I NO LONGER BELIEVE THAT SLEEP IS OVERRATED

For many years, I believed that sleep was overrated. I am one of those people who can get by on relatively little sleep, and at one point I figured out that I could function pretty well with 4 ½ hours of sleep a night although I preferred to get at least 5. I would justify it by telling myself that I sleep faster than most other people, and that people who sleep 8 hours a night miss out on a lot of life. I had a fair amount of support from society because there was no shortage of reports of highly achieving people who got by on minimal amounts of sleep.

Within the past decade, as sleep science became more developed and prominent, there was too much research being produced that demonstrated the importance of sleep for both physical and cognitive health for me to ignore. When we moved from the suburbs to Center City (that’s what we Philadelphians call our downtown), my commute to work reduced from almost an hour door-to-door to 8 minutes. I put the gain in commuting time into sleep time and made my sleep goal 6 ½ hours a night. I learned a few things by doing so – like yawning doesn’t have to be a normal part of my day, and I could schedule patients during the hour after lunch without fearing whether I would remain awake.

During Libby’s final months, my sleep became more irregular as I was on a heightened state of alertness if she got up during the night so that I could be available to help her if needed. Now that I unfortunately have total control over my sleep schedule, I’ve discovered a couple of things that work for me. Because I typically haven’t had trouble falling asleep, I never paid much attention to going to bed a specific time. Although I told other people that they should, I allowed myself about a 2-hour window, depending how tired I felt. I now have a regular bedtime, which is actually pretty late, but I’ve been resisting the urge to go to bed earlier just because I’m tired – and that actually works as well as being in line with some principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy of Insomnia (CBT-I). I wake up refreshed and function well on 6-7 hours of sleep a night and don’t feel sleep deprived.

What I hadn’t anticipated is how having a structured sleep pattern sets me up for a successful day. By getting up at roughly the same time each day with a good energy level, it enables me to make and keep a schedule that includes work, exercise, home chores, and relaxation. I don’t have to be playing catch up because I’m not worn out before I could get to the next thing on my schedule. If I get an unexpected pleasant surprise, like a visit from a grandchild or an invitation from a friend for a leisurely lunch, I may fall behind on my schedule for that day – but it won’t make me further behind like it would in previous times when I was always already a few days behind.

While I don’t know if I’d be a comfortable about it if I had all that I have to do and needed 9 hours of sleep a night, but I’m also not sure that I wouldn’t be able to make it work. I am now a believer in the physical, cognitive, and psychological benefits of getting sufficient sleep.