A Good Night’s Sleep to Downtime and the Pace of Ageing

Dolphins and lions are early wakers, while the wolf comes to life later in the day and dislikes early morning. Bears’ sleep behaviours are between that of early wakers and wolves. Most of us are bears. The first three categories – dolphin, lion and bear – function well within the set timetable that society has imposed on us regarding school and work. Because the wolf’s circadian rhythms, and therefore the clocks in all cells, are somewhat out of synchrony with light–dark signals, this group comes to life later in the day and likes to stay up late and work later in the day. Wolves are a minority and society’s established timetables do not serve the poor wolf. Consequently, these nocturnal sub-types can be disadvantaged and commonly chronically fatigued or ‘socially jetlagged’, thus experiencing slow mental processing, day-long hunger, a feeling of exhaustion and apparent ‘laziness’.

Chapter 5: A Good Night’s Sleep

The 24-hour circadian rhythms of all important physiological parameters, such as blood pressure, cortisol, heart rate, adrenaline, melatonin and temperature, behave differently in the sub-types and are delayed or even flipped in wolves compared with other groups. Because the wolf’s hunger and appetite clock is out of sync, wolves are more likely to experience excessive eating and obesity. As a consequence, wolves are more likely to get diabetes, heart disease, strokes and sleep apnoea. Wolves are also more likely to have addictive personalities, encompassing overeating, smoking and excessive alcohol intake. As we age, we morph towards being a dolphin or lion. Dolphins • Struggle to fall asleep • Sleep approximately six hours • Wake up unrefreshed • Tired until late evening • May experience anxiety irritability • Highly intelligent • Perfectionist Lions • Medium sleep drive • Wake up early • Lots of energy • Little energy at bedtime • Optimistic • Overachievers • Go-getters • Health conscious • Eat well • Take exercise • Leaders Bears • Deep sleep • Rise with the sun • Strive to be healthy • Team player • Hard-working • Easy to talk to • Good people skills Wolves • Wake in a haze • Groggy in the morning • Energy in the evening • Tend to miss breakfast • Come alive after dark • Creative • Pessimistic • Moody • Comfortable alone • Most likely to be addicted of all the chronotypes.

Chapter 5: A Good Night’s Sleep

Whereas lions are frequently high-achieving goal-setters and team leaders, wolves tend to be more creative. If you are a wolf and wish to change in order to accommodate society’s timetabling, you’re not without hope. It is possible to adjust your schedule somewhat to become more of an early bird by gradually changing sleep and food intake by 15 minutes per day until desired sleep/ wake times are achieved. But more important, perhaps, is to be aware of one’s ‘type’ and to be on guard against susceptibility to compulsive behaviours and poor lifestyle, and to ensure extra care with diet, physical activity and other habits.

Remember, chronotype is as much about food as sleep! For all chronotypes, restricting eating to within an eight-hour period each day will reduce obesity. Some elegant rat experiments underscore this. If rats with 24-hour access to food are compared with rats who have 8-hour access to the same type and same amount of food, and both finish all the food, the group with 24-hour access become obese but the eight-hour access rats do not. The same applies to humans. A 16-hour fast each night improves sugar tolerance and reduces weight and blood pressure, in addition to stabilising circadian rhythm.

Chapter 5: A Good Night’s Sleep

Digestion of food messes with sleep. For a pre-bedtime snack there are a host of sleep-promoting foods that enhance melatonin and neuropeptides such as tryptophan and serotonin. They include almonds, turkey, chamomile tea, kiwi, tart cherry juice, fatty fish (salmon, tuna, trout, mackerel), passionflower tea, white rice, milk, bananas, porridge and cottage cheese. Others such as chamomile contain apigenin, an antioxidant that binds brain receptors to induce sleepiness. Vitamin D and omega oils also improve sleep. In a randomised control trial of 95 men, all components of sleep were significantly better in the group who had omega oil rich Atlantic salmon three times per week compared to the control group who had similar nutritional equivalents but of chicken, pork and beef. In another study of 1,848 people aged 20 to 60 years, high rice consumption before sleep was associated with better sleep than eating bread or noodles.

Whereas problems with sleep become more common as we get older, there is plenty of scope to better understand chronotypes, circumvent poor patterns and modify factors which will help the quality of our sleep and therefore our quality of life.

Chapter 6: Downtime and the Pace of Ageing

OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS, THERE HAS BEEN A SEISMIC CHANGE in our pace of life. Despite all of the electronic conveniences that should theoretically make more time available for activities such as having coffee with a friend, reading a book or just relaxing, it seems we keep getting busier and more stressed. When email and other internet tools were first introduced, they were heralded as the solution to overwork and stress. We were promised utopia: we would work more efficiently and have more leisure time, more time with friends and family, more time to chill, to exercise. We could look forward to shorter working days and longer holidays. Instead, life became even busier and more stressful. Devices are constantly pinging and ringing. As I started to research ‘stress’, I realised how much I am reliant on devices and how difficult I find it to extract myself from the dependency and take my own advice!

While advancements in technology are amazing, they come at a cost. The persistent beeping, vibrating and flashing of notifications mean that we are constantly distracted and driven to interrupt what we are doing to check our phones. One UK study found that, on average, young adults unlock their phone 85 times a day and use it for a total of five hours each day. This equates to a third of waking hours. Yet awareness of use is underestimated. When asked how often they had used their phones, respondents underestimated by 50 per cent. The consequences are inability to focus attention and consolidate things properly into memory, causing distress.

Chapter 6: Downtime and the Pace of Ageing

As evidence for the technology addiction, in a study where young adults were instructed not to use phones, they exhibited withdrawal symptoms, comparable to those seen in someone with a drug addiction. This is backed up by research showing correlations between high smartphone and internet use and poor cognitive skills such as concentration, memory and learning. In one review of 23 published research papers, relationships were evident between smartphone use and depression, anxiety, chronic stress and low self-esteem. Other problems are caused by using the phone right up to bedtime. How familiar is the following: you get into bed intending to go to sleep but decide to check your phone (just for ‘a second’) to find out something innocuous and then, an hour later, you are still watching something? Couple this failure to disengage and relax with the further negative impact of blue light on circadian rhythms and melatonin and you have a perfect recipe for a poor night’s sleep.

Chapter 6: Downtime and the Pace of Ageing

Most of the evidence cited for poor outcome from technology use relates to younger adults; the relationship between technology and older adults is complex. In general, internet use by older adults is much more moderate and associated with better mental health and life satisfaction, spurring researchers to encourage use of technologies with age. However, older persons who are not technologically savvy can become disengaged from and marginalised by our rapidly changing digital society. Most of today’s services cannot be accessed without the internet, which results in some people feeling further disenfranchised and frustrated.

Few if any of us have not experienced stress at some stage in our lives and older readers will have experience of both acute stress and the chronic accumulated consequences of stress. The heavy duty medical definition of stress is ‘the quality of experience, produced through a person–environment transaction that, through either over arousal or under arousal, results in psychological or physiological distress’. This cumbersome definition is hardly necessary – we recognise what we mean by stress, we know how stress feels. Stress is identified either by our own feelings or by objective measures. Biological measures of stress are many and include reactions in the nervous system, hormones, immune or inflammatory systems and metabolic systems. The health consequences of stress are not pleasant and include obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, a fast heart rate, heart attacks and strokes.