Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Jeffy's Corner: Sleep, Or Lack There Of...

Episode Date: March 19, 2016

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Over the years, I've worked a lot of shifts. And so I'm at the point now where I need an alarm to wake up. Perhaps that's because I don't get enough sleep. Because for a while, I hate. I don't know about you, but I... hate, and that's not even a strong enough word, detest, despise the alarm. I can't, oh. For a number of years, and I really have taught myself in the past to wake up when I wanted to wake up.

Lay down, go to sleep, and I learned how to make a mental clock, and when I wanted to get up, set the clock, go to sleep. and when I hit the time in my mental clock head, I have a mental clockhead, it would, I would wake up. Now, that works when you're getting enough sleep. Would you not getting enough sleep? And I fully admit, I'm not. It doesn't work because your body's like, yeah, no.

Whatever that mental clockhead said, Don't worry about it. You ain't getting up then. And so we have an alarm that wakes us up. That really just drives me insane. Lately, I've taken... And for the longest time, the alarm would go off and I would get up. I'd sit up and, you know, grog my way through waking up.

Recently, in the near past, I've started using... even the snooze button. The alarm will go off. And I use my phone alarm. I don't have, I still have a clock sitting next to the bed, but why? Why?

My favorite clock, which I have to get another one. My favorite clock has the time light that shown up on the ceiling. So that when you wake up in the middle of the night or whatever you roll over. You want to see what time it is.

That time is lit up on the ceiling. I love that. I'm going to have to get another one of those back. I just thought of that. I love that clock. Anyway, so I use my phone. I set the alarm on my phone. That's the alarm I use.

But I've taken to using the snooze now. Instead of my phone, there's a way that you slide the X and it shuts it off. Or you slide the other way. and it just snoozes for another five minutes or however long you set it for. So I've started doing that, and I found that I feel worse. And then I see this report from Business Insider.

They're, you know, Graham Flanagan from Business Insider, he's one of their video producers, is one of their main manager guys who is explaining why the snooze button is bad. We all do it. In fact, I did it three times this morning. Everybody hits the snooze button. It's the gateway to that 10 minutes of extra sleep that you're certain you need in order to truly be ready to attack the day. It wasn't always called snoozing.

Sleep scientists in the 1970s coined the term drockling to describe the action of drifting in and out of sleep in the morning. But hitting the drollering button did. and have a great ring to it, so the process became more commonly referred to as snoozing. Well, when you snooze, you actually lose. It turns out those extra z's to which we treat ourselves are actually bad for you. According to Stanford University sleep specialist Raphael Palio, it confuses your body and brain. When your alarm goes off, that signals the end of your sleep cycle. When you hit the snooze button and fall back asleep, the cycle starts all over again.

When the alarm goes off again, your body thinks, wait, I'm not done with my new sleep cycle yet. And this leads to what the National Sleep Foundation defines as sleep inertia. It's the feeling of groginess and disorientation that can come from awakening from a deep sleep. It slows down your ability to make decisions and hurts your overall performance. That feeling of groginess can last around 90 minutes. Not a great way to start the day. But there are some things you can do to kick the habit of hitting the snooze button. First of all, you obey your alarm.

Get up when it goes off. Do it for a few days in a row. According to Palayo, this will get your mind and body into a healthy. rhythm. Another trick is to move your alarm further away from your bed than you're used to. Hey, yeah, I don't know about that. Finally, just get more sleep. Go to bed earlier and you'll feel the difference.

Together we can break this vicious cycle of snoozing. Now, I do remember years ago in my drinking days setting the alarm on the other side of the room because you know, you've been

passed out for at least an hour. and you needed to get up to go to whatever job you were doing at the time. So you had to set it up over on the other side of the room. And you used an actual alarm clock. Today, if you don't, like I use my phone. If you use your phone alarm, it rings for, I don't know how long the set is. You can go into your settings and find out how long the alarm is set to go off. But if you don't hear it and it rings for whatever, how many five minutes, 10 minutes,

however it's set for, it just shuts off. I just enough. Just enough. Nobody's going to shut me off. I'll shut myself off. I'm not going to sit here and ring for the next two hours. So, I mean, that's fascinating to me how the world works around sleep. We talk about it all the time around this building around. It would probably talk about it at your work too,

or wherever you go during the day of tired today. You didn't get enough sleep. How little emphasis we put on sleep. And yet it's so important. Now, years ago, we've talked a little bit about this before in the past on this broadcast about how we sleep different than really what we're supposed to be doing, or at least, I don't know what, I mean, I guess we're supposed to be sleeping the way we're sleeping now, right? That's the way we've progressed because there's electricity.

So we're able to move around and be part, have a life when it's not. dark outside. But prior to electricity and street lamps and businesses with lights and houses with lights, we found that people didn't always sleep in, you know, that eight-hour chunk or 10 hours or whatever you were getting. We used to sleep in two shorter periods. And I find, actually, during vacations, this is the way I end up sleeping, which I love. And now I know why I love it because I'm supposed to be this way.

You're supposed to, we would use to sleep in two shorter periods. And we slept, you know, between 8 and 12 hours. Right. You'd sleep for three or four hours. And then you'd be up for two or three hours and then sleep again until daylight or the morning. And, I mean, it talks about in this article that's, you know, however, a hundred years old now, references are scattered throughout literature, court documents, personal papers, that two-piece sleeping, it was, and they call it two-piece sleeping, it was the standard, the accepted way.

Now, they've talked about in studies that they found that, you know, doctors and homemakers wrote that it was the ideal time between sleeps to study, contemplate, between first and second sleep. They talk about going to bed. They talk about that's why people had more children. Because in between first sleep and second sleep was making love time. And then more, most they would stay in their bed.

They'd read, they'd pray. Special prayers were said in the others. They might get up and smoke, talk, family time. Some even, they talked a little bit. There are writings that they would go to neighbors and talk during mid-sleep. But, and it talks about in this story, it talks about we still linger toward that. And I do. I mean, I love that.

I love nothing more than getting up and being up for a little while and then going back to bed. Oh, my gosh. I mean, the best sleep ever for me is second sleep. Yeah, that's right. That's what I'm calling it now, too, just like they did. Okay? Just like our great, great, great, great, great, great, relatives did. They were sleeping in caves, Jeff.

I know, but oh, well. Now there was a study You know, I mean we love studies here That They did on exposure to light And its effect on sleep patterns And in the study, 15 men spent four weeks With daylight artificially restricted

So rather than staying up and active The usual 16 hours a day They would stay up about 10 And the other 14 hours They would be in closed dark room Where they would rest and sleep as much as possible I mean, that's what we have to do, right? I mean, we should be living that way.

And yet, no. Why? Because there's things to do, people to see, places to go. And, I mean, shows to watch on my electronic devices. You're listening to the Jeff Fisher Show, the Blaze Radio Network. The experts at web.com want to bill your business a successful website for free. Plus, we'll promote it on all the major search engines. If after 30 days you're happy, we'll continue to provide promotion, hosting, support, and maintenance, all for one low monthly fee.

If not, cancel and pay nothing. Call right now, and you'll also get a free.com or dot net domain name for your new website, powered by Veracine, the world's leading domain name provider. Call 800-215-0465. That's 800-215-0465.