Sleep snippet

"Practice does not make perfect, practice with a night of sleep is what makes perfect. Because you come back the next day and you’re 20-30% better in terms of your skilled performance than you were at the end of your practice session the day before” - Matthew Walker, Sleep expert & Neuroscientist.

△ We should get 7-9 hours of sleep per night. People who get <7 hours of sleep, show an objective decrease in physical and mental function.

△ Wakefulness is low level brain damage, but sleep offers a reparative function.

△ Sleep has multiple stages and each of these are important.

△ During deep sleep our mind paralyses your body so that we can dream safely.

△ Sedation is not sleep.

△ When we are sleep deprived we will consume an additional 200-300 calories per day.

△ Despite being heavily influenced by diet, we have a physiological drop in alertness between 2-4pm.

△ There is direct correlation between injury risk and hours of sleep. Athletes who are only getting 5 hours of sleep have a 60% increase in probability of injury risk during a sporting season.

△ When we are awake for >20 hours, we are as cognitively impaired as a drunk person.

Source: Walker, M. (2017). Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner