Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson – Summary With Notes and Highlights

📕Book Summary in 3 Sentences

What can I say about the book in 3 sentences?

1. Sleep is mandatory if we intend to live longer and disease-free
2. Staying up late invites chronic diseases to our bodies
3. Drinking Caffeinated Tea or Coffee 6 hours before sleep can disrupt our sleep cycle.

🤔 Major Insights/Ideas

What are the major insights or ideas in the book?

1. Insight 1: Being asleep helps us to rebuild our cells. Being awake is breaking down our cells. Sleeping is healing.
2. Insight 2: Having caffeinated Tea or Coffee 6 hours before sleeping can cause problems with getting to bed.
3. Insight 3: Being awake for more than 24 hours reduces your ability to think clearly
4. Insight 4: The best time to go to bed is before 10:00 pm every night.
5. Insight 5: Consistently staying up at night because of entertainment can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
6. Insight 6: Having a television in your kid’s room can lead to sleep problems and lower performance at school
7. Insight 7: For great sleep and better digestion, eat 90 minutes before bed.
8. Insight 8: During sleep, our short-term memories and experiences become long-term memories.

💬 Notable Quotes

What are your top quotes?

• If health is your number one priority, then don’t work the night shift.
• Give your body a solid 90 minutes (more is better) before heading off to bed after eating.
• Sleep is extremely important to me-I need to rest and recover in order for the training I do to be absorbed by my body. Usain Bolt

✍🏼  My Personal Reflections

How has your life/behavior/thoughts/ideas changed after reading the book?

• I am more careful about sleeping late. Daily, I do my best to wrap up my evening by 9:30 pm and go to bed.

💡 Actionable Steps/Ideas (if any):

• I started having early dinners. Because I wanted to eat 90 minutes before going to bed

🔆 Book Highlights

1. Generally, being awake is catabolic (breaks you down) and being asleep is anabolic (builds you up).
2. Research shows that after just 24 hours of sleep deprivation, there is an overall reduction of 6 percent in glucose reaching the brain. Simple translation: You get dumber.
3. When it comes to sleep benefits, all sunlight is not created equal. The body clock is most responsive to sunlight in the early morning, between 6:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
4. What this means is that not only is it not a good idea to have caffeine right before bedtime, but having a cup of coffee or caffeinated tea even as much as 6 hours before bed can cause sleep troubles.
5. It’s been shown that human beings get the most beneficial hormonal secretions and recovery by sleeping during the hours of 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.
6. International Agency for Research on Cancer has now classified overnight shift work as a Group 2A carcinogen. This means that staying up late repeatedly, and working overnight, is a strong enough cancer-causing agent to be lumped in with lead exposure and UVA radiation. Shawn Stevenson.
7. Authors of numerous studies suggest that the higher rates of diabetes in Night shift workers are because of the damaging effects this type of work has on insulin.
8. Just one night of sleep deprivation can make you as insulin resistant as a person with type 2 diabetes. So, whether you’re staying up late for the purpose of work or the purpose of entertainment, doing this consistently could lead to the graveyard shift showing you exactly what the name really means.
9. Much of what we are doing late at night can be done during the day with some smart planning and prioritisation.
10. If health is your number one priority, then don’t work the night shift.
11. Sleep experts suggest that your room be so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face.
12. Sleep is extremely important to me-I need to rest and recover in order for the training I do to be absorbed by my body. Usain Bolt
13. Data show that children with televisions in their bedrooms score lower on school exams and are more likely to have sleep problems.
14. Give your body a solid 90 minutes (more is better) before heading off to bed after eating.
15. A breakfast of a vegetable omelet, sliced avocado topped with kelp granules (a sea veggie that’s great for thyroid function), and some omega-3 supplements is a hormone- healthy way to start your day.
16. During sleep, our short-term memories and experiences get converted into long-term memories.