You snooze, you lose: how to pimp your sleep

How to optimise your shut-eye in the city that never sleeps for eight hours
Alice-Azania Jarvis18 September 2014

Getting a good night’s rest once meant spending eight hours in a comfy bed, but now a growing number of people are applying a blend of science, technology and psychology to optimise their time asleep, and so make the most of their waking hours. From the hackers gadgetising their bedtime routine to the ‘lucid dreamers’ taking control of their nightmares, Londoners are transforming the land of zzzzzz.

Polyphasic sleeping

Can you survive on two hours’ kip? Polyphasic sleepers believe so. They sleep in short bursts every few hours to cut down the overall time needed. A normal night’s sleep is divided into four or five cycles of three main phases: light sleep, deep sleep (the most restful) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The reasoning behind polyphasic sleeping is that you’re so tired you fall straight into the final two cycles. The most challenging regime is the ‘Uberman’ — six 20-minute naps at four-hour intervals. Sarah McCulloch, a student at London South Bank University, used Uberman while preparing for exams, for periods of up to four months at a time. Instead of her usual eight-and-a-half hours, she’d sleep at 4pm, 8pm, midnight, 4am, 8am and midday. ‘You have a few days of feeling terrible, but you adjust and it becomes like regular sleeping.’ The hardest thing, she says, is fitting it around a social life — she once had to nap at a restaurant. ‘It’s not that practical, but if you have a deadline to meet, you’ll meet it.’ Dr Guy Leschziner, consultant neurologist and lead clinician at the sleep disorders centre at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, cautions that it’s not for everyone: ‘Whether you sleep half an hour every two hours or a full night in one go, our sleep requirements are genetically conditioned. Some people need more, some people need less.’

Lucid dreaming

Persistent nightmares keeping you awake? The growing field of ‘lucid dreaming’ seeks to change that. Lucid dreamers claim to have trained themselves to become aware of their dreams, and say they are able to interact with, and even influence, them. Charlie Morley, author of Dreams of Awakening, has been practising lucid dreaming for more than a decade.

Bad dreams, he says, usually represent psychological trauma. Interacting with the nightmare, however, ‘sends the unconscious mind a message that you are taking on board what it is communicating. Say you have a recurring nightmare about a guy in a hood chasing you. If you become lucid, you could choose to wake up, or remember that the danger’s not real. Rather than running away you could move towards him, even hug him. Often the nightmares will stop overnight in response.’

It might sound far-fetched but lucid dreaming is a recognised phenomenon, seemingly occurring during the REM stage. There’s still debate over the extent to which dreams can, as some claim, be used to conquer addictions, improve athletic performance and cure phobias, but German researchers have found that it is possible to induce lucid dreams by stimulating the scalp with electric currents.

Morley recommends that would-be practitioners keep a diary of their dreams, identifying patterns or recurring themes. These then act as cues to alert the sleeper when they’re in a dream. ‘When people first start they often wake as soon as they realise they’re dreaming, but with practice they can start interacting in a similar way to how they would in waking reality.’

Power-napping 2.0

Numerous studies have shown the benefits of a mid-afternoon snooze — from improved concentration to better problem-solving skills. But is daytime sleeping compatible with working life? Judging by the number of businesses encouraging employees to take power naps, the answer’s yes. Arianna Huffington famously built two nap rooms at the New York offices of her eponymous media empire, which are almost always booked up. ‘Sleep makes us more productive, creative, less stressed and much healthier and happier,’ she said last year. ‘Even a 20-minute nap in the middle of the day can make a huge difference.’

London web development agency Potato recently installed a £925, two metre-long Podtime sleep pod for employees at its Fitzrovia office. Says CEO Jason Cartwright: ‘It provides a peaceful, private space in which to rest and rejuvenate. There aren’t set rules about how long people can spend in it but no one’s abused it.’ He’s also a fan of the ‘coffee nap’, which involves drinking coffee just before sleeping for 20 minutes. The idea is that sleep naturally clears adenosine, a chemical responsible for tiredness, from the brain, meaning the effects of the caffeine will be stronger when they kick in 20 minutes later.

At the Clerkenwell headquarters of juice makers Feel Good Drinks, staff nap on a beanbag bed: ‘You put some earplugs in, close your eyes and sleep for around 15 minutes,’ explains managing director Dave Wallwork. The most popular time of day, he says, is after lunch. Amazingly, no one’s yet been tempted to sleep all afternoon.

Sleep hacking

If you’re cutting down on sleep, you want to ensure what you get is high quality. Enter the ‘sleep hackers’ — people who use apps and wearable tech to measure how long they spend in each sleep phase. Sleep hackers use this data to draw correlations with variables, such as diet, adjusting their lifestyle to maximise deep sleep. Nick Wilsdon, head of content at a media agency, began sleep hacking in May. He wears a Zeo Sleep Manager headset, which uses sensors to monitor brain activity. He’s discovered that he sleeps more deeply in a cooler room. He’s also bought a Lumie Bodyclock to simulate sunset before bed (a more natural easing into darkness than turning a light off), and has installed the f.lux programme on his tablet so, when he uses it before bed, he can dim the blue light it emits, which is linked to sleep disruption. Improving his sleep in this way has reduced the amount he needs from eight hours to six, between 11pm and 5am. ‘By getting up earlier I can prepare lunch for my two daughters and get them ready for nursery. It also leaves me time to meet colleagues for breakfast or go to the gym before work. Other popular sleep ‘hacks’ include taking melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone; eating honey at night — the reasoning being that its glucose-rich content may prevent sugar lows from waking you; and lying on a spiky ‘induction mat’ in the evening to increase relaxation by stimulating acupressure points.

Bedtime learning

Teach-yourself-Spanish CDs, to be listened to while you slumber, have been around for decades. It’s only recently, however, that the idea has gained scientific credence. In June, researchers at the Swiss National Science Foundation claimed that listening to newly learned foreign vocabulary while sleeping can help solidify the memory of the words. ‘When you acquire memories during the day they are stored, for a short time, in the hippocampus, deep inside the brain,’ says Jakke Tamminen, a specialist in sleep and memory at Royal Holloway University. ‘We think that while you sleep the hippocampus replays these memories, and they begin to be retained by the neocortex, which retains information for longer periods.’ Ben Clark, an operations manager from Battersea, uses the technique to learn Latin: ‘I record myself reading phrases aloud, then play them on a speaker while I sleep. When I wake up, they’ve been absorbed by my subconscious.’

Dark rising

Forget waking at six — Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Apple boss Tim Cook, his new recruit Angela Ahrendts, and Robert Iger, head of the Walt Disney Company, are all said to rise at 4.30am. Iger reportedly spends the pre-dawn hours reading the papers, exercising and listening to music, while Cook goes to the gym and Ahrendts meditates and has a bath. ‘If I have more than six hours’ sleep, I get a headache,’ she once said. Fellow early-riser Sarah Lim, of recruitment firm CT Partners, writes reports and deals with clients in Asia. ‘I’ve been a morning person for as long as I can remember. It’s when I’m at my most creative.’ They may be onto something. In 2010, researchers at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany, found that early risers were more likely to be goal-oriented. Other studies have linked early rising with improved academic performance. The key to pulling it off? Getting an early night — Sarah goes to bed at 10pm.

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