What is the main message of Sleep Smarter?

The main message of Sleep Smarter is that improving our sleep habits can transform our health and well-being.

Who is the author of Sleep Smarter?

The author of Sleep Smarter is Shawn Stevenson.

Health & Nutrition

Sleep Smarter Book Summary - Sleep Smarter Book explained in key points

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Sleep Smarter summary

Name: Sleep Smarter
Rating: 4.5 (856 reviews)
Author: Shawn Stevenson

Shawn Stevenson

21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to A Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success

4.5 (856 ratings)

19 mins

Brief summary

Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson is an informative book that provides tips and tricks for improving the quality of sleep. It explains the science behind sleep, covers common sleep disorders, and suggests healthy habits for sleeping better.

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Skills Sleep

Table of Contents

Sleep Smarter
Summary of 6 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Learn the keys to some quality Zs.

We’ve all been there: waking up from a bad night’s sleep, we drift through the day like half-conscious zombies, yawning uncontrollably and unable to focus on our work. We dream about the moment we can get back to bed, but as soon as our head hits the pillow, we’re suddenly wide awake. It’s a nightmare.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Sleep can be a wonderful, rejuvenating experience, a time for repairing our bodies and refreshing our minds. And although the modern world seems intent on destroying the sanctity of sleep with screens, artificial lights and strenuous demands on our time, you can use modern science to push back against this.

That’s where these blinks come in.They’ll equip you with the fundamentals of sleep science and their relationship to our physiology. And with them in hand, you’ll be armed with a host of practical, biology-backed tips, which will help you drift off faster and sleep deeper. This knowledge will have an instant, noticeable impact on your life.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

Which specific hormones play a vital role in rest and recovery;
Why sleep is more rejuvenating during a certain period of the night; and
How houseplants can improve our rest.

The importance of sleep is overlooked and underrated.

In our modern world, which prizes speed and productivity, sleep can seem like such a waste of time. If we’re swamped with work or overwhelmed by a laundry list of tasks, the first thing that we sacrifice is our sleep. This war on rest has become so acute that the average person’s sleeping hours have decreased from roughly nine hours to seven.

But there are big problems with painting sleep as the enemy of productivity. When you’re sleep deprived, not only are you slower and less creative – you also accomplish less.

One study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, found that surgeons awake for over 24 hours took up to 14 percent longer to complete tasks and made 20 percent more mistakes once they did. And if there’s one person you don’t want to slip up, it’s your surgeon.

One primary reason for this is that sleep deprivation reduces the brain’s glucose content – an essential carbohydrate that your grey matter uses as fuel. And this glucose starvation doesn’t affect all parts of your brain equally; the ones that are hardest hit are your parietal lobe and prefrontal cortex, which are involved with problem-solving and high-level thinking. After 24 hours without sleep, glucose in these regions decreases between 12 and 14 percent.

Furthermore, several studies have shown that skipping one night of rest makes us as insulin resistant as a type-2 diabetic. Having an insufficient amount of this essential hormone leads directly to weight gain, signs of aging and decreased sexual drive.

Thus, sleep is not the enemy of productivity or an obstacle to overcome. It is a necessary restorative state, vital for our physical and psychological well-being. We simply cannot be healthy or function at peak performance without good quality sleep.

That’s partly because being awake is catabolic, while sleep is anabolic. Catabolism occurs when molecules oxidize – they combine with oxygen, causing them to break down. Anabolism is the opposite of this: it constructs molecules from smaller units, literally building us up. So, while we sleep our bodies are repairing themselves – fighting signs of aging and strengthening our immune, muscular and skeletal systems.

Hopefully now you understand the value of a good night’s rest and that scaling back on sleep in the name of productivity is counterproductive. So, what can you do to increase the quality of your Zs? Find out in the next blink!

When it comes to sleep, light is our best friend and worst enemy.

Sleep is a basic life need we cannot compromise on. And now that we’ve seen the light, it’s time to talk about just that: light. It’s something we usually take for granted, but it has a huge impact on the quality of our rest.

To understand this, we need to understand melatonin. This is a hormone produced by our brain’s pineal gland, and it has powerful rejuvenation and antioxidant properties. But, most importantly, it regulates the body’s circadian rhythm – our internal body clock, which tells us when to sleep.

For good-quality sleep, timing is everything.

It’s all well and good to do the right thing, but doing it at the wrong time is completely counterproductive, like applying sunscreen in the evening or watering flowers in the rain. This is especially true for sleep. We can do everything right, but if we don’t pay attention to our timing, we won’t get the best rest we possibly can. So let’s look at some timing tips that will improve our nightly rest.

First, we should respect our internal body clock by going to bed within 30 minutes of the same time every night.

To snooze soundly, make the correct lifestyle choices.

Understanding the biological aspects of sleep is an enormous help, but biology is only one side of the coin. To push our sleep game to the next level, we need to combine this knowledge with the right lifestyle.

First up, we need to set an unbreakable caffeine curfew.

Maintaining a healthy mind and body is crucial for a great sleep.

As we’ve seen, good quality sleep is essential for maintaining a healthy body and a sharp mind. But the opposite is also true: a healthy body and mind are vital if we want a good night’s sleep.

Let’s start with the body. Did you know that one of the benefits of exercising is better quality sleep?

Creating a sleep sanctuary gives us the best possible environment to rest in.

What’s the use of all these sleep suggestions if we’re going to ignore the place we sleep in? Our surroundings have a huge impact on the quality of our rest, so taking sleep seriously means taking our bedrooms seriously by creating a sleep sanctuary.

The key point here is that our sleep sanctuary should have fresh, clean air and provoke feelings of relaxation.

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What is Sleep Smarter about?

Sleep Smarter (2014) is your quickstart manual for improving the quality of your sleep. Drawing from a host of scientific studies and punctuated with practical tips, this accessible guide promises to change the way you think about sleep and give you a better night’s rest, starting tonight.

Sleep Smarter Review

Sleep Smarter (2016) is a valuable book that offers practical advice on improving sleep quality and optimizing our overall health. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It presents a science-backed approach to sleep, providing actionable tips and strategies to help us maximize our sleeping potential.
Combining expert advice, research findings, and personal anecdotes, the book is informative, relatable, and easily relatable to our own sleep struggles.
Shawn Stevenson's engaging storytelling style keeps readers hooked, making the topic of sleep fascinating and definitely not boring.

Who should read Sleep Smarter?

Productivity enthusiasts who think sleep is a waste of time
Insomniacs who need help drifting off
Those waking up feeling exhausted

About the Author

Shawn Stevenson studied business, biology and kinesiology at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, before founding Advanced Integrative Health Alliance – a company providing wellness services for individuals and organizations worldwide. He is also a keynote speaker and podcaster, having spoken at TEDx and created The Model Health Show podcast.

Categories with Sleep Smarter

Health & Nutrition

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