P(good sleep): How Can We Sleep Better?

Increasing the probability of good sleep

Rob Henderson writes:

As far back as I can remember I’ve had difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. I solved the first issue years ago by placing my phone on the other side of the room and reading a book before bed each night until my eyes get tired. Usually I fall asleep within 15 minutes.

But staying asleep remained an issue—until very recently. Many of you are aware that I recently moved to New York. I had to buy a new bed. I went with an Eight Sleep setup. Heard a million ads on podcasts etc. and tuned it all out. Huge mistake on my part. Now I'm mad I didn't get one way sooner. When I used to wake up in the middle of the night, the usual problem was temperature. I’d be too warm, or (less frequently) too cold, and struggle to find a comfortable temperature to fall asleep.

A number of years ago Bryan Caplan wrote something similar:

During the last five years, I put many of my concerns on hold so I could finish The Case Against Education. Now that the project is wrapping up, I’m doubling back. Many of the tasks are non-academic, like refinishing my childhood furniture. But I also have a list of topics I want – nay, need – to learn more about. For starters, I’m looking for high-quality systematic evidence-based work on the following:

1. The science of health – including but not limited to the net health effects of alcohol, antihistamines, sunscreen, and indoor air pollution, and the best ways of preventing diabetes and Lyme disease.

2. The science of diet. What does the best evidence say about healthy diet? To what extent are the effects simply mediated through obesity, versus other channels?

3. The science of sleep. I’ve always been a bad sleeper: trouble falling asleep when I was young, trouble waking up too early in recent years. Can science help me?

So let’s consider this hypothetical question from the audience: “I want to fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly through the night, what should I do?”

Answer: While I don’t know the exact cause of your sleep problems I’m tempted to list a few possible causes:

1. Sedentary lifestyle, particularly sedentary work combined with lack of exercise

2. City congestion: small, expensive living quarters along with sedentary commute

3. Poor temperature control of your bedroom(s)

4. Stress caused by our decisions to take on certain projects and associate with certain people

5. And maybe diet, particularly not the right mix of protein, carbohydrates, fats, fruits, vegetables, fiber, and water

Poor sleep has been a problem through the ages, but the poor sleep I’m writing about here is of the First World type: One in which our individual decisions and priorities influence our quality of sleep, or if we’re talking about children, our parents decisions and priorities influencing our quality of sleep. We can contrast this with Third World-type sleep loss, which to a larger extent tends to be further beyond our individual control and decision making.

If I think about this problem stochastically I would assign a probably of good sleep variable, call it P (good sleep), to predict the likelihood that I sleep well on any given night. It would be dependent on the above factors 1-5.

So, P (good sleep) is dependent on my decisions to take a certain type of job, live in a certain location, associate with certain people, take on certain projects, eat certain foods, and prioritize certain temperature control technologies. Sure there are many other factors, some beyond our control. We could list these and make this more complicated, but I’m limiting the scope here to this set of variables because they are things we can control, perhaps.

Solutions (albeit not easy solutions)

If I want to sleep better what should I do?

Temperature control

Get control of the temperature in your bedroom, and your home in general. If you don’t own your home, this can be difficult. If you do own your home, investing in high quality central HVAC can help. It should be quiet and provide you with reliable temperature in all the important rooms in your house, which is probably all of them.

Look for a variable-speed system that uses flexible ducting. A mini-split architecture is another option common in Japan.

Avoid complicated zoned systems that attempt to control the temperature of multiple zones of your house using one central unit. This type of system relies on dampers (valves) to steer hot or cold air to different rooms of your house. The odds of obtaining reliable temperature control over all of your zones decreases as you attempt to vary the temperature between them in order to save money.

If you’re truly interested in quality sleep, consider multiple independent single-zone systems. These can be sized specifically for each area of your house. Shutting one system off will not significantly affect the performance of the other system. They are independent.

And don’t forget about your children and guests. Make sure their bedrooms have reliable temperature control as well.

When you invest in temperature control your P(good sleep) should increase.

Anecdote: I had trouble sleeping as a kid on cold winter nights in South Lake Tahoe (elevation 6225ft, think Donner Party cold). I slept on a water bed for a number of years. My dad and step-mom slept upstairs and my sister and I slept down downstairs. Heat rises. The temperature was set by them to be comfortable upstairs. Downstairs was cold. Some nights our water pipes would ring loudly as they started to freeze. I would awaken to this ringing noise and my dad would come downstairs and turn on our bathroom faucets to prevent the water in our pipes from solidifying. This would also stop the noise. He would leave the faucets dripping the rest of the night.

My sister was probably warmer than me since she was sleeping on a regular mattress. My seventies-era water bed was another story. It had a dial to vary the temperature of the water mattress, but I could never get it right. Each time I adjusted the knob it would take a few days to come to equilibrium. Some nights I would be so cold I would crank it to maximum heat and still shiver through the night. Two days later I would be burning hot. As I result, I lost a lot of sleep as a kid. Finally I figured it out, and asked for a regular bed, but that wasn’t until later in high school. How many IQ points did I loose (at the time) over poor temperature control of my bedroom and bed? More than zero.

Sedentary lifestyle

One cause of poor sleep is lack of physical movement and lack of physical exertion during the day. If we choose sedentary work, eight hours of each day will likely involve little movement and may require sitting in front of a computer or in meetings, often only moving our head, mouths, fingers, and arms.

On top of this we may have a sedentary commute and may do sedentary activities after work. For many this might appear “normal,” but it isn’t from an evolutionary perspective, especially for men and boys. We need a certain amount of physical movement and exertion everyday.

One consequence of this sedentary lifestyle, is the emergence of exercise. In the past we got enough exercise through hunting, gathering, fishing, farming, cleaning, building, making, carrying, etc. Now we have power tools, combustion engines, and machines to do our routine physical labor. Even construction worker might drive a Caterpillar front-loader for many hours each day. As a result we now have to exercise after work. And for many, exercise feels like more work.

So we have a couple of options here:

1. Make exercise less like work and hence more enjoyable

2. Choose an occupation that requires more exercise

3. Choose a method of commuting that requires more exercise

4. And in general choose activities outside of work that are more physically demanding

With those general ideas in mind, we don’t want to get too much exercise because this can also lead to poor sleep as well. There is an optimal amount of daily exercise with regard to your quality of sleep. How to quantify this? I’ll just say, get an Apple Watch or similar device and complete your rings everyday. Apple has thought about this problem a great deal more than me. When I complete my rings, my P(good sleep) increases.

Option 1-4 are much easier said than done. Extreme solutions that have worked for me: quitting my office job; moving out of a congested city to a lower cost county; bike commuting; reading books at the gym; and playing sports with my kids. I have many other ideas to promote more exercise, but these may not be enough. Subscribe to my Scout Fitness newsletter to learn more.

Moving away from a sedentary lifestyle might require a complete change of scenery and career change. This is a huge topic, so more on that another time.

If you’ve changed your place of residence or career in pursuit of more physical activity please feel free to share your story in the comments.

Stress

When I don’t sleep well it’s often because I’ve been wronged by someone or an unfortunate even has occurred. For example, someone might have swindled some money from me or failed to fulfill their end of a deal. I can’t control other people, but I can choose to do less. I can choose to take on smaller projects or at least spread them out over longer time periods. I can make smaller, less demanding commitments. I can avoid making promises to certain deadlines. I can be more realistic in my assumptions. I can better research the backgrounds of the people I choose to work with.

When starting a new project, I should ask myself how will this affect my P(good sleep)?

This is a big, complicated topic that I can only touch on lightly here right now. More on this in the future.

For now let’s just summarize this section with the following. In order to reduce stress:

1. Simplify your activities

2. Remember to think carefully about who you work with

3. Proceed cautiously, prudently and think through the next few steps

4. Have awareness that other people don’t see or understand things like you do, especially your children. They are likely encountering certain things for the first time. Go easy on them. Might be true of your spouse as well.

Diet

Diet and exercise are coupled. We vary our daily diet based on our physical activity. I tend to eat more pasta and bread after doing more exercise as I need those extra calories. But if I’ve been sitting all day, a bunch of pasta and bread is going to reduce my P(good sleep).

Here are a few quick, basic thoughts on this topic.

1. Eat the right amount. To increase P(good sleep) don’t eat too much or too little. Obvious, but how to improve?

2. Do exercise to promote hydration. We know that drinking water can help us feel better, help digest food, and help us sleep better. So why don’t we drink enough water? I blame lack of physical exertion. Exercise promotes drinking H20, and optimal H20 promotes better digestion.

3. Get enough fiber, fat and protein. Carbs are plentiful in the First World: cereal, cheap bread, pasta, and rice are abundant. In order to increase P(good sleep) prioritize daily fresh fruits at all meals. Cook yourself a good vegetable at dinner. Invest in high quality baked or grilled fish, chicken, beef and pork. Again obvious, but how to improve? Shopping at the right store is a good starting place.

4. Don’t eat out.

For more on diet subscribe to The Art of Simple Food newsletter.

Religion, Philosophy and Ideology

Lastly we might include all of these factors into a framework that could be labeled as a personal religion or personal philosophy: a set of beliefs and habits that are pretty unique to you. This would include means of improving, growing, and learning. The world is going to change, so how are we going to adapt to this change? Through our religion; through our personal philosophy. Notice that I don’t use religion in the way that other people use the term. I’m trying to change the meaning of religion rather than amending the First Amendment to include all aspects of our personal lives that should be protected from governmental distortions, prohibitions, interferences and subsidies.

And because we are social creatures, composed of groups of families, this religion or philosophy will tend to resemble a social platform and include church, social media, school, politics, LLMs, ideology, etc.

This is one reason why ask things like, “What is your food ideology?” Diet isn’t just the science of health. It’s actually pretty complicated. It can depend on your politics, your religion, and if and where you attend(ed) college.

Similarly exercise, sleep, occupation, and the physicality of our lifestyles depend on religion, location, politics, technology, culture, philosophy, education, etc.

All of this we might roll into something called “truth.” Truth is what works best for you and your family. And you may likely defend that truth just as people have defended religious truth throughout history — with your life and your liberty.

So these are big, important topics to discuss. Sleep is really important. Without good sleep we can go crazy. And if we don’t get good sleep it can knock points off our IQ. That’s just a fancy term for being able to think well.