The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 50 - The Most Common Misconceptions About Sleep: Stephanie Romiszewski

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. This week, I want to bring back to you a section from this incredible conversation I had with Stephanie Romiszewski, an experienced sleep physiologist and expert in developing bespoke treatment plans for sleep problems. Here we discuss the common misconceptions many people have about sleep, including the much perceived importance of getting those 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night. Her main piece of advice denotes that perfection is the enemy of the good; dictating our bedtime is the worst thing we can do to ourselves, and instead we should focus on the quality over the quantity of sleep and never expect to get that solid 8 hours that we have all been told to get. Finding a reasonable sleep routine, and maintaining it will allow our bodies to regulate and rest, which will eventually train the brain to use our sleep window as a sleep opportunity. Such an overload of misconceptions can go wrong, and cause even more panic for people who have become crippled by their sleep patterns. We often forget how efficient our bodies are, so we need to stop worrying about sleep debt and instead focus on a good routine.Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/OrX6sjtZEob Stephanie- https://twitter.com/sleepyclinic https://sleepyheadclinic.co.uk/stephanie-romiszewski-sleep-expert/ Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. You're an expert in this field. So you must, as you kind of spoke to there you must get pretty i can feel it when you're speaking get pretty pissed off when you see unhelpful information um being pushed on i don't know social media or online or through books these sort of simplified narratives what are some of the most um common misconceptions that you speak

to your patients about you mentioned one there about this like eight hours of sleep being the optimal yeah and even when i put out on my instagram earlier what are the key questions you want to ask um i'm speaking to a sleep therapist expert today um i'd say the vast majority or at least the medium question was uh do i need to get exactly seven or eight hours sleep every single night yeah um yeah so that is definitely the biggest one we get um you do not that perfection is the enemy of the good have you ever heard that term because at the end of the day it's true yes your body loves consistency and regulation but that does not mean you have to get eight hours of sleep every night think about it differently think about it over a month for example we love this idea of the way the way we look at time is slightly different to the way your body looks at time. And over a month, you might actually be all right.

So maybe one night you get six and a half hours, the next night you get seven and a half. And then the next night you might get slightly different. As long as it's fairly consistent and maybe 80% of the time you're doing fairly well and you're, you're giving yourself the right opportunity to sleep, that's okay. Your body's going to do, do you know it will do what it needs to do and with that a caveat to that is this understanding of sleep debt so we don't understand sleep debt properly people think it's an eye for an eye I lose four hours I must gain four hours well what happens when your body being as efficient as it is doesn't actually need you to gain an extra four hours of sleep to recover you your expectation is that it should and when your expectation doesn't get met you get upset about it and you change your

behavior and that's when you start getting sleep problems when the reality is your brain is so smart that even in the certain amount of hours that you get normally at night it can recover you from that sleep deprivation by just improving or increasing the sleep stage that it thinks you miss the most for example but because we have a lack of education we believe we don't get some sleep we need to regain that sleep and when we don't regain that sleep that's when the anxieties and the stress is over not sleeping starts so that's a big one the sleep debt one the other one is this idea that fatigue and sleepiness are the same things. So yes, when we don't sleep well, we get a lot of fatigue. So fatigue is anything from feeling like your body needs to rest, to needing to shut your eyes, to pain, to your brain buzzing because you've been working so hard

for like 48 hours straight and you don't know what to do with yourself. But the only definition of sleepiness is the ability to shut your eyes and within a few minutes you're falling asleep so if you were saying to me right now steph i'm so so sleepy i'd probably say to you well you don't look it because right now you don't look tired in the way that i would expect you to be falling asleep i mean you wouldn't be able to sit still you you would be sort of probably your eyes would be shutting all the time, dozing off, having little micro-sleeps. That's sleepiness. And that's what we should really be understanding as a cue to sleep. So in the evenings, if you're not feeling that, then don't be worried.

Give yourself permission to stay up later. Because you can't dictate what happens to you during the day. And there are so many variables that affect your sleep. You are never going to be able to control them. having good sleep hygiene how many good sleepers do you know have it so good sleep hygiene is all these things that we get told we should do so the 10 top things that you should do have a warm bath never drink coffee ever again um never have alcohol you know all these things that you're supposed to do but if you look at good sleepers are they following all those things no they're not and they're still sleeping really well and that's to show that most of the time

sleeping poorly comes down to brain training and the patterns we get ourselves into you start going to bed early you might be able to get to sleep earlier but you're probably not going to be able to have that sleep all the way through the night because at some point or another your body's going to be like well you've had enough now but your expectation is you should be able to sleep till seven and why didn't i sleep till seven or if you lie in you keep changing the goalposts of your wake-up time which is the most important thing that you should be looking at not your bedtime um if you keep changing that goalpost your body doesn't know when to feed you it doesn't know when to make you feel alert because you've changed everything and so of course you're not going to be sleepy at

the right time in the evening the time you wake up is the a much more important time to be focused on yes the things your morning routine is going to be way more important than your evening routine when it comes to your sleep at night but because people see that as a far away time compared to when you go to sleep they don't really focus on it in fact haven't we been taught in this society that lying in is a luxury i can't believe that we have made it okay at the weekend to lie in so much but during the week one of the only things that gets us up is work it makes absolutely no sense to me i'm not saying it's the worst thing in the world I'm not saying I never lie in but I don't use it as a compensatory method for a bad night's sleep

because that's when you're going to get into trouble because that's kind of throwing your your your schedule off is that what you're saying yeah yeah if you line on the weekends and you're going to pay for it at some point yeah why are we not looking you know if you have to lie in so significantly every single weekend why are we not looking at know if you have to lie in so significantly every single weekend why are we not looking at during the week and thinking why am i doing this to myself at the time when i need it the most i will choose to get less sleep and then at the weekend i'll just compensate and people and you much of the conversation around sleep in society talks about the amount of hours and it's almost like the amount of hours that i was in the bed

um what's your sort of rebuttal to that because quality over quantity every single time every single time and if you have good quality and you need longer your body will tell you and you will get more sleep but people are so obsessed with duration and I think people don't understand what I mean by sleep opportunity I mean every single night most of the time so about 80% of the time I will give myself a seven to eight hour sleep opportunity sleep window but I do not mean that if I'm not sleepy I take myself into a dark room and shut myself down. I just know that it's there. I've got a bedroom, a place I really want to be to sleep that is available to me during those hours. And I will not sleep outside those hours. And that's the, that is the big thing is you can

dictate to your body when you don't sleep, but you cannot dictate when you do. And by doing that, you will force your body to be in a nice regular cycle. It's actually really, really simple once you know how to do it. And every time I fix someone of their insomnia there, and honestly, 50, 60 years of insomnia, they often turn around to me. They're like, I don't know why I wasn't taught this when I was younger. And I do believe if we taught everyone how to sleep properly, give them a proper sleep education when they're little, I wouldn't exist. Insomnia wouldn't exist. A lot of people when they, you know, when they knew that I was speaking to you today, they want to know how they can sleep better in the short term tonight. They're looking for some

kind of quick fix to the, to a problem they've had for a long time. What would you say to those people? Okay. So the first thing I'd say is that you're never going to find that reactive very quick method it's never going to happen and even if you find it i promise you it won't work in the long term it might control your condition in the short term but not in the long term i can teach you how to read to sleep but it's going to take you a few weeks not a night um but in the meantime don't worry it's okay like part of this is i just there is a solution so what i do is called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia it is not the same as cbt for depression or anxiety or anything else um and it is just about retraining yourself to sleep and building up that strong sleep drive you have to do that over time

um but in the short term i usually tell people that they do not need to worry nothing bad is going to happen to you and the reality is that it's more your mood that will affect your day when you wake up in the morning than the bad night's sleep you just had so i know we've got evidence to show that when you have a bad night's sleep your cognitive abilities etc are going to be um reduced however if you think about how you generalize that you're not you're not going to lose your job you're not going to perform horrifically in that meeting because you didn't get a good night's sleep it would be far better for you to go to bed later and make sure you're lovely and sleepy and only get four hours than to go to bed eight

hours before that meeting and toss and turn and be fidgety and stressed and anxious all night. That's what I do. I still get nervous when I have to do like a lecture in front of 500 people. Of course I get nervous. But instead of, you know, focusing on my notes just before I go to bed, I'll put everything aside. I'll go and enjoy myself, do something I really love to do. I'll get ready for bed a bit earlier than usual just so that I do not have to think about anything when I get sleepy. And when I am sleepy, even if it's two, three, four hours later than usual, I know that I'll go and have a really lovely three or four hours sleep. And then I'll wake up and I'll be like, great. I know I'm going to be a bit sleepy today, but that's only going to

help me sleep tonight. And I'm going to have an epic day. I don't care that I'm a bit sleepy. Sleepiness is amazing. Sleepiness is such a good thing for you. Why are we teaching people that sleepiness is a bad thing? You need sleepiness to sleep.