Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, guys, how did you sleep last night? Were you
out like a light as soon as your head hit
the pillow or was it a bit more tossing and
turning with those racing thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We've all been there. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Experts have been looking into the different stages of sleep
for a really long time, and it turns out there
actually might be more stages of sleep than we originally thought.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
That's what we're getting into in today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
We're finding out what happens to our bodies when we
go to sleep, why some people find out harder than
others to get to sleep, and some advice on how
to get a better night's sleep as well.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm at Krithruk and this is What's in the World
from the BBC World Service.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I'm here with Caroline Steele, who has been looking into
all of the science behind the sleep. She's the gal
who's in the know. First off, Caroline, how did you
sleep last night?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Not very well. It maybe took me like an hour
and a half to fall sleep, and then I woke
up hot, so I opened the window and then I
got worken up by birds and then the bins being collected. Yeah,
so not a disaster, but I'm not feeling my best.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Oh no, sorry to hear that. But how do you
normally sleep? What kind of sleeper are you?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I take a long time to fall asleep, and then
if I wake up, I take a long time to
fall back asleep. So i'd say in general, I'm a
bad sleeper, and I kind of feel like I'm constantly
on a quest to like work out how to fall
asleep better, but I'm not very good at it.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I feel like I can pretty much blame my head
done anywhere, and now I'll get to sleep.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oh, a bit of a skill. I don't mean to brag.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I'm so jealous. And you fall asleep on a train,
That's what I'm always really jealous. Put their head in
their hand.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Kind of embarrassing sometimes as well.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Okay, so you're the opposite of me. If I want
to fall asleep, I have to have this imask. I
have to have ear plugs as well. I take these
with me everywhere I go, and I use a lamp
to wake me up in the morning. That sort of
mimic sunrise, and I feel like that maybe helps.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Why is there such a difference? Sometimes then some people
filing it much harder than others to get to sleep, So.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
There's lots of different reasons. It's partly a genetic lottery,
so there are thousands of different genes which influence how
easily we do or don't fall asleep, So it's partly
kind of the hand you're dealt when you're born. It's
also down to feeling safe. So if you don't feel
safe in that moment, it's really hard to fall asleep.
So if you imagine trying to fall asleep with your
front door wide open, that would be hard, right. But
(02:30):
it's also down to how safe you felt as a child.
Some research shows that if you felt unsafe or when
neglected as a child, you're sort of you can become
wired to be super alert, which is a really useful
adaptation if you're growing up in an unsafe environment. But
when you're older, you're safe, you're tired, and you just
want to sleep. Well, it's not so helpful. And it's
also down to our mental health. You know, if you're
(02:52):
more anxious, if you've got sort of more racing thoughts,
that's also been shown to keep you up at night.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
There is a lot of different factors affecting the coal
of the sleep. I want to talk a little bit
about the science behind all of this and what actually
happens to our bodies when we go to sleep.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
What do we know about that.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah, so it's quite hard to study sleeps. We don't
know everything, but we do know that there is a
collection of brain cells, a collection of neurons in the hypothalamus,
which is part of the brain that's sort of responsible
for regulating our body function. And they're synchronized with the
outside world, so they're synchronized with when it's light and
dark outside, and during the day, when it's light, they're
(03:30):
more active, and they do things like increasing your heart rate,
increasing your body temperature, and then at night they calm
down a bit, they become less active, your heart rate decreases,
your body temperature decreases, all sort of in preparation for
you falling asleep. And then there's also this really interesting
chemical called a denozine, which basically builds up in your
brain as you're awake, as your brain cells are hard
(03:53):
at work, they make a denozine, and a denozine sort
of gives you this pressure and need to fall asleep,
and luckily, once you do fall asleep, your brain sort
of clears it and you wake up the next day
feeling refreshed. But yeah, it's down to the build up
of adenizine and these incredible cells in your brain that
are synchronized with the outside world.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
All right, Well, we've been finding out what happens to
the body when we don't get enough sleep. Jonathan tam
is a sleep doctor an expert. He sent us this,
Let's have a listen.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Don't sleep during the night. You can't process the things
you've done during the day, you can't lay down the
memories of the new things that you've done, and you
may be more affected by any traumatic experiences that have happened.
We know sleep is important for our immune system, so
if you don't get it, you may not be able
to throw off those pesky cold as easily, and you
may not respond to vaccines as well. During the day,
(04:42):
toxins can build up in our brain. These are removed
during sleep, and there's some evidence to suggest that if
they're not we may be more at risk for conditions
like Alzheimer's disease later in life. Quite apart from all
of this, your brain knows just how important sleep is,
and if you don't get it one night and the
next day it will make you feel exhausted to encourage
(05:02):
you to get more.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I know that you recently went to a sleep lab,
right what happened there?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
What did you go through?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So I went to a sleep lab in Cardiff in Wales,
which was really really interesting. They sort of have all
these rooms which are sort of designed for a perfect
night's sleep. They've got no windows, so there's no light
to wake you up. They're at the perfect temperature, so
everything's sort of in favor of you falling asleep, apart
from the fact that they put electrodes on your scalp,
(05:30):
which isn't super comfortable. So I sort of had a
cap with electrodes attached to the skin on my scalp
to monitor my brain as I was falling asleep. And
so they're sort of looking for two things in particular.
They're looking for alpha waves, which are a sign that
you're conscious and aware. So when your alpha waves sort
of disappear, it shows that you're falling asleep. And they're
(05:51):
also looking for signs of rapid eye movement, which is
one of the stages of sleep, so that can sort
of tell you at what stage of sleep you are.
I didn't fall asleep.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Oh no, I was going to say, you must have
fallen asleep, you're in a sleep lab.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I didn't fall asleep, which was really frustrating. I think
the added pressure of being like, I'm in a sleep lab.
I want to learn about my brain when I'm asleep,
I must fall asleep. I just sort of lay there,
really frustrated. But I got to see my sort of
brain graph afterwards, which was really interesting. I could see
the alpha waves becoming more spaced out and sort of
less frequent as I was sort of drifting off, but
(06:29):
then I'd suddenly jolt back awake and the alpha waves
would be back. So yeah, it's a very frustrating, frustrating experience.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, Oh my gosh. But we heard about those sleep
stages there with the RAM stage as well.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I wondered if you could tap.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Me through that a little bit more, because there could
be more sleep stages than we thought.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, so it sort of generally accepted that there are
four stages of sleep. There's light sleep, deeper sleep, the
deepest sleep, and then AREM sleep that's the rapid eye
movement sleep, which is what happens when you're sort of
dreaming and your eyes are darting all over the place,
and we sort of cycle through those stages about once
every ninety minutes. But I interviewed a scientist from the
(07:10):
University of Oxford who's looked at people asleep in MRI
scanners and he thinks there could be as many as
nineteen different stages of sleep. Wow, Yeah, which is really interesting.
And he thinks we don't sort of necessarily go through
them one after the others. We don't go one, two, three, four, five, six,
We could go stage four, stage nine, stage twelve, stage two,
(07:31):
and that there's sort of a many different routes into sleep,
but for now, sort of more research needed.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And what if you enter a different stage at just
so much later time than you normally would like? For example,
probably lots of listeners can relate to coming back from
a night out at three am.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Do we know what happens to the body then? Does
it go into a certain stage or what happens?
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Well, you'll still if we're talking about the four stages
of sleep, you'll still sort of progress through the difference stages.
But if you have to wake up at a certain time,
it might be that you end up sort of getting
yanked out of sleep at say a really deep stage
of sleep when you weren't really ready to wake up.
So as well as getting enough sleep, it's great if
you can wake up at the right point in your
(08:15):
sleep cycle so you don't sort of feel that, you know,
when your alarm goes off and it feels really jarring.
That can be avoided if you can sync up with
your sleep cycle.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And I know you're not an expert, but you've been
through the journeys. You're still going through the journey. Do
you have any advice for getting a good night's sleep?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
What's helped you?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Oh, there's so many different things you can do. I
guess it's kind of it's worth working out what it
is that's stopping you from falling asleep. So it could
be your environment, which is great if you can change it.
So you want to be in a dark room, so
if you're not in a dark room, get an eye
mask like me. You want to be in a quiet space.
If it's not quiet, I would recommend using ear plugs.
You want it to be a good temperature, so about
(08:56):
nineteen degrees, which I know is really hard if you're
somewhere it's hot and it's summer. I'm struggling with that
at the moment, so I'm using a fan and leaving
my window open, but with that comes extra noise, so
it's difficult. If you're someone who's kept up by anxiety
and racing thoughts, it's a good idea to try and
do something before bed that will distract you from those.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So the sort of research shows that, you.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Know, doing things like reading a book that takes you
into another world or chatting to a friend or something
like that could really help. And then not doing things
like drinking caffeine that can make a huge difference. So
caffeine is incredible. It blocks the receptors in our brains
for a denizine, which is the chemical I mentioned before
that sort of builds up and makes us feel tired.
(09:39):
So it can really help if you're feeling sort of
symptoms of sleepiness, but then it can stop be falling
asleep later. So avoiding things like caffeine, avoiding alcohol, which
also disrupts your duration and quality of sleep as well.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Okay, well let's bring in the expert on this.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
We've got some sleep tips for you.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
All you've heard from Jonathan tam the Sleep Doctor, A
little bit earlier. Let's bring him back see what his
tips are.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
We can help sleep by trying to help our body clock.
You can do that by getting up at roughly the
same time every day and seeking light when you do,
but avoiding it later into the evenings. You can also
get into trouble if you spend a lot of time
in bed awake, at which point you might start to
associate your bed, bedroom, even the act of trying to
(10:23):
sleep with wakefulness. So if you are having trouble with
your sleep, it's important only to go to bed when
you start feeling sleepy, to not have a rigid bedtime.
And if you do find yourself lying in bed awake
for long periods, then simply get up, go somewhere else
and do something else until you feel sleepy. If you're
choosing to do other things in the bedroom, like reading,
(10:43):
watching television, even working, try and take those things somewhere
else and save the bedroom for sleep and intimacy with partners.
But through all of this it's important to recognize that
sleep isn't something you can try to do. It's something
that comes to you, and if it doesn't, well, some
times you just have to give yourself a bit of
slack and let it come to you. Now. A couple
(11:06):
of bad nights here and there are part of life.
But if you find yourself sleeping badly for more than
three months, it's definitely time to the adopter.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So I know you know you went on this personal
mission for this documentary. Has your sleep improved since then?
How you discovered more about your sleep?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
At least since then.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I've definitely discovered more about my sleep, and my sleep
has improved, but not for probably the reason you'd think
it it would. So I every morning I wake up,
I have a coffee, and then sort of throughout the
day I'll have a couple of decaf coffees. I normally
have a decaf coffee before bed as well. And I
went to replace my coffee pods a couple of weeks ago,
(11:46):
and I realized that my decaf pod was sat box
of pods was sat where my caffeinated pods should be,
and my caffeated pods was sat where my decaf pods
would be. So for the last three months and while
making this program and while going to the sleep Lab,
I've been waking up having a dcaf coffee wondering why
I still felt awful, and then just before bed drinking caffeine,
(12:09):
so I'd say, really pay attention to what coffee you're drinking.
So yeah, since I fixed that, I'm sleeping much better.
But not for any reason other than you know, realizing
I made a really stupid mistake before.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Oh well, at least she got there in there.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Got there in the air. Yeah. Three months of bad
sleep just due to accidentally putting my caffeinated pods in
the wrong place.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Oh my gosh, Caroline, thank you so much for coming
on chatting all things sleep. I learned a lot and
I hope you get some good sleep as well. Thank
you all try. I don't know about you, guys, but
I'm taking notes of all of those sleep tips.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
It's been so useful. What's helped you guys get a
better night sleep in the past? Comment below.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We're going to read all of them, like and subscribe
to You've been watching What in the World from the
BBC World Service.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I'm at Kriffrouke and we'll see you guys next time.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Night
Hey, guys, how did you sleep last night? Were you
out like a light as soon as your head hit
the pillow or was it a bit more tossing and
turning with those racing thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We've all been there. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Experts have been looking into the different stages of sleep
for a really long time, and it turns out there
actually might be more stages of sleep than we originally thought.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
That's what we're getting into in today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
We're finding out what happens to our bodies when we
go to sleep, why some people find out harder than
others to get to sleep, and some advice on how
to get a better night's sleep as well.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm at Krithruk and this is What's in the World
from the BBC World Service.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I'm here with Caroline Steele, who has been looking into
all of the science behind the sleep. She's the gal
who's in the know. First off, Caroline, how did you
sleep last night?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Not very well. It maybe took me like an hour
and a half to fall sleep, and then I woke
up hot, so I opened the window and then I
got worken up by birds and then the bins being collected. Yeah,
so not a disaster, but I'm not feeling my best.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Oh no, sorry to hear that. But how do you
normally sleep? What kind of sleeper are you?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I take a long time to fall asleep, and then
if I wake up, I take a long time to
fall back asleep. So i'd say in general, I'm a
bad sleeper, and I kind of feel like I'm constantly
on a quest to like work out how to fall
asleep better, but I'm not very good at it.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I feel like I can pretty much blame my head
done anywhere, and now I'll get to sleep.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oh, a bit of a skill. I don't mean to brag.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I'm so jealous. And you fall asleep on a train,
That's what I'm always really jealous. Put their head in
their hand.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Kind of embarrassing sometimes as well.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Okay, so you're the opposite of me. If I want
to fall asleep, I have to have this imask. I
have to have ear plugs as well. I take these
with me everywhere I go, and I use a lamp
to wake me up in the morning. That sort of
mimic sunrise, and I feel like that maybe helps.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Why is there such a difference? Sometimes then some people
filing it much harder than others to get to sleep, So.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
There's lots of different reasons. It's partly a genetic lottery,
so there are thousands of different genes which influence how
easily we do or don't fall asleep, So it's partly
kind of the hand you're dealt when you're born. It's
also down to feeling safe. So if you don't feel
safe in that moment, it's really hard to fall asleep.
So if you imagine trying to fall asleep with your
front door wide open, that would be hard, right. But
(02:30):
it's also down to how safe you felt as a child.
Some research shows that if you felt unsafe or when
neglected as a child, you're sort of you can become
wired to be super alert, which is a really useful
adaptation if you're growing up in an unsafe environment. But
when you're older, you're safe, you're tired, and you just
want to sleep. Well, it's not so helpful. And it's
also down to our mental health. You know, if you're
(02:52):
more anxious, if you've got sort of more racing thoughts,
that's also been shown to keep you up at night.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
There is a lot of different factors affecting the coal
of the sleep. I want to talk a little bit
about the science behind all of this and what actually
happens to our bodies when we go to sleep.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
What do we know about that.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah, so it's quite hard to study sleeps. We don't
know everything, but we do know that there is a
collection of brain cells, a collection of neurons in the hypothalamus,
which is part of the brain that's sort of responsible
for regulating our body function. And they're synchronized with the
outside world, so they're synchronized with when it's light and
dark outside, and during the day, when it's light, they're
(03:30):
more active, and they do things like increasing your heart rate,
increasing your body temperature, and then at night they calm
down a bit, they become less active, your heart rate decreases,
your body temperature decreases, all sort of in preparation for
you falling asleep. And then there's also this really interesting
chemical called a denozine, which basically builds up in your
brain as you're awake, as your brain cells are hard
(03:53):
at work, they make a denozine, and a denozine sort
of gives you this pressure and need to fall asleep,
and luckily, once you do fall asleep, your brain sort
of clears it and you wake up the next day
feeling refreshed. But yeah, it's down to the build up
of adenizine and these incredible cells in your brain that
are synchronized with the outside world.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
All right, Well, we've been finding out what happens to
the body when we don't get enough sleep. Jonathan tam
is a sleep doctor an expert. He sent us this,
Let's have a listen.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Don't sleep during the night. You can't process the things
you've done during the day, you can't lay down the
memories of the new things that you've done, and you
may be more affected by any traumatic experiences that have happened.
We know sleep is important for our immune system, so
if you don't get it, you may not be able
to throw off those pesky cold as easily, and you
may not respond to vaccines as well. During the day,
(04:42):
toxins can build up in our brain. These are removed
during sleep, and there's some evidence to suggest that if
they're not we may be more at risk for conditions
like Alzheimer's disease later in life. Quite apart from all
of this, your brain knows just how important sleep is,
and if you don't get it one night and the
next day it will make you feel exhausted to encourage
(05:02):
you to get more.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I know that you recently went to a sleep lab,
right what happened there?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
What did you go through?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So I went to a sleep lab in Cardiff in Wales,
which was really really interesting. They sort of have all
these rooms which are sort of designed for a perfect
night's sleep. They've got no windows, so there's no light
to wake you up. They're at the perfect temperature, so
everything's sort of in favor of you falling asleep, apart
from the fact that they put electrodes on your scalp,
(05:30):
which isn't super comfortable. So I sort of had a
cap with electrodes attached to the skin on my scalp
to monitor my brain as I was falling asleep. And
so they're sort of looking for two things in particular.
They're looking for alpha waves, which are a sign that
you're conscious and aware. So when your alpha waves sort
of disappear, it shows that you're falling asleep. And they're
(05:51):
also looking for signs of rapid eye movement, which is
one of the stages of sleep, so that can sort
of tell you at what stage of sleep you are.
I didn't fall asleep.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Oh no, I was going to say, you must have
fallen asleep, you're in a sleep lab.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I didn't fall asleep, which was really frustrating. I think
the added pressure of being like, I'm in a sleep lab.
I want to learn about my brain when I'm asleep,
I must fall asleep. I just sort of lay there,
really frustrated. But I got to see my sort of
brain graph afterwards, which was really interesting. I could see
the alpha waves becoming more spaced out and sort of
less frequent as I was sort of drifting off, but
(06:29):
then I'd suddenly jolt back awake and the alpha waves
would be back. So yeah, it's a very frustrating, frustrating experience.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, Oh my gosh. But we heard about those sleep
stages there with the RAM stage as well.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I wondered if you could tap.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Me through that a little bit more, because there could
be more sleep stages than we thought.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, so it sort of generally accepted that there are
four stages of sleep. There's light sleep, deeper sleep, the
deepest sleep, and then AREM sleep that's the rapid eye
movement sleep, which is what happens when you're sort of
dreaming and your eyes are darting all over the place,
and we sort of cycle through those stages about once
every ninety minutes. But I interviewed a scientist from the
(07:10):
University of Oxford who's looked at people asleep in MRI
scanners and he thinks there could be as many as
nineteen different stages of sleep. Wow, Yeah, which is really interesting.
And he thinks we don't sort of necessarily go through
them one after the others. We don't go one, two, three, four, five, six,
We could go stage four, stage nine, stage twelve, stage two,
(07:31):
and that there's sort of a many different routes into sleep,
but for now, sort of more research needed.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And what if you enter a different stage at just
so much later time than you normally would like? For example,
probably lots of listeners can relate to coming back from
a night out at three am.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Do we know what happens to the body then? Does
it go into a certain stage or what happens?
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Well, you'll still if we're talking about the four stages
of sleep, you'll still sort of progress through the difference stages.
But if you have to wake up at a certain time,
it might be that you end up sort of getting
yanked out of sleep at say a really deep stage
of sleep when you weren't really ready to wake up.
So as well as getting enough sleep, it's great if
you can wake up at the right point in your
(08:15):
sleep cycle so you don't sort of feel that, you know,
when your alarm goes off and it feels really jarring.
That can be avoided if you can sync up with
your sleep cycle.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And I know you're not an expert, but you've been
through the journeys. You're still going through the journey. Do
you have any advice for getting a good night's sleep?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
What's helped you?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Oh, there's so many different things you can do. I
guess it's kind of it's worth working out what it
is that's stopping you from falling asleep. So it could
be your environment, which is great if you can change it.
So you want to be in a dark room, so
if you're not in a dark room, get an eye
mask like me. You want to be in a quiet space.
If it's not quiet, I would recommend using ear plugs.
You want it to be a good temperature, so about
(08:56):
nineteen degrees, which I know is really hard if you're
somewhere it's hot and it's summer. I'm struggling with that
at the moment, so I'm using a fan and leaving
my window open, but with that comes extra noise, so
it's difficult. If you're someone who's kept up by anxiety
and racing thoughts, it's a good idea to try and
do something before bed that will distract you from those.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So the sort of research shows that, you.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Know, doing things like reading a book that takes you
into another world or chatting to a friend or something
like that could really help. And then not doing things
like drinking caffeine that can make a huge difference. So
caffeine is incredible. It blocks the receptors in our brains
for a denizine, which is the chemical I mentioned before
that sort of builds up and makes us feel tired.
(09:39):
So it can really help if you're feeling sort of
symptoms of sleepiness, but then it can stop be falling
asleep later. So avoiding things like caffeine, avoiding alcohol, which
also disrupts your duration and quality of sleep as well.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Okay, well let's bring in the expert on this.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
We've got some sleep tips for you.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
All you've heard from Jonathan tam the Sleep Doctor, A
little bit earlier. Let's bring him back see what his
tips are.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
We can help sleep by trying to help our body clock.
You can do that by getting up at roughly the
same time every day and seeking light when you do,
but avoiding it later into the evenings. You can also
get into trouble if you spend a lot of time
in bed awake, at which point you might start to
associate your bed, bedroom, even the act of trying to
(10:23):
sleep with wakefulness. So if you are having trouble with
your sleep, it's important only to go to bed when
you start feeling sleepy, to not have a rigid bedtime.
And if you do find yourself lying in bed awake
for long periods, then simply get up, go somewhere else
and do something else until you feel sleepy. If you're
choosing to do other things in the bedroom, like reading,
(10:43):
watching television, even working, try and take those things somewhere
else and save the bedroom for sleep and intimacy with partners.
But through all of this it's important to recognize that
sleep isn't something you can try to do. It's something
that comes to you, and if it doesn't, well, some
times you just have to give yourself a bit of
slack and let it come to you. Now. A couple
(11:06):
of bad nights here and there are part of life.
But if you find yourself sleeping badly for more than
three months, it's definitely time to the adopter.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So I know you know you went on this personal
mission for this documentary. Has your sleep improved since then?
How you discovered more about your sleep?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
At least since then.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I've definitely discovered more about my sleep, and my sleep
has improved, but not for probably the reason you'd think
it it would. So I every morning I wake up,
I have a coffee, and then sort of throughout the
day I'll have a couple of decaf coffees. I normally
have a decaf coffee before bed as well. And I
went to replace my coffee pods a couple of weeks ago,
(11:46):
and I realized that my decaf pod was sat box
of pods was sat where my caffeinated pods should be,
and my caffeated pods was sat where my decaf pods
would be. So for the last three months and while
making this program and while going to the sleep Lab,
I've been waking up having a dcaf coffee wondering why
I still felt awful, and then just before bed drinking caffeine,
(12:09):
so I'd say, really pay attention to what coffee you're drinking.
So yeah, since I fixed that, I'm sleeping much better.
But not for any reason other than you know, realizing
I made a really stupid mistake before.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Oh well, at least she got there in there.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Got there in the air. Yeah. Three months of bad
sleep just due to accidentally putting my caffeinated pods in
the wrong place.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Oh my gosh, Caroline, thank you so much for coming
on chatting all things sleep. I learned a lot and
I hope you get some good sleep as well. Thank
you all try. I don't know about you, guys, but
I'm taking notes of all of those sleep tips.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
It's been so useful. What's helped you guys get a
better night sleep in the past? Comment below.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We're going to read all of them, like and subscribe
to You've been watching What in the World from the
BBC World Service.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I'm at Kriffrouke and we'll see you guys next time.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Night
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