The Sleep Prescription with Dr. Aric Prather

Annmarie Kelly:

Wild Precious Life is brought to you in part by Green Apple Books in San Francisco, connecting curious readers to great books since 1967.

Browsing at Green Apple is a unique experience from our handmade signs and book recommendations, to the many nooks and crannies. You can both get lost in here and find serendipity.

Our friendly, well-read employees also stand ready to help you in any way. For your next great reads, stop by or go to greenapplebooks.com.

And we're brought to you by The Terrateer Club, a holistic online community, helping parents raise kids who will care for the earth and change the world. Go to theterrateerclub.com to find parenting resources and a supportive online community today.

[Music Playing]

As a child, I was terrified of the HBO music. If your family had the good cable in the ‘80s or ‘90s, you remember it. Terrifying.

My childhood bedroom was above the living room, and when I heard that tune once, I knew the eight o'clock movie was starting. If I heard it a second time, I knew the 10 o'clock movie was starting. And if I heard it again, it was midnight and I was still awake.

I've always been a bit of an insomniac. In elementary school, I went through a whole stage where I'd be worried if I knew everyone else in the family was asleep and I wasn't. I'd get out of bed, wander into the hallway and call out. “Psst. Are you guys awake?” I knew they weren't, but somehow asking seemed more polite. “Mom, dad, are you guys awake? Because I can't sleep.”

Inevitably, one of them would grumble and then give me some utterly useless advice. “Go back to bed and count sheep.” “Say some Hail Marys.” “Hold your hand in the air until it falls asleep, and then the rest of your body will fall asleep too.” “Just read.”

I tried all of their ideas. Sheep were stupid, and prayers were boring. And of course, holding my hand in the air didn't work at all. All of that simply reinforced the fact that I wasn't falling asleep. The only one that really stuck was reading. Occasionally, I'd read entire books while I laid in bed trying to fall back asleep.

In high school, I did theater and played sports, so it wasn't unusual for me to be up late doing homework on school nights, 11 o'clock, midnight, 1:00 AM. And up early in order to curl my hair and zip to school before that 7:00 AM bell. Like most teenagers, I tried to make up that sleep on the weekends. Drowsing until 11:00 or even noon.

College was more of the same and even a little worse. Nothing fun even started until like 11:00 PM on campus. And my work shift, making coffee at the hospital, started at 4:45. It wasn't unusual for me to get by on five hours of sleep, sometimes less. On the weekends, I would often sleep past lunch.

So, when I had kids, I figured all my college all-nighters, those had prepared me for sleepless nights with babies. But I was utterly, utterly mistaken. I have memories of being so exhausted during those middle of the night wake-ups that I simply sat on the edge of the bed, unable to figure out whether I was getting up to feed the baby or going back to sleep because I'd already fed her.

Now, that my oldest daughter is 18, I've realized that it's been decades. In this episode, I guess two decades. But if I'm being honest, it's probably been most of my life that I've been sleeping poorly. So, I was skeptical, extremely skeptical about the book I read for this conversation, The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest.

But today's guest, Dr. Aric Prather, makes an incredible case for why we should all be getting better sleep. “Sleep boosts the immune system,” he writes. “It regulates metabolism. It makes you happier. It makes you a better, more empathic partner and a more patient parent.”

“It can improve your productivity and creativity at work and boost your energy so you can actually squeeze in that extra or first workout during the week. It sharpens the mind and can actually clear toxins out of the brain that build up over time, and including those thought to play a role in neurodegenerative diseases.”

In research findings, Dr. Prather points out that people who get less than six hours of sleep were four times as susceptible to the cold virus. And I hate to break to you folks, you're not getting any younger. Neither am I. And it turns out that rest, more fortifying and healing rest, is not as hard as my life has led me to believe. For most of us, improved sleep is merely a few better practices away.

Since I read this book and started implementing Dr. Prather's simple techniques, I'm sleeping better. I am no longer afraid of the HBO music. Okay, to be fair, I got over that years ago, but now, most nights I am sleeping straight through. That's right, not waking up to haunt the house or go to the bathroom multiple times, just sleeping through the night.

Better sleep hasn't made me look younger yet. My hair is still turning gray and I still have these lines on my forehead that I wish were from laughing too much, but I think are probably from frowning. But you know what? I feel better. Some days I even feel rested. If you know you need more sleep, I urge you to stick around for this conversation.

My guest today is Dr. Aric Prather, a professor of psychology and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, where he co-directs the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center.

He's also a licensed clinical psychologist who helps lead the UCSF Insomnia Clinic, where he practices cognitive behavioral therapy to treat patients with insomnia. He also directs a robust research program focused on the causes and consequences of insufficient sleep.

A self-proclaimed sleep evangelist, Dr. Prather has dedicated his career to raising awareness about the importance of sleep health and advocating for sleep opportunity as a basic human right.

Dr. Aric Prather, welcome to Wild Precious Life.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Thank you for having me.

Annmarie Kelly:

So, you're the author of the Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest. My oldest daughter is 18. So, between pregnancy and children, I haven't slept well in about two decades.

I was incredibly skeptical that your teeny tiny little book could even help me. I am naturally a night owl, though every child in my life seems to wake up unnecessarily early. So, I have been in sleep trouble for years.

I brought my notes today. I have my sleep diary. My opportunity and efficiency numbers are calculated down to the minutes and percentages. So, I'm ready for this conversation, but I think I might be too ready.

So, before we dive in, why don't we listen to your sleep story. How did you come to be interested in the science of sleep?

Dr. Aric Prather:

I'm a clinical health psychologist and in my like graduate training, I went to the University of Pittsburgh and it was really to study stress and how it affects the immune system. I got trained in this kind of like subfield called psycho neuroimmunology, which is just kind of trying to understand the behaviors and how our mind impacts our immune system.

And the project that I was working on that I came into graduate school to work on, was about kind of things that predict who does well and who does poorly to the hepatitis B vaccination series. And so, we were bringing people into the lab and stressing them out and drawing their blood and seeing what happens and trying to understand the mechanisms. All this like really cool and fun stuff to do.

But then I needed to figure out kind of where was my part in this. And I had been reading in the larger literature around sleep. Turns out the University of Pittsburgh has a really big sleep group, like a research sleep group.

And so, I got some exposure to that and I really began to see that the same changes that we see in the immune system when we stress people out, you see very similar patterns when you deprive them of sleep. So, you see sleep deprive people, draw their blood, get all these changes in their immune system.

And it was kind of like fairly obvious that like stress and sleep are so intimately related. When we have a bad night of sleep, we're more sensitive to stress. When we have lots of stressors, particularly close to bedtime, it affects our ability to sleep.

But yet kind of these fields we're really kind of siloed. Like people just studied stress and daytime things, and then some people just studied sleep and got into the brain to see what was the EEG waves and all this kind of stuff. But it seemed like there was a place for trying to marry these two things. And so, that's kind of how I got started.

And then it turned out sometimes it's like many people who do their dissertations, it's just like doesn't work out. They do all the studying, and they find out like, “Look, what I thought was true in the world is not true and bummer.”

Mine actually was really successful. So, we found that people who got less sleep were substantially poorer in responding to the hepatitis disease vaccination series. And we've like now gone on and kind of studied as in other vaccines and there's just such a clear picture there. And so, that certainly kind of propelled me forward in kind of doing the research side of things.

But then as a clinical psychologist, you also have to do like a one-year internship just doing clinical work and it's kind of like a residency for medical school. And so, I did this at Duke University Medical Center.

Annmarie Kelly:

Woo, go Blue Devils.

Dr. Aric Prather:

And so, I happened to be able to work with kind of one of the pioneers in cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, this guy Jack Edinger. And so, I got to do that training and I got to see firsthand like if you give someone their sleep back, it has incredible spillover effects. And I was hooked.

I was like, “If I ever do clinical work …” Which I wasn't sure I was going to do at the time, like I was just all research all the time at that time in my life. I was like, “I'm going to do this. This makes a meaningful impact.”

And like sleep is such an interesting like entry point into someone's lives. Like everyone wants to talk about their sleep. Not everyone wants to talk about their anxiety or their depression, but they'll talk about their sleep. And so, it might be a really impactful leverage point to actually make all of these sustained changes in people's wellbeing, their mental health, and as we found, kind of their physical health.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, no, 100%. I realized at the beginning of your book that I had never thought much about what it is our bodies do when we sleep. I know we generally rest and I know my body forgets everything it was supposed to do the next day.

But what else is our body doing when it sleeps?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Our brain is very active when we're sleeping and it's doing a lot of important things. So, of course, there's the restoration and we're learning more about how sleeping may be critical for helping your brain clear out metabolites that build up throughout the day.

But also, it has profound impact on your immune system, your metabolism, your blood pressure drops, your heart rate variability kind of gets enhanced. There's kind of well documented impacts of sleep on memory consolidation and learning.

From an emotional perspective, it seems that sleep is playing an important role in kind of helping to kind of disentangle kind of the facts and the emotions that go with those facts that happen throughout the day.

So, if you think about kind of emotional memory, I guess in that case, that when you have say a traumatic event or any kind of emotionally laden event, you want to remember the factual experience, but you don't want to relive the emotions every time that's brought back up. And so, there's kind of theories around how sleep might play an important role in kind of breaking that relationship.

And I mean, I think that's just scratching the surface of like what's going on when we're sleeping. There are certainly kind of upticks in kind of different hormonal pathways. So, like growth hormone is released when we sleep. All of these things that probably serve a really critical function that don't necessarily happen when we're awake.

I think one of the complications is that in addition to what sleep does, also, there's kind of the role of our circadian rhythm. And so, they do these studies where they'll deprive people of sleep and you'll still see these changes even when people aren't sleeping, which suggest that those are kind of driven by the circadian rhythm.

But there are other things that don't and what seem to be more specific to sleep. And so, I think the research enterprise around sleep is still kind of chugging along and understanding those things. But it's certainly, there are kind of a laundry list of impacts that sleep plays for our health.

Annmarie Kelly:

Sure, sure. I think you say in your book that sleep is medicine. I'd never heard that before, but it makes such sense. If you're talking about immune systems, you're talking about, I don't know, parenting patiently, if you're talking about the desire to exercise, sleep is medicine for our bodies.

And it made me wonder if our bodies know they need the medicine and our bodies know how to sleep and we all want rest, then of course, why do so many of us have so much trouble sleeping?

Dr. Aric Prather:

One of the things that I try to impart to the patients that we see at our clinic here at the University of California, San Francisco is that like we're kind of built for sleep. It's so biologically embedded. I mean, it's conserved across species. Every species that we study does something that looks like sleep or rest. And then it's been conserved across millennia. And so, it's really so fundamental to our being.

With insomnia, it's really this kind of fear system that gets engaged. People begin to see sleep as kind of unpredictable. They're chasing it, instead of letting it come to you. With the best intentions, kind of make changes to our behavior because we're so desperate for sleep to work. But sleep is not something that we make happen. Sleep is something that comes to us, it kind of washes over us.

But in the service of trying to kind of fix this problem because we're doers, it actually undermines how sleep works naturally. And so, what a lot of my job is in the clinical spaces kind of identifying those barriers and kind of putting people back in a place where they don't think about it.

Like sleep is kind of the absence of doing. And so, the more effort that you're putting in to trying to make it happen, especially in the moment, it's actually kind of working against you. And that's a hard thing to get people to shift on because they're … and it's distressing. Like people are desperate.

I mean, I have people all the time say things that like, “I was feeling really sleepy, and then as I got closer to bedtime, I got more and more anxious because I knew what I was facing. Like I knew I was so scared it was going to be one of those nights.”

And like that is something that I don't wish on anybody, but there are also ways in which we can make some behavioral changes to reduce the likelihood that it will be one of those nights.

Annmarie Kelly:

You can't just like try really hard just sleep right now, that that's not the way to get yourself to sleep, by like holding on tighter. “I'm going to do it. Here we go.” Like that actually is working against you.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Right, right. Like the white-knuckle approach is not advised.

Annmarie Kelly:

It's not working hard enough. Yeah. So, before we talk about the individual need to sleep, I just want to say that I really, really appreciated that you include in this book, although it is, like you said, behavioral strategies for people to sleep, I like that you also say that we often think of sleep as an individualized issue, but it's also a societal concern.

If you live in an unsafe neighborhood, you may be hypervigilant, you might not be sleeping well because of noise pollution or because you want to protect your kids and you want to feel safe.

I'm just quoting you here. You said, “Sufficient and restorative sleep is not evenly distributed across populations. There are clear sleep inequities on average black folks and low-income individuals report shorter, less restorative sleep than folks in other racial demographics.” And you said sleep is a vital social justice issue.

I really appreciated you mentioning that. And I don't know, I'm not in the sleep psychology realm. I've never heard anyone say that before. I really appreciated your framing there.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah, thanks. I mean, and if people haven't read it, Tricia Hersey's Rest Is Resistance is like a great kind of pretty popular book around this topic. And really, the disparities are striking. And it really, like from our research perspective, might help us understand kind of some of these other racial disparities in health.

Like cardiovascular disease. Like we know that insufficient sleep is a significant risk factor for hypertension, for the development of atherosclerosis. And it's possible that it's these racial disparities in sleep that are kind of mapping onto this, that are potentially driving this.

But then what creates these disparities? And they're certainly kind of at the individual level. Perhaps, if someone walks around in a society where they're discriminated against on the regular, like that's going to generate some kind of hyper vigilance. But the individual, of course, is like nested within families, within communities.

If you live in a home that there's violence outside or there's light pollution or noise … you're near a throughway or a freeway, that might impact your sleep. If there's crowding within kind of the home that you live. Like you're sharing the bed with three other people, that's going to affect your sleep.

And you can just kind of begin to build the kind of the nesting doll of like what it looks like and all the way up to the societal level. Like policies around kind of where people can live, kind of affordable housing issues around who are the people that have jobs where they don't have control of their time or their schedule. Or have to make excess commutes because they have to live way out to be able to afford where they live, and then ultimately, have to get up at 4:00, 3:00 in the morning to drive into work.

All of those things, those systemic factors kind of trickle down to impact someone's ability or their opportunity for sleep. I definitely do see kind of sleep health and sleep opportunity as something that's like worth speaking up for, from like a social justice perspective.

And I will say that there is a fairly growing sector of like the sleep medicine community that is moving in that direction and it's really exciting.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, I mean, you talk about how police and judges make worse decisions when they sleep poorly. As a policeman, if I've slept poorly, I'm going to be treating my suspects with more anger. If I'm a judge, I'm more likely to dole out a longer sentence.

So, I really appreciated thinking about sleep on a communal level and what individuals that are part of groups. If we mandated or if we made things better for more sleep … I was getting up with my daughter in the six o'clock hour. And again, she's 18, she's a senior in high school, she'd like to get up at noon. We know this about seniors in high school. We know this about high school kids, and yet we keep putting them on buses at seven o'clock in the morning.

So, anyway, I was all on board to talk about my own lousy sleep from an individual and a communal level. And I looked to the first of your recommendations and then I was out, because wake up at the same time every day, excuse me, on the weekends, on the holidays, on that one Saturday when we don't have a piano recital or soccer?

You're telling me I've got to get out of bed at the ass crack of dawn on a Saturday? I say, sir, you're nuts. So, why is it so important that we should wake up at the same time every morning?

Dr. Aric Prather:

So, this may surprise you, you're not the first person who has had this reaction. But I mean, and I always kind of frame it in like, look, like I'm not the enemy. Like I'm not-

Annmarie Kelly:

Aren't you though?

Dr. Aric Prather:

A little bit, a little bit. But the point of getting up at the same time seven days a week, is to take advantage and kind of reintegrate kind of one of the key regulators of our sleep, which is our internal clock.

So, our circadian rhythm, our internal clock, plays an important role in ensuring that we get adequate and restorative sleep. And so, by kind of having an anchor point at which when you get up, that helps keep the body kind of in better timing.

It turns out that like our body and our mind, our brain, like just crave predictability. Like your brain, our brains are just kind of predicting machines. They're like bringing in information and there's so much, they're trying to make kind of best guesses about what's going to happen next.

So, the more predictable things can be in our environment, just the better the predictions are and kind of the more efficiently things work.

The other thing that’s important about waking up at the same time is that it sets the beginning of the other clear regulatory process in our sleep, which is called our homeostatic sleep drive. And I talk about it like it's a balloon that like builds up with sleepiness throughout the day, the longer we're awake.

And so, in the best case, you wake up and your balloon is flat, you go throughout the day and it builds up and then it gets to like an optimal amount and you feel sleepiness cues. You want to go to bed, you go to sleep, and it kind of drains out until the next day.

And so, but if you kind of shift your timing on when you wake up, it actually shifts the amount of time it takes for your balloon to fill up.

Also, when you shift your time by hours or two hours, it actually induces in your body, though you may not perceive it this way, as kind of a jet lag. Like you're moving time zones despite kind of like not getting any of the benefits of traveling. And so, you're still stuck in your house and your life, but now, you're off by a couple hours. And so, all of those things could potentially be problematic if you have sleep problems.

The other thing that I want to say is that (and it's kind of related to what we've talked about in the beginning) some people will say, “Well, yes, I've heard I'm supposed to keep a same wake time and keep a bedtime the same all the time too.” And I just frame it in that like if someone has sleep problems, actually setting a bedtime that's standard for them can actually be really distressing.

So, imagine you have insomnia, your sleep doctor's like, “Okay, well you got to be in bed by 10:00.” And like 9:45 rolls around and you're like not sleepy, you know that you're not sleepy. You're like, “Oh my God, the sleep doctor said I need to go to bed. Like now, I need to get in bed.” And now, you're getting in bed and you're kind of like starting to spin out.

And we can't control when we get sleepy or when we fall asleep. Like our sleep drive does that, our circadian rhythm does that, the energy that we use throughout the day does that. But we can control when we wake up. And so, focusing on this anchor thing that we can do will kind of set in motion a bunch of other things that we can layer on to increase the likelihood that we'll have a good night's sleep.

Now, we can never ensure that tonight's sleep is going to be great, but what we can do is kind of put things in place to increase the chances that we'll have a good night's sleep. And on average, our sleep will improve over time.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. So, I was just going to skip that first recommendation and just pretend I didn't do it. Because it was a long holiday weekend and I was doing the seven days ahead of this, and I thought I'm just going to-

Dr. Aric Prather:

I get it, I get it.

Annmarie Kelly:

But I set my stupid alarm anyway for 7:01 because I felt like that one minute was important. And because my worst night of sleep is typically Sunday night and I've never understood it before. I've always thought, “Oh, it's a stressful work week, my brain just won't shut off. I'm getting ready for Monday.” And it's not unusual for me to be up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning on Sunday night. And then I'm getting up for the work week.

And I've just always assumed it was just Mondays are tough, but I realized that that jet lag thing for me is real. Because I would often sleep in on Saturday or Sunday and then my body just wasn't ready to go to bed at its normal time. I was so angry at you that that stupid wake up works. It really does.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Oh, wasn't sure where this was going.

Annmarie Kelly:

It's good advice.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Oh.

Annmarie Kelly:

So, thank you.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah, you heard it here, guys.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh, it's so painful though that waking up for no reason whatsoever. But there was this gift that … what is it called? The time windfall of suddenly I had hours before the kids even woke up. And then I got back some of my day to do some of the things that I too often do at night, which interrupts my sleep.

You had this phrase, I actually didn't know this phrase. I think it's pretty common in your trade. But you talk about practicing good sleep hygiene. I didn't actually know what that phrase meant. When I read some of the ideas in the book, they made sense. Like don't have your television on loud in your lap, in your bed. It's not ideal. But what's some other sleep hygiene and why is it so important?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah. I mean, so, the sleep hygiene things are kind of like a lot of them are the things that make a lot of common sense and that we've heard about. But you can make all these behavioral strategies that are maybe a little bit more novel, but if you're consuming an espresso right before bed, it's not going to matter.

And so, I think there's first, the things during the day that are around substances. So, limiting caffeine intake, ideally not after lunch, limiting alcohol consumption too close to bedtime, couple hours before bedtime and making sure that it's not excessive. Because that can certainly have an impact on your sleep architecture and the restorative quality of your sleep.

A lot of things focused on the bedroom and making the bed kind of a shrine to sleep. And so, as we say, only sleep and sex, everything else out of the bed.

One of the things that's so critical for our ability to sleep well is to have this kind of conditioned response to the bed. Meaning that when we get in bed, it actually tells our body that it's time to go to sleep and actually brings on the feeling of sleepiness.

And for people who don't have sleep problems, they might feel sleepy before they get in bed, but they get in bed and it's like a hammer coming down on them that's like, “Oh.” And no one really knows why that happens. But it's because there's been so many nights of being sleepy, getting in bed and falling asleep that it's created this conditioned response.

And then the opposite is true when people have bad nights of sleep. They spend a lot of time tossing and turning, kind of struggling and being frustrated. And over time, that fractures that relationship. And actually, it becomes that it's not just that you're anxious, it's like you're in bed and the bed itself like triggers that in you. And that's really kind of at the foundation of how insomnia works.

Back to the sleep hygiene things within the bedroom. Keeping the bedroom dark, keeping it quiet, keeping it cool. So, it turns out that our core body temperature has to drop as we go throughout the night. And so, a cooler temperature tends to help with that. So, between 64 and 68 probably is like in Fahrenheit. And then yeah, I think those are like the basic sleep hygiene.

Exercise is another one. I mean, but that kind of has like a bimodal experience. Like some people can exercise right before bedtime and just be exhausted and then have like a really restorative night of sleep, while for others it's very activating.

And so, that's something that you can do a little kind of N-of-1 experiment, become your own sleep scientist and begin to see what works for you.

But in general, exercise not too close to bedtime, limit the alcohol, limit the substances that keep you awake and then kind of keep the bed a shrine and an environment that facilitates sleep.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, these were good things I thought I was doing and then I was sort of checking them off. And I dumped out a cup of coffee, a beautiful cup of coffee at like 3:30 last week that I had barely drunk. And I was like, “Ugh.” But I often drink coffee too late in the day. I know that. But it does affect my sleep.

[Music Playing]

When I get to bedtime and I'm go, go, go all day. One of your strategies was about like taking breaks during the day. And I think I had always thought like if you go hard all day, then you'll just like collapse into sleep.

But it turned out that one of your suggestions was like if you're forced to take breaks during the day, you're actually going to settle into rest better, I guess. I had a really, really hard time, even harder than the morning wake up was taking breaks.

But how does taking breaks across the course of a day actually help us sleep?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah. Right. So, I recommend kind of taking these like micro breaks. And I mean, I think it's like my colleague — I run a lab here with this woman, Elissa Epel, and she wrote The Stress Prescription, which is like it goes along with The Sleep Prescription, this book, like a series.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh, I know that one too. I didn't realize you guys were partners in a lab. Okay, great.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah, yeah. So, we co-direct the center here. And we just did an event where we both talked about our books and it just struck me at like how compatible they were.

And because it's really like our sleep, one of the things that gets in the way is exactly what you're saying. It's like the things that build up throughout the day and end up kind of trickling in, seeping into our subconsciousness and kind of messing around with our sleep. Because we wake up throughout the night and a lot of them we don't even remember.

But when people have a lot of stress on board, like when you do have those wake ups, it can kind of kick on board like your brain's like ready. It's like, “Oh, awake, boom, let's talk about this. Let's talk about this thing you should have done better or this thing you have to do tomorrow.”

And so, one of the strategies is to really be preventative. To really give yourself some grace and some restoration throughout the day. Some kindness for yourself. And that is kind of for me, what the micro breaks are about.

It's like breaking up the day to give yourself an ability to kind of do a little bit recharging of that battery. Like we want to try to get out in front of it. We want to do things during our waking hours that will make it easier for us to let go at night.

Kind of finding these micro breaks, these times in which you can say go outside or do a meditation or just have some time to yourself where you're not kind of engaged with the world, the hamster wheel that you're on, will ideally, put you in a better space for when bedtime comes.

It's interesting kind of to hear kind of your story because you said that you're a night owl. And that's actually a challenge that comes up fairly often with people that have insomnia is that it's not only that you kind of want to go to sleep, but it's like and oftentimes, especially when people are kids, but it goes throughout adulthood, the world is often not set up for night owls.

And so, there's this like extra pressure to fall asleep and you're kind of fighting against your biological preference to be awake. And that's a real challenge. And it's like a next level of kind of dealing with insomnia is this like how much of it is that you're anxious about being asleep, going to sleep, versus like your body's just like not ready to go to sleep. And like how do you know those things?

And so, I just wanted to mention that because it like makes it a little bit more complicated and just like a little harder to manage. And so, I definitely empathize with that.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well, I appreciated that, yes, the world is not built for night owls except for college. College I did well because college is built for night owls, but not the rest of the world, no. My natural sleep would be like 2:00 to 10:00 if that, yeah.

But I did like this idea of forcing myself to take breaks. So, instead of trying to like wear myself out from the day, this idea of taking some practice and some moments just to like practice a pause.

And you would actually think that meditating for five minutes would make you more tired, but for some reason meditating for five minutes … and by meditating, I mean went to YouTube, typed up stupid five-minute meditation and like listen to the guy or the girl. Just like I don't know how to meditate, but it did it.

And it's funny that doing this quick break behind my computer it did actually both … I don't know. I was sticking my head in the freezer and just like, “What am I doing?” Because that was another resource suggestion, “You nuts.” I'm like, “This is the weirdest thing I've ever done.”

But that also worked, that these little breaks actually, they both woke me up during that afternoon lag time that I have, and then they somehow made it so that I can let go a little bit better at night.

But you mentioning the night owl thing made me think about partnered sleep. That I love my husband, but I sometimes harken back to those TV sets from like the 1950s when Lucille Ball and her husband, Ricky, who slept in separate beds. Because it turns out if you're partnered, you may not have the same sleep needs.

My partner is an early bird and I'm a night owl. We are compatible in lots of ways, but sleep ain't one of them. And so, it took a long time for me to realize that if we went to bed at the exact same time, I'm awake for two hours, he's out. But if we go to bed at 10:00, I'm awake.

But I don’t know, you had some interesting strategies for how can partners get better sleep together?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Well, I mean, I think your experiences is kind of in line with I think many, many, many, many couples. I mean, like it turns out that like sleeping preferences is not high on most people's list in like what they want in a partner. Usually it's like, “Oh dang, I didn't even know this was going to be different. Why would it be different?”

And I think it also changes over time. I think that in some ways, the appreciation of the importance of sleep, that I think there is a bit of a collective culture shift around kind of the importance of sleep. And my hope is that there'll be kind of less kind of negative or like stigma around kind of not sleeping in the same bed.

Because that's really what keeps this kind of going is this idea that like when people sleep in separate beds or in separate rooms, that it's a symptom of a poor relationship. But there's many scenarios where that makes tons of sense.

I mean, I think some bed partners have different schedules, like you're saying, some people are like really restless when they sleep. Maybe have a sleep disorder on board, like obstructive sleep apnea.

And I think couples specifically having conversations about what they need around their sleep can be really helpful and kind of a maybe even build further intimacy around because it's something that we don't always talk about.

And I think it has important ramifications just for relationships. I mean, we know that if one bed partner gets a poor night of sleep and then they're put in a conflict task, the person that got the bad night to sleep just has a really hard time taking the other person's perspective. We become kind of more self-focused, less empathetic.

And I always say that like if people get the sleep they need, I mean, we're just kind of better versions of ourselves. We're kind of our best selves. Like we're more empathetic, we're better parents, we're better partners, we're more productive, we're more creative.

And we have kind of better capacity to deal with kind of the stressors, whether it be in our relationship, or at our job, or in traffic, or with technology issues, whatever. It really is kind of the glue that holds our life together.

And we spend so much time with our partners and so, I think we should take the couple's sleep health really seriously.

Annmarie Kelly:

I appreciate what you said about that cyclical nature of things because I always think about how, yeah, crummy sleep influences my day. Sure, sure. I didn't sleep last night, so I'm grumpy today. Or maybe I had a hard time falling asleep so I snoozed and missed my alarm and then I missed my morning workout. Like I've understood that part.

But that the rest of the cycle I hadn't thought about like if I sleep poorly, I am more likely to eat poorly. But then when I eat poorly, I'm probably more likely to sleep poorly. If I'm worried and stressed out, yes, it might make it harder to sleep, but I hadn't thought about how crummy sleep is actually going to make me more prone to worry the next day that.

I hadn't completed the cycle on that, that I would say I felt a little more even tempered this week doing my 7:01 wake up on the holiday weekend. Being angry with you, but also thinking, “You know what …” I had to fly over the weekend and usually, I'm a little stressed flying because I'm running late and then I'm doing what if scenarios.

But I was kind of remarking on the fact that I just sort of rolled with it. It was snowing and I just … and that's not to say that it's all my sleep, but I'm someone when I calculated I'm in the 60s or 70s usually, for my sleep efficiency, that's kind of where I tended to land.

But just by doing that same wake up, I did find myself kind of winding down into sleep. Not always, but with a little bit more ease.

Because also, I'm not going to go over all the, you say seven days to unlocking your best rest and you've kind of got seven big strategies. I'm not going to go over all of them. Folks should definitely buy the book.

But one of them talks about the wind down and I was looking at I was looking at the things I usually do before bed. I usually check my email and scroll social media and maybe have a drink and maybe watch some TV.

And I was going over your list. It's like just don't scroll social media and don't do your work emails and maybe don't have a drink before bed. I was guilty of having done all the things you said not to do in what I considered to be my wind down.

So, at the same time that I was grousing about your strategies, I was thinking, “Wow, I hadn't thought about how in aggregate all of those do actually affect, not just my sleep today, but my day tomorrow.”

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah, totally.

Annmarie Kelly:

I always try to close with just a few questions that are tangential to the book, but also, we get to meet the person behind the book. So, these are just little kind of fun questions, so if you don't mind. These are multiple choice, so pick one. Mountains or beach?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Oh, beach.

Annmarie Kelly:

Dogs or cats?

Dr. Aric Prather:

You would think it would be obvious. I don't know. Like my kids want a dog so bad and I'm like, “Man, a cat would be so much easier. But maybe not as loving.” I don't know, I guess dog.

Annmarie Kelly:

Coffee or tea?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Coffee.

Annmarie Kelly:

What's your caffeine cutoff personally?

Dr. Aric Prather:

I want to say like two o'clock.

Annmarie Kelly:

Gotcha. Early birder, night owl for you? Which are you?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Early bird, for sure.

Annmarie Kelly:

By nature, or just by science?

Dr. Aric Prather:

By nature, by nature. I love a good sunrise.

Annmarie Kelly:

Ah, I have almost never seen the sunrise.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Except when you've stayed up all night.

Annmarie Kelly:

I saw one in Mexico not long ago. I'm like, “Ha, that looks a lot like the sunset. Only I think the sun …” It was very funny. I was like, “I don’t know if I've ever seen it from this angle before.”

If you're feeling low energy in the middle of the day, are you more likely to go for a brisk walk or stick your head in the freezer?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah. I'm more prone to go outside. We actually, I mean, in my office building here, we're really near like a cove in kind of the Mission Bay area of San Francisco. So, there's like this really nice walk. You can just like walk to this little beach thing. It's like a loop I do. So, that's what I tend to do.

The freezer is always available, but it's like a communal freezer. And so, I don't know. I mean, they would understand if I did it, but I don't want other people starting to use the freezer that way.

Annmarie Kelly:

Nice. Are you a risk taker or are you the person who always knows where the band-aids are?

Dr. Aric Prather:

I'm probably the latter. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like to be prepared in that way, or I strive to be. Also, I am the one to prone to get hurt possibly. So, it's good to have those things at the ready.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, you got to be prepared. Alright. This is a fill in the blank. If I wasn't working as a professor who leads the University of California's, San Francisco Insomnia Clinic, I would be a?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Gosh. I don't know. I mean, I think being here in San Francisco, there's always this pull towards kind of doing something in like a startup or like a sleep tech or something like that. That could be just be fun as an experience. I don't think I would like it and I don't think I'm built for it.

But yeah, I mean, I've only done this job. Like this is the only job I've ever had, so it's like really hard to imagine doing something different than this. Even with this book, I thought like, “Maybe I'll really just do public speaking. This is my chance to begin to just like …”

Because I really like talking about this and I'm really passionate about like communicating this importance. And there's just so many levels in which you can engage with the public.

But there's also, like as I'm sure you know, kind of the like branding that has to go on with this kind of thing, like I'm also not well suited to, I think. Like I've realized that people that are kind of like constantly tweeting about themselves or kind of creating information about themselves, it's just like it doesn't feel great for me. So, it's like maybe I'm not built for it, I don't know. But I don't know, that was kind of a tangential, I guess.

Annmarie Kelly:

No, that's great. Roxane Gay's partner, Debbie Millman had an article out just recently about the self-brand or like all the nonsense of like yourself as a brand and why it's actually kind of runs counter to yourself as a human. So, I think sometimes and a version of that is pretty healthy.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah, yeah. And well, yeah, I mean, it's like the look at me culture, I guess. Is like what is, how does that work? Who are the … how's that driven from? Like obviously, people can make a good living off of it, but I think most people don't, and it seems really hard.

Annmarie Kelly:

I think it might mess with your sleep.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Yeah, yeah. Possibly. What doesn't?

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, no kidding. Do you have a favorite ice cream or a favorite sweet?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Oh, I'm prone to chocolate is like probably my like favorite sweet that I go to. Yeah.

Annmarie Kelly:

How about a favorite movie or television show you're bingeing?

Dr. Aric Prather:

So, as noted in this book, I like watch The Office all the time. I don't know why, that's like the show that I binge. My wife and I we're watching White Lotus right now, which has been pretty good. I don't know, like we tend to kind of like run through lots of different shows, so if you have any recommendations, I'm all about it. Yeah.

And then with my kids, basically we watch like all the Marvel movies over and over and over. That's my life.

Annmarie Kelly:

My kids just want to do that too. And a couple of them are rated R but they figured out that I didn't know which ones those were until we … so, for me, the Marvel, with apologies to Marvel, they were all just sort of interchangeable. It's like, “Cue it up.”

But every once in a while, I guess there's one that they know is rated R but they don't think that I know. So, we'll be halfway through that. I'm like, “Whoa, whoa. Hey guys, what are we watching?” And we've sometimes just plowed through them anyway, but … hashtag judgment.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Understood, understood.

Annmarie Kelly:

Alright. A last one. If we were to take a picture of you really happy and doing something you love, what would we see?

Dr. Aric Prather:

Oh, I mean, it would definitely be with my family doing something. Like I think that's like the main thing that I do in my life outside of this job and doing these interviews.

And so, I think yeah, I mean, living in San Francisco is really special. I mean, it's hard to live here. To be a professor and live in San Francisco is not a easy kind of type of job, but it has so many incredible things that you can do in the city.

And so, like I mentioned, I'm like a beach person in that way. Like Northern California beaches are so beautiful. So, we often like will go down to see a sunset and like hang out and like check out like local places and that's definitely kind of the best part of like my weekend, typically.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's nice. Well, hey, Dr. Aric Prather, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Thank you. Super fun.

Annmarie Kelly:

You wrote that (I'm quoting you here), “We live in a society where we've glamorized short sleep and long work hours. We elevate productivity and devalue rest.” And this is so true, but it's often making us sick. It's often not good for us.

And as you point out in your book, the ironic thing is that rest is what we most need to be more productive. And I'm really grateful for the reminder of that.

Dr. Aric Prather:

Thank you.

Annmarie Kelly:

And folks who are listening, Dr. Aric Prather's latest book is called The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest. It's tiny, it's blue, and, ugh, I think it works, you guys.

I've slept wonderfully this past week, even through my grumbling, even through my laughter of the things I was trying. But I don't know, I'm a zealot in a convert. But I had forgotten what it felt like to feel rested. So, thank you. Thank you for this possibility.

Guys, you can pick it up at an indie store near you. Give it a try. Let us know what you think. Better sleep is within your reach.

For everyone listening, we're wishing you love and light wherever the day takes you. Be good to yourself, be good to one another, and we'll see you again soon on this wild and precious journey.

Wild Precious Life is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Special thanks to executive producers Gerardo Orlando and Michael Dealoia; producer, Sarah Willgrube; and audio engineer, Ian Douglas.

Be sure to subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hide Transcript