’m not going out I often fall asleep in
Front of the TV might might be as early as 9: uh but then I go up to bed about 10:30 and I and I sleep and I don’t have an alarm um I think that’s one of my uh helps in my sleep that I don’t have an
I’ve I hardly ever ever have an alarm so I think that greting noise of an alarm um but but nowadays we we do sleep with our phones in our room and I did try to stop doing that but I have been doing some online meditations and if I ever
Find a bit of trouble getting to sleep or if I wake up I am waking up about 5 quite often I put on a meditation or a bedtime story and I’m asleep within seconds so I think um obviously social media has been a bit of a problem having
Those gadgets in our rooms so what what do you think about sleep habits and what would you advise people about when they go to bed with with regards to uh the bedroom uh essentially uh you need it to be a uh Sanctuary for sleep
It needs to be the place you go to sleep and only to sleep um so by going into the bedroom you are saying or getting into the bed you’re saying this is it I am going to sleep therefore there should be no wake Behavior or wake Associated
Behavior when you are in your bedroom uh so no no uh phones or whatever I remember when I first started as say back in 1982 there was the advice in the few sleep books that were around of not having a television in your bedroom uh
And this amazed me because we had one TV in the corner of the living room from Radio rentals uh the fact that people could afford two TVs was just bizarre but we even had had that advice then not because of the not because of the blue
Light and all of this sort of nonsense which has been the blue light story 15 years old not true anymore um but it was just like if you’ve just watched The Exorcist you’re not going to get a good night’s sleep it’s nothing to do with blue light it’s going to do with
Stimulation of the brain uh so the bedroom should be dark quiet cool and comfortable so dark darkness is the signal for Sleep um light is the signal to be awake so if you have light and even very small amounts of light can be disturbing of your sleep uh light at
Night is bad for you there was a study a few years ago that showed that if at midnight you can stand with your back to one wall of your bedroom and see the opposite wall then that level of light at night is significantly related to increased risk of breast cancer and
That’s scary that’s not just the bedroom should be a bit dark it is your bedroom should be dark so uh heavy curtains black outlines ey masks whatever to get the room dark quiet the World Health Organization says 35 DBS background with intermittent peaks of 45 debels now nobody talks in decibels it’s completely
Pointless advice 35 debels is a quiet conversation in a library 45 DBS is an articulated Lorry going past your window uh average snorer 65 to 95 DB so they are going to disturb your sleep so your bedroom needs to be quiet so earplugs or separate beds separate
Bedrooms cool in order to get a good night’s sleep you need to lose one degree of body temperature you lose that body temperature out of your head and face because that’s the bit that sticks out from under your duve so the room needs to be
Cool the bed needs to be warm needs to be Thermon neutral essentially 29 30 degre but you heat the bed up just by being it you’re just big one cuddly hot water bottle um but the room you need to have that temperature gradion so even in Winter you shouldn’t be heating the room
You should be heating the bed where you are and have that gradient if the room is too cold and in this time of austerity and crazy electricity builds wear a night cap it’s green efficient cost very very little wear a night cap if it’s very cold wear bed sockss if
It’s freezing cold also wear gloves um much much better than trying to heat the room and then comfortable if you live to the age of 70 you’ll spend 220,000 hours of your life in bed you’ll actually spend more time in bed than you’ll spend in any one other position
In your life and yet you think that you can pay 99 quid from a mattress from a man in a white van now I’m not saying that you have to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a bed or even thousands of pounds on the bed but you
Should think about buying a comfortable bed and the only way you can buy a comfortable bed is to get on the bed and try it out you can’t buy a bed off the Internet it’s impossible to get the right bed off the internet uh so try it
Out so that’s the bedroom and then there’s two other things you need one is a relaxed body but know that you can be absolutely physically exhausted and not fall asleep so the thing that is an absolute prerequisite for sleep is a quiet mind and that’s the bit that we
Fail at if you are taking your cares and worries to bed with you they are going to play on your mind your mind’s going to race and you are not going to be able to fall asleep so that quiet mind and essentially it’s just about having a wind down having a routine doing
Something something nice for 45 minutes or so before you get into bed putting your cares and worries to one side and doing something relaxing and nice whatever that may be I read every night before bed regardless of what time I get home I read maybe a paragraph maybe an
Entire book but I will read but that might not be for you listening to music doing yoga mindfulness meditation whatever works for you will help you sleep but it’s that bit that we’re missing most people’s bedtime routine is to switch the tell you off have a pee brush their teeth flop into
Bed saying sleep take me and being slightly disappointed that sleep isn’t doing that um you can’t force sleep you can’t you can’t uh encourage sleep you have to let sleep happen uh and you have to therefore put your mind and body in the position to allow sleep to happen
And I’m not going to say it’s as simple as that but we need to think about you know the way we live our lives and how that may be impacting on our sleep I I think for me um what my superpower is even though I might have just been working five minutes before
Once I decide I’m not going to work anymore and I sit down literally my kids will tell you I I fall asleep within seconds it’s it’s they say think it’s really quite bizarre but I I can amazingly switch my brain off and I think that’s uh that’s my superpow I’m
Going to take you up on the blue light yeah the blue light so that’s yes that’s controversial so tell us more about that because we hear that all the time is that a myth they’re saying it’s a myth you you hear it all the time because
People want to sell you a solution to a problem they’ve created it’s not a myth but it is a something that’s been disproven the idea was that we 20 years or so ago uh receptors that aren’t image forming were found in the eye uh so they’re not part of the visual thing but
They are part of uh running our Cagan Rhythm and they respond to Blue Light 460 to 485 nomers blue light so light in that blue spectrum is a signal to be awake and when that blue light disappears that’s a signal for going to sleep and as the sun
Sets the sun sets are red they’re not blue they’re red or the enemy of sleep and that you had to strip out blue light uh but then we found out that it’s not blue light it’s any light at night so even a Kindle paper white will disturb
Your sleep so it’s any light will you know whether it’s red green or whatever uh will disturb your sleep so it’s not blue light stripping blue light out of your screen actually just makes the screen look muddy and dull and so you switch the brightness up and it’s the
Brightness of the light which is important and also there was a study uh from Scandinavia a couple of years ago that actually shows that your light is that you have a a daily need for light so if you work outside side under a bright blue sky actually using a device
At night has no effect on you at all um so the idea that blue that you know you have to strip blue light is not true any light and the other thing is that our sensitivity to light is hugely different so for some people the amount of light
From a single candle could disrupt their sleep for others uh it would be sort of the light that you’re sitting in now with a with a with you know with just a sort of a desk lamp and that sort of thing that level of light would be needed to disturb sleep
So we are again going back to what we were saying about being individuals it’s your sensitivity to light that’s important not the color of the light and as I said with with uh looking at social media or looking at your tablet or your your thing it’s not the light that’s the
Problem it’s what you’re doing it’s what you’re watching that dopamine hit of going through Tik Tok or whatever or watching you know some horrific video of whatever’s happened in in in the Middle East or or whatever this is what’s causing you to have an unquiet mind not necessarily the light from your from
Your your device I mean to be honest to say I I’m been doing this for 42 years I look at my phone before I go go to sleep the last thing I do is just scroll through Twitter Facebook check I’ve got some emails look at the BBC News and if
I wake up in the middle of the night to pee as a 58 year old man that’s what you do uh I will again check and it has no effect on me um because you know I I I’m awake and it’s not going to it’s it’s
Not going to make me more awake because I’ve already woken up uh so I I I have no problem with with phoned um but I say I’m I’m I’m 58 and I’m I’m sensible with the use other people are not sensible with the use of their phones and will
Unless you take it away from them scroll on night and you know a few years ago the streaming service Netflix reduced the amount of time between episodes deliberately so you don’t have enough time to consider not watching the next episode it’s already started and the CEO of Netflix actually said my biggest
Enemy is sleep my biggest competitor is sleep so yes if you if you abuse screens then they will disturb your sleep but as I say it it’s it’s not the biggest problem in the world and I say the problem with sleep is it’s been monitorized people want to
Sell you a solution there’s a lot of money to be made in sleep um not by people like me because I I haven’t got the brass neck to foggy something that doesn’t work and and Common Sense has never made you a fortune which is a problem um but uh yeah it’s been
Monitorized and so you you will you know magnesium supplementation everybody’s going on about you know take magnesium to help you sleep it will do absolutely nothing at all um except make money for people who selling magnesium um etc etc etc thank you I love busting myths and
Um I I now feel a bit better about using my phone in bed so I’m not going to feel so guilty I think your advice is don’t watch News at 10 that’s going to that’s going to make your mind so we won’t do that anymore um thinking a bit more about lifestyle and
Individuality uh alcohol and coffee so um I’ve actually never drunk a cup of coffee coffee in my life so I but I’m very aware that I’ve got when we’re at dinner there’ll be some of the table and an evening dinner that will say oh no I can’t have coffee past 10:00 in the
Morning midday 2:00 3:00 and then some that can drink a cup of coffee and be totally fine and alcohol I think is the same so I I I personally think that for certainly it will come on to uh women and things in a minute but but for many
Women going through the per menopause I think drinking even one glass of wine might have an effect but at other times of their life it might not so how do you feel about um advice to people about alcohol and coffee well again as you said it it’s very very individual our sensitivity to
Caffeine is massively massively uh wide and as you say there are some people who should perhaps not use caffeine at all and there are others who can have two double espressos before bed and sleep perfectly well so if you have had two double espressos every night for the
Last 40 years and you’ve never had a sleep problem and you develop a sleep problem it’s almost certainly not the caffeine uh that’s causing the problem something else has changed so we just need to be sensible about it caffeine hangs around in the body for a long time
Five to 10 hours is the half life of caffeine so for some people having a coffee at lunchtime or or 2 o’l you get that hit of caffeine um H but the thing is the amount of caffeine to give you the hit during the day is a lot more than the
Amount of caffeine needed to disturb your sleep at night and so that’s the problem that even even though you’ve had a long period of time between the cup of coffee and going to sleep it can still affect you but it’s about finding what’s right for you um but I have a friend um
Who uh I meet every once in a while she’s also in the Sleep field and we sometimes you have dinner together and we’ll have a nice three course meal couple of glasses of wine and then she’ll say I’ll have decaf and you think well you’ve just had
A a big meal a couple of glasses of wine the the anxiety about decaf is much more than the you know caffeine would disturb you with regards to alcohol again sensitivity is is different alcohol has since it was invented 9,000 years ago in Babylonia uh was uh used as a sleep aid
It’s the most widely used sleep aid uh that there is um and it is it works on the same receptors as sleeping tablets so it is good for putting you to sleep the problem with alcohol is that when it leaves the system and so there are three
Issues with alcohol and one of which pertains very much to the women you described um so one is it makes you pee um it’s a diuretic so it makes you pee so you wake up and you have a pee too it gives you that horrible headache um because it’s shrinking the brain and
That’s pulling on the meninges which gives you that headache and the final one which is the one that people don’t really latch on to is the fact that it’s calorific I said earlier you need to lose one degree of body temperature to get a good night’s sleep if you drink
Too much you have to burn off those calories and burning off the calories causes heat which makes your sleep fragmented and this of course is particularly worrisome in women going through the menopause because their temperature control is shot to Pieces uh they have the hot flashes hot flushes um and so alcohol
Just adds to that so one of the pieces of advice that you give to women going through the menopause is don’t do anything before bed that increases your body temperature further than it’s already being increased uh by the symptoms and so at alcohol in that regard is is causing that issue with
With temperature and for for women in the menopause temperature is probably around 90% of the reason why they have Disturbed slate it’s almost exclusively the fluctuations in the temperature and the abil inability to cool down at night is the cause of poor sleep and my menopause friends would say that they
Think many in many cases the symptoms that women are seeing during the day are EXA exasperated but by the fact that they’ve had poor sleep so their irritability brain fog um hot flushes during the day and and all the other many of the other issues that they can
Have if they haven’t slept well everything is going to be compounded and they’re going to feel much worse so they exactly so sleep’s just especially I mean it’s a vicious cycle it’s it’s a vicious cycle and and that’s the problem that as you say um you know it’s very easy to say
Um but if you have poor sleep you will be more irritable you will have more arguments with your partner you will have less empathy with your partner you’ll actually have less desire to make up the argument and even in in extremists there is is a link between uh poor sleep and domestic violence
Increased levels of domestic violence so yes the you know people um very conveniently both in in teenagers and menopausal women they use the same excuse it’s their hormones which means nothing at all it’s nonsense but the two th the two you know we know that if you have poor sleep uh you you
Know there’s a direct correlation between quality sleep and the amount of pain you feel the worse you sleep the more pain you feel uh we know there’s a direct correlation between the amount of sleep you get or the quality of your sleep in the amount of sugar you
Consume so the more sleepy you are the more you crave sugary and fatty foods get a better night sleep and you won’t have those Cravings so if you’re trying to diet or maintain a healthy weight um get a good night’s sleep that’s the first thing you should do because then
You won’t have those Cravings you know a particular weight loss organization calls them sins well you know if you remove the Temptation you’re not going to sin they be getting biblical here I don’t intend to um but if you if you don’t crave sugar and fat you won’t eat sugar and
Fat so there are we this is what I said earlier about it being the foundation if you are going through any type of situation whether physical mental or emotional sleep is the thing you need to do you mentioned the a few questions ago about cats getting on your bed if a cat
Gets ill what does it do if it could if you don’t take it to the vet a cat just hides somewhere for five days magically heals itself for free and then comes back but we don’t do that we you know you have these adverts on telly about powering through you know I’ve taken
Such and such a drug I’ve got man flu and I’m going to power through why just go to bed for a day you know it it we’ve lost this common sense and so um you know that we are sleep is just so fundamental to cope I mean talking you
Know using something from Pain you often hear pain patients say if only I could sleep well I could deal with my pain and yet they get treated as pain patients not as somebody who needs to improve their sleep and that’s where we’re missing it sleep is I’m not saying
Answer to all problems but a great many of the problems that we have sleep would be fundamental to to that I do sleep well but I do still crave sugar so I’m afraid I’m afraid I’m the exception work for me Sugar’s but it’s it’s the level the
Amount that you that you eat and I say there’s a 33% increased desire for sugar in fat foods and an 18% increase in something called leptin which is the hormone that tells you you’re full so when you’re sleepy you want to eat you want to eat junk you eat junk and you
Don’t stop eating junk so there’s a say women who have poor sleep year on year put on half a BMI point this is a Swiss study over 14 years uh so there is a direct link and as I say getting a better night’s sleep will actually reduce your sugar intake without you
Having to do anything else you don’t you don’t have to sell this to me I’m I’m definitely a a big advocate of sleep so let’s go back to babies um and you you had a really good interesting section about the way we think about our baby sleeping and it’s
Like you said it’s like a competition to see you know know parents to see whose child’s going to be the first baby to sleep through the night and I never agreed with that when I when my kids were babies and um you know mine mine slept when they slept and we co-slept
And um yeah I was never one of these people who wrapped their babies up put them in a separate room and let them cry themselves to sleep night after night I I just thought I thought that was child abuse really so what advice would you give to to new parents with babies well
Basically that they’re going to be a problem because a newborn has absolutely no idea the difference between day or night uh or that mommy and daddy have to go to work they have no idea of that and as you say they will sleep when they want to because they have no Cagan
Rhythm at this point they will sleep at any point for any period of time they like um and so all you can do with a child is to allow it the freedom to have the sleep it needs um and a newborn needs 16 to 20 hours sleep a 10-year-old
Needs approximately 10 hours sleep until a child is four years old it should be having two long day daytime naps every day until a child is six it should be having at least one long daytime nap we don’t do that if you look at if you go
To Finland or Russia U places like that they have cops in their in their infant schools where the kids will have an afternoon nap every day they will have a long afternoon nap uh we fill our children’s life up with with absolute rubbish um rather than allowing them to
Sleep oh they’ve got football this week this day swimming the next day Cubs the next day they do this they do that got to keep them busy got to keep them no you don’t just let the poor souls go to sleep and get sleep but it has become a
Competitive Sport and it has it is a badge of my child’s better than your child because it sleeps through the night whoopy do well done aren’t you clever you had nothing to do with that at all the child just happens to be a child that has developed that uh ability
Earlier U but we should allow it we should your granny would have told you never wake a sleeping child if a child’s asleep you should never wake it because it’s get you you know I mentioned memory uh you learn during the night you learn new skills during the night but also
Critically deep sleep is the only time that you physically grow you only ever grow when you’re asleep so we’re mocking about with fundamental processes that the children need to go through yes children are a problem but as you say this idea of children only cry for a couple of reasons because they’re hungry
They’re in pain they’re scared or because they want to annoy you now I’m not a mother and I’ve never had children but I damned if I believe that anybody can tell the difference between those cries and to so refuse if you were sat on your couch at home and you were
Crying and your partner just left you there and ignored you you would be rightly annoyed with them and yet for children oh no let’s just ignore it it will self soothe it will settle no it won’t it’ll just learn that you are a hard-hearted person who doesn’t care
About it so it won’t cry out anymore um so yes co- sleeping co- sleeping’s been demonized and it’s only ever been demonized in the Anglo-Saxon world so America UK Canada people say oh if you sleep with your child you know you’ll get CAU death the Japanese sleep with their children
And they have the lowest rate of caught death in the in the developed world the prohibition against sleeping only applies to you if you are obese alcoholic smoker sleeping on the C with your baby if you’re not anybody like that then the child wants to be with the
Mother the mother is good she’s nice and soft and cuddly and she provides food it’s brilliant that’s what mothers have been design for they are good at it men can’t at the moment do that so we’re not much use at it so children want to sleep with their mother because everybody can
Only sleep if they’re safe and secure so instead of having mother listening to her breathing listening to her heartbeat and the mother listening to the child’s heartbeat and the child’s breathing we replace mother with a glow in the dark Teletubby if you were to wake up in the
Middle of the night seeing glowin the dark animals circling over your head you would be petrified but we think that’s a repl bement for mother it is crazy what we do and the only reason that we have put children into another bedroom is it happened in the late
Victorian era when Victorian men wanted to have more sex with their wives so they kicked the child out of the bed and installed themselves into the bed which is why you treat your partner as though they are a child yeah you’re listening out for them in the same way you would
Listen out for the child and of course you can’t get a good night’s sleep because you’re listening out for a child who’s 20 yards away because you can’t hear it breathe you can’t hear its heartbeat so how the hell do you know that it’s still alive when you wake up
In the middle of the night you don’t so you know this there’s this again this whole mythology that has been built around making women feel guilty about you know wanting I mean I I do a lot of lectures to healthc Care Professionals and a lot of my audiences uh of GPS are
Young female GPS from uh the Indian subcontinent and they come up and they sort of whisper to me is is it okay to co sleep and I say yes they go oh you thank you know because in the country they come from it is absolutely normal to do that whereas we have
Demonized this loving bonding relationship with children and I say and have have replaced that with a glow-in-the-dark Teletubby which to me seems horrific um so yeah probably haven’t made myself very popular saying any of that but who cares no I I I totally agree with you and I
Did I did all of that I ignored all this propaganda that was around at the time when mine was small that you should they should they should have a nap at this time and you should wake them up at this time I never woke my kid I was I think
That was crazy to ever wake your kids up they’re asleep leave them leave them till they wake up and you know I’m as I said they’re quiet they’re not doing anything enjoy it and as I said I’m someone that doesn’t use an alarm I’m
I’m I just go with with my body and I went with their uh rhythms as well but now they’re teenagers they’re all here at the moment because it’s half term one of them was actually napping on the sofa when we started but he’s he’s just sort
Of risen from the dead so teenagers they do go a little bit nocturnal and mine were in lockdown um just when they were really really going through puberty and Beyond and so I I did let them just get their own Rhythm to sleep so what do you what
Advice would you give someone with teenage kids about their sleep and as you said it’s important time to grow and for their brains to to sort of um calm down and reset so what about teenagers and getting enough sleep okay well the thing that happens with teenagers and and we don’t actually
Know why um is that they do need to go to bed later there is a shift in their Cadian Rhythm as I say we’re not sure why because if you look at anything there has to be an evolutionary benefit to it and why teenagers would need to go
To bed later doesn’t seem to make any sense but they do uh the thing is the shift is only approximately two hours so what that probably means is your teenager is probably going to go want to go to bed later than you do and one of the things that parents do
Is all know you’re you know we’re the parents you’re the child you go to bed before we do um you know because that’s the way it is well it might not work that way they might go to go to their bedroom but they certainly won’t be able
To fall asleep but it also means that they want to get up later so your average teenager should be going to bed around 11 11:30 and sleeping between 9 and 9 and a half hours which means of course that they’re not going to be able to get up at 7:00
Their natural tendency is to want to together up around 9 8:30 9 9:30 um and so that’s why teenagers find it difficult to start in the morning but also as I say they need to go to bed later so if a teenager says I can’t get
Out of bed at 9:00 in the morning they might be telling you the truth but a teenager who says they cannot get out of bed until 2 o00 in the afternoon is unfortunately merely lazy uh there is no reason physi logical reason for that at
All but the problem is to say that they face is that school start times in England in UK are not too stupid uh compared to American school start times uh but they are uh not necessarily the start time of the school but the travel to the school I mean I I frequently get
You know early trains into London and that and you see uh children teenagers on the train at sort of 7:00 meaning they must have gotten up at 6:00 or whatever in the morning to get ready so this is they’re not fitted uh to the 9-to-5 world that we we we push them
Into um and uh there is no reason why we shouldn’t start school later to allow teenagers to get up at a you know their biologically correct time and and make it into school that would help their academic performance uh massively it’s it’s thought that delaying start time in America increases people’s grades by
At least one to one and a half points on a you know uh your standard scales of of exams so the the again there is nobody on Earth who can tell you why schools start early uh and people are surprised as to why schools start end at
3:00 um people say oh it’s for the teachers to do marking and thing like that it’s not it’s the only reason schools finish at 3:00 is in the olden days you had go home from school and do some useful work on the farm uh so that’s why it finishes early so say
There’s no fundamental reason why schools couldn’t change but yes teenagers need sleep again this is why they have this huge need for sleep because their brains are transitioning from being children’s brains to being adult brains I mean it’s you know sleep is all about you know processing new
Information but it’s also about uh processing emotions and so teenagers become sort of emotionally uh mature shall we say in brain wise not action wise but they become emotionally sensient beings um and they need the time to process it and again all the things that we ascribe to teenagers hormones their moodiness their
Miserableness their lack of motivation to do anything has got nothing to do with hormones um it’s got everything to do with their sleep um you know let’s be honest teenagers were only invented in the 50s and 60s they didn’t even they didn’t exist before then you were just a
Young adult and you were treated as such um so there’s nothing unique about a teenager’s uh hormonal pattern but there is something different in terms of sleep and that’s the problem I’m not saying that if you’ve got every teenager a good night’s sleep they’d suddenly turn into
Lovable creatures but but uh wouldn’t be a bad thing to start with mine aren’t too bad they’re quite lovable but I wanted to say I wanted to um uh take up what you said about people being asleep on the train so I uh I um I don’t
Normally get the train to London till 10 9 and everyone’s quite awake but every so often I do get the earlier train if you get the 7 o’cl train they’re all asleep I I’ve posted about this before on social media and this is a terrible
Way to start the day if you’ve got up how do a shower had some breakfast got on the train and fallen asleep at 7:00 a.m. what do you think yeah I mean this is this is the problem I say this is this is the issue
That we have that you know we have the 9 to5 working day but it is never 9 to5 there is you know the commuting Ian I live I live in farma south of London so it is a commuted town and you see these people as you say they get to the
Platform one second before the train arrives they stand in exactly the same place they sit in exactly the same seat and literally will fall asleep uh the minute they get on it and then you see them again at the other end of the day at 6 6:30 getting the train back um and
This is the issue that we we you know we used to live and work in the same place there wasn’t this commuting and that sort of thing and again it’s eating into sleep because we think that sleep is pliable that it will make it up at the
Weekend but you can’t make up sleep at the weekend uh that’s not good for you and it doesn’t work so it is a problem we we as I say we’ve we’ve extended the day because we have you know artificial light and and central heating we’ve extended the day into the night whereas
In the not too dim and distant P people always say the thing that changed the world was medicine and his light bulb uh it wasn’t because we’ve had fire for 450,000 years we have illuminated you know the monks of lindes fan wrote their manuscripts by candlelight we’ve always had
Light uh that allows us to see at night but what we didn’t have was cheap Fuel and it was the coming of central heating that allowed us to colonize the night because in the past you had to decide to put the last log or piece of coal on the
Fire now you just put the heating on it’s not an issue it’s not a problem and so that’s the problem it’s been a very modern phenomenon that we commute long distances uh we get up we don’t have an hour lunch break uh you know we eat our
Sandes in front of our computer all of these things uh are messing with that sort of natural rhythmicity of our lives but I mean there’s a there’s a absolutely true but very funny story about people sleeping on trains um from waterl to farm you have to go through
Woking and one this is in the days of the slam door trains where you could open the door and just step out and one day a guy who always got off at woking so he woke up as it pulled into woking he woke up the train had pulled into the
Opposite platform so he automatically opened the door stepped out and fell out the train um which you know he was fine and slightly embarrassed but but people have you know they’ve become absolutely robotic about their lives and and that that again doesn’t sound like quality of life which we’re all you know struggling
To achieve yes and uh another myth that you broke in your book uh many myths for me that I was reading um we sleep less as we age it’s something that again people always say but you said it’s a myth tell us more it is um and again where this comes
From no idea no idea why this has become such an ideal what happens there’s a couple of things that happen as you get older uh one is that you may start wanting to go to sleep earlier and therefore wake up earlier um that might cause you to think you
Have a sleep problem because you’ve woken up early but you you might shift wanting to go to bed bit earlier but the main difference as we get older is not that we reduce the amount of time asleep it’s that we lose our deep sleep our deep restorative sleep so-called N3
Sleep uh and we progressively lose that as we get older and this is two consequences one N3 sleep deep sleep is the bitter sleep that makes you think like you’ve had a good night’s sleep so it’s the restful recuperative part of sleep so if you don’t have as much of it
You wake up and you don’t feel as refreshed as you perhaps used to um and so that might lead you to believe you have a sleep problem because you know when you were 20 you slept for eight hours you woke up and you felt brilliant now you’re 60 you sleep for eight hours
And you wake up and you think so what um and it’s common therefore for people think well I need more sleep I’m I’m I’m missing out on something so I’ll if I have just another hour’s sleep I’ll be fine I’ll get that missing thing but
That’s a bit like trying to get drunk on Shandy you can have eight pints of Shandy and you won’t get drunk having a ninth pint of Shandy isn’t going to make any difference the other thing about this loss of slower sleep is it’s the thing that drives your need for sleep
It’s the pressure to keep you asleep so babies for instance have huge amounts of slow sleep memory learning growth all happens during deep sleep so they need a lot of it as we get to being an adult it makes up about 25% of the night so if you don’t have as much deep
Sleep you’re more easily woken and once you are awake there is less physiological pressure to put you back to sleep so again there is also this thing that the elderly do is well what can I expect I’m 75 years old you know bits of me are falling off other bits are
Hurting how can I expect to have a good night’s sleep well yes there are some natural changes which I’ve just mentioned that can cause you to sleep worse but there are plenty of other things that are fixable if you get up and pee more than twice a night you
Need to have that fixed it can be fixed if you have sleep apne or snoring or you’re in pain these can be fixed so don’t just accept poor sleep just as a consequence of getting older now there is a sex difference in this loss of slow wave sleep Men start losing their slow
Wave sleep a lot earlier than women men from around the age of 35 or so women from around the age of 55 or so so over the age of 60 men against age match controls have worse sleep because they’ve been declining longer so a man over the age
Of 70 will probably have hardly any of that deep sleep at all so that’s what changes so you need the same amount of sleep you’re just going to find it a lot harder to get that sleep that you need I wanted to finish off talking
About tech and sleep problem so I I I do snore I mean I’m normally sleeping alone so it doesn’t really matter but there’s I’ve seen you know gadgets for snoring gadgets to help you sleep sleeping pills and there’s these wearables that now people are wearing and you’ve talked
About this a lot in your book people are wearing it it and one of my friends was becoming obsessive by it and I saw them yesterday and said oh you know I was interviewing you and he said yeah I’ve decided it doesn’t work and I said no
That’s what Neil said so what what would you advice would you give to people that are you know becoming obsessive with all these new tech that or potions and lotions that they say you’re going to help with sleep as I said it’s become in a monitorized condition um people see
Sleep as important U but because of that they can uh guilt you into paying money for you know there’s a robot that you clutch to your chest that breathes and you breathe with it it’s over 600 pounds God for this device um and it’s it’s
It’s the size of a a a pillow and it’s hard plastic so once you form the sleep I don’t know what you do with it when you turn over on it in the middle of the night or kick it onto the floor um but yes it it’s just been identified as I
Say as a uh as a way of making money the national in Ute of clinical Excellence nice um the med par sleep medicine European sleep research site all say that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is uh what you should do so behavioral intervention we talked about you know making the bedroom nice we
Talked about quieting the mind uh these are things that cost no money at all you can do them yourself um so Tech is just as say people are you know we’ve talked about the blue glasses you know people are even though the Sciences they don’t work and there’s good science that says
It doesn’t work they’re still selling it people who claim to be sleep experts are still selling you a device that they know does not work uh and then as you say this observed self the wearable um you’ve got people going to their doctor saying doctor doctor I’ve got insomnia
Why how do you feel oh my fitbits told me yeah but how do you know my fitbits told me well your fitbits rubbish uh as with every other sleep uh wearable they are not capable of measuring anything other than the amount of time you’re asleep they can’t measure light sleep
Deep sleep or or uh REM sleep dreaming sleep they can’t measure that I’ve I’ve heard people come to me and say I’ve got 40% deep sleep and I said that’s not possible that that that’s physiologically impossible unless you had absolutely no sleep last night no or
The night before no I slept fine the night before but I have 40% how can I reduce it or I don’t have enough REM sleep what can I do about it well all you can do about it is get the sleep you need the brain is self-regulating it can
If you give the body the sleep it needs it will get the stages of sleep that it needs but you know and this this will come to the head and I I I confidently predict this will happen uh and I do hope I’m involved in it as the expert
Witness because what will happen is somebody will drive from London to Glasgow have an accident and say but my device told me I was all right to drive and that’s when the whole thing will come tumbling down uh and I won’t mention them but a certain manufacturer
Of a certain type of device has been sued twice in America successfully for over claiming what their devices can do uh with regards to sleep so um but as I say there was a p there’s two papers published back in 1916 in New York by a came guy called um
What was his name James Walsh the GP in New York um and it said it was called they’re both called insomnia as dread and he said the biggest cause of insomnia is reading that you’ll die or go mad if you don’t get a good night’s sleep now the biggest selling sleep book
Ever uh published five or six years ago uh which I won’t name because he sold enough of them um basically spends 500 pages telling you you’ll die or go mad if you don’t get a good night’s sleep the problem is that’s nonsense um you you know nobody has ever
Died of lack of sleep um and uh you know the link everybody says oh there’s a link between poor sleep and dementia well it actually might be completely the opposite way around it might be that poor sleep is the first sign of dementia that we can recognize long before the
Cognitive decline so it might be completely opposite but it’s enough to cause you to Panic it’s enough therefore to buy a solution for for your problem rather than taking responsibility for your own sleep and switching the blooming Telly off um at a sensible time
Oh you know we we we need an alarm from Netflix to tell us that we’ve been watching Netflix too long you’re an adult look at the clock if it says 11:00 you should probably be going to bed you don’t need an alarm to tell you that you
Don’t need to do anything then they say read a book listen to some music it’s not difficult we just refuse to do it and and just think that we can force sleep to happen just by lying in bed that sleep will happen well no it won’t
A good friend of mine Professor Jen told well ameritus professor of genology at lfer um Kevin Morgan he said falling asleep is like falling in love he said you have to woo it he said the harder you chase the object of your affection the more you will chase it away and he
Said you have to woo sleep uh and I I just think that’s the that’s what we’ve forgotten and the other thing we’ve forgotten completely is it’s a pleasure there’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep certainly nothing cheaper than a good night’s sleep and we’ve forgotten how good we can feel after a
Good night’s sleep and we try to replace that with God knows what else to make us feel good rather than getting a good night sleep I I love sleeping I definitely do and just to pick up what you said you know I just feel with this health Tech
In so many areas in in my field for sure it’s not empowerment at all this exploitation and you know we’ve we’ve we’ve got to stop stressing people out with all these gadgets and and things it’s just it’s just gone crazy now in your book you’ve you’ve done you’ve got
So much more we’ve really just skim the surface so if you’re if you’re interested in this topic please read Neil’s great book and you’ve got a whole section at the end I absolutely loved with so many uh myths that you broke I absolutely loved it but I want to move
Now just briefly at the end um onto your new book coming out on the 24th of February called Sleep divorce how to sleep apart not fall apart would you like to just tell us the bottom line well this is yeah this is Again part of the my busting uh because we’ve
Been sold this idea that you should share a bed with another person which is completely unnatural um humans the only animals that sleep together for intimacy other animals may sleep together for warmth or protection but we choose to do it um but as I mentioned earlier your
Average snore is 65 to 95 DBS I published probably the first paper about couple sleep about 20 years ago now showing that much of your sleep disturbance is is caused by your bed partner they move they kick they punch they fight you over the duve they want the temperature different level um and
The thing is it’s only ever poor people who slept together because we didn’t have the space rich people go to any stately home in Britain you’ll see the Lord’s bedroom the L’s bedroom so with um my co-author Jenny Jenny Adams from Australia she wrote a book a few years ago uh where
She had interview intered her friends about sleeping separately and we met on a huff poost Live program in America uh and we’ve sort of increased it so it’s basically a handbook it’s uh why you should sleep separately and how to have that conversation with your partner and
How to um tell your sort of friends and families about it because you know there’s this Joy I mean there’s this whole industry about relationship count you know if you sleep separately It’s The End end of your relationship no it’s just a recipe for disaster as I said more arguments more divorces more
Marital violence caused by sleeping together and we’ve been sold this Con of an idea that we have to do it and it is nonsense buy a bed and have it the way you want and this is one of the pieces of advice uh that I I you know is
Important for menopausal women uh is you know um Jenny Hislop a sociologist from s and Oxford University showed that women actually um disrupt their sleep for their partner uh they’ll actually uh so a man will always shake a woman awake if she’s snoring but a woman will lie next to a
Man and put up with this snor and this is rooted on the idea that he’s the breadwinner he’s the hunter gatherer so I will disrupt my sleep for his sleep and this is PR she she published a number of papers on focus groups that
She did as saying s and Ox a couple of years ago um and so women will I say they won’t toss and turn they won’t they won’t you know throw the duvet on and off because they think they’ll disturb their partner well get rid of him he’s
No bloody use to you at this point um get rid of him and have your own bed have the bedroom temperature have the pillows you want the duvo the want then you can toss turn get up one around have whatever fans whatever you want to do and you’re not disturbing another person
So the big thing is that plenty of people sleep separately but they’re not willing to admit to it and so this is De myth de mythologizing this idea we should sleep together telling you how to have that conversation and making it easy so yeah the books out uh well it’s actually out
Now on Amazon Amazon have their own way of doing things and they’ve released it two weeks early without telling anybody which caught us all on the Hop um but but it is out now on Amazon and other good retailers but certainly Amazon have got some in stock and they’ve even
Reduced it for us ex buy now Buy It Now buy it now and my final questions which I ask all my guests so this podcast is called why didn’t anyone tell me this so over your career what have you heard people say that they they didn’t know before
And you’ve told them what’s the main topic well besid sleep but main area I I think I think really and and this is not dodging the question but one thing that I found is that people don’t want answers they want affirmation so people will say to me oh
I’ve got this sleep problem I’ll go yeah and they go blah blah blah and I go yeah and they’ll go and so I should do this shouldn’t I and I say yeah and they go thanks and I thought well I haven’t said anything you work that out for yourself
I actually didn’t say anything all I’ve done is just confirmed so I think what the the the thing is the people know this they just need somebody to tell them to do it and so they they’ve got this knowledge we all know what we should be doing and so my my role in
Life is just to say to people yes that’s common sense do it so I think that’s it I think a lot of people don’t realize when it comes to sleep they don’t realize that they probably know the answer they just have sort of suppressed it if that makes sense yeah yeah it does
Um and what motivates you so what makes you jump out of bed every morning and continue with your day knowledge the desire to bust myths um this is what this is what I I I hate there are there are so many people in the Sleep field now who have got no
Qualifications they’ve got no experience they’ve got no knowledge about the subject spouting nonsense to the world uh and that’s what motivates me that I I have to fight against this I have to tell the truth make myself unpopular sometimes go against the zeit guys you know like saying that children should
You you should pick them up and love them and whatever you know there’s enough nonsense in the world and I can’t abide it as I said earlier I got into this field by accident and it’s been my life and I am going to damn well defend
The science um and make sure that you know people aren’t ripped off exploited cond so that’s what most motivates me the truth very very simply which is why my next book is shaping up to be about 400,000 words long just to disprove a single fact that has been said and I I I
Have been reading well last week I’ve been reading um about German middle-aged German Middle Ages German fire regulations in order and I don’t speak German um so in order to prove a point because as I say the truth is important so that’s what motivates me only in my little field of sleep
Maybe and what makes you happy and where is your happy place what makes me happy go I sound so dull knowledge I love reading I love I cannot I’m one of these people who will watch a movie movie on TV and have to have my phone there I mean you’re
Watching these old movies on talking pictures TV I have my phone there and I’m looking up actors and what other films they’ve been in and then I’ll look at what the book is and I’ll probably buy the book of the film and read it and
I’m I’m just one of these people who has an absolute thirst for knowledge and and and and an innate curiosity about the world so I can’t just see something and just let it happen I have to know everything about it which is why I buy as many nonsleep books as I buy sleep
Books I mean I probably read two to three books a week uh and and completely eclectic but almost all I can’t remember the last time I read a non-fiction book but so knowledge makes me happy um finding out things makes me happy with regard to my happy place it’s going to
Sound soppy but wherever my partner is my partner and I Liv separately she lives in Poland I live here we don’t see each other since Co happened we don’t see each other as as often as as we do did um because of brexit and Co and God knows what else
Has got in the way of life um and so when I’m with her I make sure that we’re as as happy as we can be wherever we can be usually she loves climbing in the mountains of uh Poland and I don’t but I pretend to do it you know
Regularly pretend to not have a heart attack whilst walking up these blooming mountains but it makes her happy so yeah I’m I’m I’m you know I’m I’m yeah wherever she is I’m happy if I’m with her that’s s answer answer very final question um what advice would you give your younger
Self seek wisdom from the wise it’s the what I wrote in the front of my PhD thesis um because there are so many people out there telling you what you should do what you should eat what you where you should go and all of these sorts of
Things and most of them are complete idiots um and if if they say it in an authorative Voice or whatever or get lots of likes on Tik Tok people are apt to believe them and what that does is that it just uh trivializes what should be important and
We don’t listen to experts anymore we listen to people who are pretty or thin that seems to be their only qualification or you watch your program you know the BBC a few years ago did a program about sleep big big program about sleep um I helped develop the program I
Wrote some of the script for the program but because I’m a fat 58y old I didn’t get to present it but who did get to present it a gynecologist because he’s good at reading a script and will wear a white lab coat on telly whereas I would never
Do that um so we listen to Media figures idiots pop stars actors rather than actually listening to people who have a clue what they’re talking about and that’s the saddest thing in the world that we’ve we’ve forgotten that there are some people who are knowledgeable experts in
Their field and there are a lot of very stupid people who have got a lot more sway on society than they should have unfortunately oh I I agree with that um lots of people don’t listen to me I’m only a professor they listen to a celebrity I so Neil I can’t
Believe we actually got through everything that was the longest script I’d ever had for one of my podcasts but I there were so many important things I really want to discuss with you we we did it we’ve been a long time it’s a long podcast so sorry everyone for
Making this so long um but we have covered everything so Neil I want to thank you so much it’s been a real pleasure and please everyone real read Neil’s books thank you very much Joyce it’s been a pleasure thank you