Anna Fletcher: So, Vicki, what is your background and your interest in sleep?
Vicki Clupin: So I started out life as a cognitive psychologist, so I spent time working on memory and how to improve memory,
that was my topic on my PhD, and through that I became interested in sleep because I had a sleep disorder called sleep apnoea
and one of the most common symptoms of people with sleep apnoea is that their memory gets poorer
and they often go to the doctor because they think they have got memory problems and it turns out to be a sleep problem.
So I came into the sleep field really though my interest in memory,
but working in a sleep lab and doing some research with a colleague in a sleep lab I suddenly realised
that the topic of sleep was way more interesting than the topic of memory.
So I then became very interested in sleep and the wellbeing issue and topic around that
and about nine years ago I moved from a traditional academic institution to a business school environment
and realised that that topic of wellbeing and resilience, and particularly sleep, was so pertinent and so it went from there.
Anna: So why is sleep so important?
Vicki: It is so important in a whole variety of ways.
So physically, psychologically, emotionally, socially, it affects us in a whole variety of ways.
The study of sleep is a relatively new field, but within the last 10 or 15 years we have made huge inroads into understanding how it affects us.
It can affect us physically - we are more likely to pick up low lying bugs and germs, colds, stomach infections, those kinds of things.
Very chronic sleep debt - so sleep debt that goes on for a number of years and is quite chronic -
then that leads to much more significant and serious physical effects such as heart disease, stroke,
general cardio vascular issues, type 2 diabetes, obesity, so really quite significant issues.
On a more psychological side of things, it affects our communication skills, our social skills,
our decision making, our ability to judge risk, our problem solving, our creativity and on and on and on.
The list is quite vast.
Basically it does not take long at all: very poor sleep over a couple of nights and things start to fall down, high level decision making, creativity, problem solving.
Over longer periods of time it can really start to affect us physically and then lead to the much more serious physical effects.
So what does it not affect is probably a better question.
Anna: OK. So how much sleep do I need?
Vicki: Very good question. It is hugely individual.
A really good way of starting to think about it is the average healthy adult needs between roughly seven to eight hours a night,
so that is a good starting point, but then of course it is individual -
so you will have people who are very fit and healthy and happy to have less than seven or others who require more than eight.
But as a good starting point go for seven to eight and then judge in the morning when you wake up:
if you have had seven to eight, how to do you feel, good or bad?
You should be waking up generally, over a two-week period, you should be waking up feeling refreshed.
If you are saying you feel bad more frequently than good, and you are getting maybe seven hours,
that is a suggestion that maybe you need slightly more than that.
If you are waking up after 6½ hours and feeling fantastic, it is a suggestion may be you are one of those lucky people that needs less.
But as a rule of thumb, aim for around seven to eight hours.
Anna: And if I am a poor sleeper, what can I do about that?
Vicki: OK. A whole range of things. It depends why you are a poor sleeper.
So there are things that are sort of maybe keeping you awake at night, so sort of cognitively procrastinating,
going around things over and over again in your head, we all do that.
A really good way of solving that or trying to help that is a couple of hours before you go to bed,
basically do something called free form writing - blank sheet of paper, stopwatch for three minutes and just write.
Do not make sense of it: you are not writing a list, you are not writing a novel you just write, write, write,
you are not allowed to take your pen off the paper and you do it for three solid minutes.
It is quite hard to do because we are just not hardwired to do that, we want to make sense of it,
but it is almost like a psychological trick of outputting everything that is in your head on to that sheet of paper.
As long as you do not do it quite close to bed that really might help.
And then there are things like poor sleep hygiene, so things like watching TV too close to bed,
reading an engaging book too close to bed, eating food too close to sleep time, exercising too close to sleep time...
So again, the general rule of thumb is make sure that with those kinds of activities you have got at least a two-hour gap before you go to bed.
TV and books are OK, but they should not be cognitively engaging, because the minute you start to engage yourself cognitively, you are waking yourself up.
Blue light, laptops, tablets are a definite no no, again about two hours before bed, and then there is the bedroom environment,
so making sure that you are not working in the bedroom, making sure that the temperature in the bedroom is not too hot or too cold,
making sure that if you have had a warm bath or a warm shower, you have let your body temperature cool very slightly
before you fall asleep because we do not tend to fall asleep very effectively when we are too hot.
So there is general sort of bedroom hygiene things
and then there are things to check so that you do not wake up in the middle of the night so is the central heating clock clicking on and waking you up?
Have you got a bright outside light that is turning on and waking you up?
Do you have small children coming along and poking you in the eyes?
Those are the kinds of things, the external environment, that can also affect you
and then really basics like your duvet and your pillow, those are also things that can really affect the quality of your sleep.
So you have to look at sort of the internal environment, what is going on in your head, and the external environment as well.
Anna: Great. Thanks very much.
Vicki: My pleasure.