Dr. Matt Walker

It is very sensitive to sleep.

When you don't get enough, it goes in bad directions.

You used a very specific word, cleverly so.

That word was partially.

at first you hear or read that study, and Rhonda was never suggesting this too, I'm not saying that, you think, well, if it offsets blood sugar, and the study was saying exercise can nullify a lack of sleep,

you conflate that single outcome benefit with the idea that, well, but maybe it doesn't actually compensate for the deficits in immune function or cardiovascular disease concerns or my hormonal health or my learning and memory or my emotional and brain health.

Maybe it does, but maybe it doesn't.

So I think I would always just caution people to saying when you hear a study like that, it's very natural to think, oh, that must mean that it translates to everything else in my body and everything else in my brain.

It may, but it also may not be.

Okay.

We should do.

So I think other suggestions I would have after do nothing is,

would be try to think about limiting your time in bed.

If you are struggling with sleep, this is something that is used in probably the most well-validated psychological intervention for insomnia, and it's called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBTI for short.

What happens is that you work with a clinician, they interview you, they assess all of the reasons that you may not be sleeping, and then they create from their toolbox of many different options, a bespoke, tailored sort of Savile Rose Soup prescription for you, for your treatment.

If you look at the studies of that collection of different tools in the CBTI box for intervention of insomnia, and you ask, of all of those, which seems to carry the greatest impact on insomnia, which has the greatest sort of gravitas?

It seems to be this thing that we call bedtime rescheduling.

It used to be known as sleep restriction therapy, but obviously if you come to me and you say, look, I'm not sleeping very well, I've got insomnia.

I say, I understand, and I've got a treatment for you.

It's called sleep restriction therapy.