Announcer: Five things for better sleep that you're probably not doing. That's coming up next on The Scope. Medical news and research from University Utah specialists and physicians you can use for a happier and healthier life. You're listening to The Scope.
Interviewer: We're in the studio today with Dr. Kyle Bradford Jones, family physician at the University of Utah. First of all, let's explain to the audience how important sleep is. We know that sleep is important because we all need it, but exactly how important is the amount of sleep that we get?
Dr. Jones: It's huge both from an issue of quantity as well as quality. Making sure that you're sleeping long enough but also making sure that you're doing the things that you get good quality sleep. So getting adequate sleep improves your thinking, it allows us to better handle stress. Getting too little or too much actually can cause us to die prematurely. It can cause heart disease, it can cause obesity, and if we're trying to lose weight, it keeps us from losing weight. It just kind of affects everything and when you think about little kids in school, if they get adequate sleep they're going to do much better. They're going to do better in school, they're going to be better behaved and they're going to be smarter overall.
Interviewer: So in a nutshell it's pretty important.
Dr. Jones: Exactly. And especially as a nation, we're basically all sleep deprived and so this becomes a huge issue to make sure we're doing the best we can to kind of optimize our body.
Interviewer: So five things to better sleep then, to increase that amount of people getting the right amount of sleep and the quality of it as well. So number one?
Dr. Jones: Avoid caffeine, nicotine and alcohol four to six hours before sleep. So some people think that some of these things kind of calm them down and help them get to sleep, but it actually decreases the quality of your sleep. And so you're not getting as much rest and it actually can be detrimental for you.
Interviewer: So no coffee before bed?
Dr. Jones: Exactly.
Interviewer: All right. Number two?
Dr. Jones: Next one, set a comfortable environment. You want it to be dark; you want it to have a comfortable temperature and things like turning off the TV, turning off the radio. Those types of things can actually keep your mind working a little bit more then actually decreases the quality of your sleep.
Interviewer: But turn off the radio is a little bit surprising to me personally because I always sleep with my iPod on with music kind of low. Is that not good then?
Dr. Jones: Some people do better with a small amount of noise, whether it's typically . . . white noise can actually help a lot of people. Having the music or something that's constantly changing, your mind wants to focus on that and so it can actually kind of detract your mind from getting the quality of sleep you need.
Interviewer: That's probably why I'm not falling asleep as fast as I could be. All right. It makes sense.
Dr. Jones: Maybe.
Interviewer: Number three?
Dr. Jones: Turn off your screens. So cell phone, TV, computers, try to avoid using them for an hour before you go to bed. Now, I realize that's very difficult and this may be the most difficult thing for all of us.
Interviewer: I'm thinking in my head too. I'm failing at all of these but especially this one.
Dr. Jones: Exactly, most of us do. But again, it disrupts sleep quality. It makes it harder to fall asleep. It actually increases depression, decreases your attention span, lots of things that are attached with using these too much, especially right before bedtime.
Interviewer: Okay. Well, number four?
Dr. Jones: Number four is getting exercise during the day. So especially cardiovascular exercise.
Interviewer: Like walking and jogging?
Dr. Jones: Exactly.
Interviewer: Okay.
Dr. Jones: Making sure your body is moving, making sure you're increasing the blood flow, especially to your brain. That then helps your body to be able to get a better rest and fall asleep quicker, but also try to avoid exercise a couple of hours before bedtime because that can actually ramp up your body and make your sleep a little worse.
Interviewer: All right. Five things for better sleep. The last one, number five?
Dr. Jones: The last one is consistency. So making sure you're going to bed the same time each night, making sure you're waking up the same time each morning, and making sure you're having the same rituals before you go to bed, kind of doing things in the same order because that helps structure your mind and your body and prepare you to go to sleep.
Interviewer: Seems like I'm just failing at all five of these and they're so simple. I feel like a lot of Americans or people in the world in general, I want to say, don't really do these. And they're so simple and they're so easy and they lead to better health, but we're not doing them.
Dr. Jones: And that seems to be a lot of things that optimize our health. But you're right, we're all sleep deprived and doing some of these things with them being fairly simple can really improve our sleep. So again, focusing on these things even though they seem very simple, they're kind of hard for a lot of us to do. So make sure we're doing those to improve our sleep, which actually makes us happier as well as can make us more productive and improve our wellbeing.
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