Moment 50 - The Most Common Misconceptions About Sleep: Stephanie Romiszewski

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Steven Bartlett?

  You're an expert in this field, so you must, as you spoke to there, you must get pretty, I can feel it when you're speaking, get pretty pissed off when you see unhelpful information 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 common misconceptions that you speak to your patients about? You've mentioned one there about this like eight hours of sleep being the optimal.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:26Steven Bartlett?

  And even when I put out on my Instagram earlier, what are the key questions you want to ask? I'm speaking to a sleep therapist, expert today. I'd say the vast majority, or at least the medium question was, do I need to get exactly seven or eight hours of sleep?

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Every single night?

• 0:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that is definitely the biggest one we get. You do not, perfection is the enemy of the good. Have you ever heard that term?

• 0:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  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, 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

• 1:32Speaker 01

  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 behaviour. 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 missed 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.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  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 forty eight 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.

• 2:52Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  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, 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 ten top things that you should do, have a warm bath, never drink coffee ever again.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  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? Um, 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. Uh, 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.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  It doesn't know when to make you feel alert because you you've changed everything. And so of course you're not going to be sleepy at the right time in the evening.

• 4:29Steven Bartlett?

  The the time you wake up is the the a much more important time to be focused on.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  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 becau- 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.

• 5:12Steven Bartlett?

  Um, because that's kind of throwing your your your schedule off, is that what you're saying?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:17Steven Bartlett?

  So if you lie on the weekends and you're going to pay for it at some other point, right?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Why are we not looking, you 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.

• 5:36Steven Bartlett?

  Um, 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.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Um.

• 5:46Steven Bartlett?

  Um, what what's your sort of rebuttal to that? Because.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  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, I think people don't understand what I mean by sleep opportunity. I mean, every single night, most of the time, so about eighty percent 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 wanna be to sleep that is available to me during those hours.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  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, fifty, sixty years of insomnia, they often turn around to me. They're like, I don't know why I wasn't taught this. Um. 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.

• 7:08Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people, when they, you know, when they knew that I was speaking to you today, um, they wanna 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?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Okay. So the first thing I'd say is that you're never gonna find that reactive, very quick method. It's never gonna 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 gonna take you a, a few weeks, not a night. Um. But in the meantime, don't worry. It's okay. Like, part, part of this is, I just, there is a solution. So what I do is called cognitive behavioural 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.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  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, et cetera, are going to be 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.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  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.