Sleep Smarter
A review of Shawn Stevenson’s amazing book.
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Overview
From a 200 pound college student eating little but pizza, Shawn Stevenson has become the epitome of health. At 15 he was immobilised by his hip breaking under nothing more than the stress of a 200m sprint. At 20 years of age Shawn was diagnosed with degenerative bone disease. His spinal vertebrae were completely f*cked and immobility for the majority of his life seemed certain.
His doctor prescribed him concoctions of drugs to ‘treat the problem’, but Shawn had a grudge even at that point that the issue was far deeper. He was putting drugs in his mouth to fix issues, surely the food he was putting in must matter too.
This lead Shawn to start the transformative process of improving his health. He describes in the book Sleep Smarter, 3 fundamental pillars of health. Sleep, nutrition and exercise. This isn’t new. But the depth of analysis, the scientific backing of every assertion and the ease of application of every change suggested in this book are all sublime.
Shawn hosts ‘The model health show’ and is now a leading authority on health and fitness. What gives him authority in this field however, isn’t his current phenomenal health but the extent of his transformation. Those entranced by the ‘take a pill to fix issues’ will label it as miraculous. But it makes sense that the quality of what we put into our body, and the care with which we treat it will directly affect its health. That’s common sense, not rocket science.
In this book Shawn gives 21 factors that affect your sleep. In this post I’m going to highlight one of them so you have a flavour for the impact this book can have on your life and how easy these changes are to implement. Think of this like those free cubes of cheese you get on the dairy counter in supermarkets.
Screens
We all know that screens before bed time kills your sleep. We’ve been told it 110,000 times by every relative we have over the age of 45 and every sleep related thing ever. The reason for this is it is pretty much the most impactful thing you can do for your sleep. As Shawn points out though, knowing this is 10% of the challenge. 90% of it is executing a change based on your knowledge and maintaining it.
Why are we addicted to social media?
We are foragers, think back to the olde days of caves and the ability to explore a forest for hours is pretty useful. We are out trying to find something useful like a pond, a berry tree or a rock we could use as a tool. Our body adapted to love doing this. Every time we are searching, our body releases dopamine. This is the searching hormone, but it is also tied to enjoyment. Whenever we find something, our bodies release a load of opioids to reward our brains.
Bring this back to the modern day and you now can explain why you can get lost in Instagram for half an hour before you regain control of your life. Every time you scroll for a picture you get a dopamine hit, every time you find a new pretty picture you get a hit of Opioids. This is why social media is so addicting.
All is fine and dandy until you realise both of these chemical hormones cause you to be more alert, ruining your ability to fall asleep quickly and get deep sleep.
Light
Further to this is the effect of light on your brain. Let’s again think back to a time pre Thomas Edison . After about 7pm, it is dark. We know sleep is associated with darkness, but the extent to which this is true is not appreciated.
Our body-clocks are not really ‘clocks’ as such, but just a response system based substantially on the light levels and activity levels of our bodies. In the morning we expose ourselves to sunlight, which releases cortisol and other ‘be awake and alert’ hormones. In the evening when there is less light, sleep friendly hormones like melatonin get released and cortisol levels drop.
There are a few key players in the sleep contest. Melatonin is the ‘get good sleep hormone’, we want this. Its basically the king of sleep.
Using a phone, TV or laptop within 2 hours of bed will stop melatonin from being released for the first 4 hours of your night. It should normally peak at 10pm allowing you to get rest. This means your body can’t slow down, your glymphatic system can’t clear the waste out of your brain, your brain waves can’t slow down. It basically means you will wake up feeling about 10x worse than if you did turn off your phone two hours before bed.
Flux
Shawn however fully appreciates that for many turning off your phone entirely at 7.30pm is about as probable as it not raining in England this week. As blue light is 4x more impactful than any other light, simply downloading a blue light dimmer like Flux, or Twilight can massively improve your sleep. So stop reading this article and go do that right now. They’re game-changers.
Cancer and manboobs
If that isn’t enough for you, as is explored in the book melatonin is incredibly anti-cancerous. A study in the international journal of Cancer showed nurses who work night shifts (ie get less melatonin), are 30% more likely to get breast cancer. The reason for this is melatonin is one of the strongest anti-oestrogenic compounds there are. Most anti-cancer drugs are based on anti-oestrogen's. If you are a women, not using your phone near sleep will substantially decrease your risk of breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, and improve your life in many other ways too. If you are a man the effects are the same as above, but you will also lose the man boobs, get a deeper voice, grow a thicker beard, lose the belly fat and put on more muscle.
If that isn’t enough for you and you still want the TV in your room, realise couples who have TVs in their room have on average 50% as much sex as those who don’t. A similar case is true for couples who use their phones. If that can’t convince you, nothing will.
Execution
The thing that surprised me about this book is its how succinct it was. Chapters that only needed to be 5 pages long were in fact 5 pages long. 5 juicy pages packed full of dense and impactful information and well evidenced science. The book leaves you with almost no argument left, addressing every single concern you may have. This once again brings out the fact that Shawn himself has gone through this transformative process. Every single challenge and objection to improving his personal health, he has stepped through and got over in some way.
On top of this there are huge numbers of extra resources provided to help if the book is not enough, and a free weekly podcast if you really want to drown in healthy goodness.
Easy to read
This book is one that I got through in the space of about 12 hours in two sessions. With 8 books on the go at once, I tend to be someone who reads 30 pages or so then changes books. This book was an easy read. Despite being dense and packed with as much science as something like ‘Thinking fast and slow’; the constant movie references, tasteful jokes and other top quality banterous literary devices make this book an easy read. Whereas most scientifically based books leave you drained and exhausted, this book almost gives you energy. Its actually enjoyable to read.
Easy to apply
As well as being easy to read, the ideas in this book are easy to apply. Although some of the recommendations are a bit out there, buying a perennial snakeplant being one of them, they are generally super easy. Stuff as simple as get outside for 20 minutes before 8.30. Do your exercise before 5.30. Don’t eat for two hours before bed. Basically they are simple things designed to make the biggest difference they can. Every change has its impacts explained, and you can weigh up which you want to implement. The more you change, the better your sleep.
Conclusions
As you can probably tell I loved this book. Suffering from severe acne from the age of 15, at 17 I went through a similar process of slowly improving my health in a desperate attempt to clear up my skin. Through this process I tried going dairy free for 2 months, which cost me a fortune. I almost fainted in Pret before stumbling my way through Tesco to find a baguette, having gone 4 days without eating carbs. 2 years into this journey I feel more energetic, more clear headed, more young than ever. Oh and my skin is basically clear, thank god. But this book still has highlighted that there are massive improvements I can make incredibly easily, just by focusing on improving my sleep.
Instead of doing what I did and becoming a coconut milk drinking carb abstaining zombie, just read this book that basically tells you everything you should do that really matters, then do it.
Shawn Stevenson’s Sleep Smarter (9.5/10)
