Stop Trying So Hard to Sleep & Why New Things Are So Hard to Resist

Something You Should Know

This episode explores the biological and psychological mechanisms behind common human experiences, ranging from physiological responses to cold to

Key takeaways

• The body deliberately reduces blood flow to fingers and toes during cold exposure to protect vital organs like the heart and brain.
• Stephanie Ramashevsky suggests that over-monitoring sleep with technology can actually induce anxiety and worsen insomnia.

Main topics

• Physiology of cold extremities
• Sleep optimization anxiety

Notable quotes

Stop trying so hard.

Conclusion

The episode encourages listeners to trust their natural biological rhy

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:02) Today on Something You Should Know, why your fingers and toes sometimes get cold when the rest of you doesn't. Then, people worry a lot about their sleep. They take pills, wear trackers and toss and turn. Speaker 1 (0:16) And it's causing sleep problems now because we're trying to biohack it, over-optimize it. And I just wish that I could take that worry away from people and help them realize how incredible your sleep is and how much it's looking after you, no matter what your expectations are. Speaker 3 (0:31) Also, what is the point of goosebumps? And who doesn't love new things? New Speaker 2 (0:37) car, new Speaker 3 (0:38) clothes, new gadgets. Speaker 2 (0:40) Research has shown that when we encounter something novel, our brains fire off dopamine, pushing us to explore it. So we are hardwired to gravitate to new things. The problem is that today, novelty is everywhere. We are overloaded with it. Speaker 3 (0:56) All this today on Something You Should Know. 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Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees so you keep everything you earn. Speaker 3 (2:17) Something you should know. Speaker 2 (2:19) Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Speaker 3 (2:27) Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Speaker 3 (2:30) Have you ever had that experience where your fingers and your toes feel real cold, but the rest of you doesn't? Well, why does that happen? That's the question we're going to answer as we begin this episode. I'm Mike Carruthers, and welcome to Something You Should Know. So on a chilly day, your fingers and toes can feel freezing, while the rest of your body feels perfectly comfortable. That's not simply because they're farther away from your heart, which some people believe. You see, when your body gets cold, it deliberately reduces blood flow to your extremities. Blood vessels in your hands and feet narrow so that more of the warm blood stays around your vital organs, like your heart, lungs, and brain. In other words, your body is willing to sacrifice the comfort of your fingers and toes to protect the important machinery in the middle. That's also why warming just your hands doesn't really seem to help much. One of the most effective ways to get warm fingers and toes is to warm your core. Put on another layer, a jacket or a hat. Once your body is satisfied that its important organs are warm enough, it can then afford to send more warm blood back out to your fingers and toes. And that is something you should know. Speaker 3 (3:51) People spend an awful lot of time worrying about their sleep. Am I getting enough? Is it good quality sleep? Why did I wake up at 3 a.m.? Is my bedroom too warm? Should I be tracking all of this? Increasingly, we're trying to manage and optimize sleep with apps, watches, rings, special routines, and all kinds of advice about the perfect way to sleep. But what if that's part of the problem? What if sleep generally knows how to take care of itself, and the more you monitor it, judge it, and try to perfect it, the more anxious you become about getting something that is supposed to happen naturally? And of course, anxiety about sleep is a pretty good way to make sleep harder. Stephanie Ramashevsky has a refreshingly different take on all of this. She is a sleep physiologist and co-founder of Sleepyhead Clinics. She has worked in chronobiology and assisted with sleep research at Harvard Medical School. And her book is called Think Less, Sleep More, From Panic and Perfectionism to Stress-Free Sleep. Hey Stephanie, welcome Speaker 2 (5:02) to Something You Should Know. Speaker 1 (5:04) Thank you. Thank you for having me. Speaker 3 (5:07) My sense of sleep, and I think the sense for a lot of people, is that sleep is something that we have to do, that you pay a price if you don't get enough sleep, if you don't sleep well, if you don't sleep at the right time of the night. Everybody may be a little different, but you need somewhere around eight hours of sleep per night. And if you don't follow those general guidelines, there is a price to pay. Speaker 1 (5:33) Which is very interesting to hear you say that. And that is exactly how most people think, because I would add to that and you're never going to stop sleeping. So it's a biological trait that you have that is never going to go away. And I think the reason that's important is because the way you just described it sounds to me like you really need to take care of it, that if you don't, terrible things are going to happen, like, you know, really worrying. And whilst, of course, we do have research to show what happens when it's severely restricted, it's a bit like talking about what happens when you don't have the most perfect nutritional diet. Of course, there are going to be pitfalls to not eating the way that your body needs on a day to day basis. But that's going to change. Right. And sleep is very similar. So I find that we are our definition of what. good sleep is likely needs to change in order for us to really take care of it in a much more realistic and rational fashion. Speaker 3 (6:41) So what's your definition of good sleep? Speaker 1 (6:43) My definition of good sleep would be the person who doesn't really think about their sleep. So that's the first, probably most important part is that it's not really, it's a bit like breathing to them. They're not overthinking it. They are taking care of it in the most influential ways. So they likely have those key things in place. They're likely not what you think. So it's not a case of a never ending list of sleep hygiene and supplements and tech. It's not all of that. There's just a few key things. And they don't worry when they have a bad night because that's going to be normal. Sometimes sleep is going to vary. It will not look the same from 25 to 55. You're going to go through loads of variations and it's not abnormal to wake up in the middle of the night. And actually, it's completely impossible, even if you are an eight hour sleeper, which not everybody is, for you to sleep eight hours every night. So there's something amiss with this definition that we have at the moment. And actually, you're doing yourself a bit of a disservice by trying to reach perfection each day. Because if your sleep was not flexible, how would you deal with jet lag? How would you deal with clock changes? How would you deal with sickness when your body needs a little bit of a different style of sleeping in order to... really heal you. You know, what you need is triaged by your body. It doesn't need you interfering quite as much as perhaps we are. Well, Speaker 3 (8:21) it sounds like you're saying we worry way too much, that your body can't not sleep. If you don't sleep, your body will eventually go to sleep. Unless you're being tortured with sleep deprivation and being forced to stay awake, your body will go to sleep. So it'll all take care of itself. Speaker 1 (8:40) Absolutely. So the reason that, for example, sleep is used as a torture method or has been used as a torture method is because it's so horrific trying to keep yourself awake. I mean, I don't know if you've ever tried to actively keep yourself awake, but it's impossible. It's really hard to do. After a while, your body is going to shut you down. You literally have to have someone physically keeping you awake with very loud noise, keeping your eyelids physically open. Like it's not good what has to happen. Speaker 3 (9:13) So here's some things that I've heard are supposedly important for a good night's sleep. One of them is that you should go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, to which you say what? Speaker 1 (9:27) This is a very confusing one. So I would argue that, yes, getting up at the same time every day is really key. It's a great anchor and it helps your body to understand when to build your sleep drive. In order to be sleepy, you actually have to build a drive to feel sleepy. And to do that, you have to be awake. So if you were doing that consistently every day, then you would feel predictably sleepy around about the same time. Most of the time, you know, things are going to change that sometimes. Going to bed at the same time every night will be a happy consequence of getting up at the same time. However, guess what most people do? They don't take heed of the getting up every day at the same time because that seems harder, right? Especially in our society and how we work. But going to bed at the same time seems a lot easier. Now, without an anchor in the morning, you just going to bed when you feel the right time is, is not helpful. You can't just go to bed and feel sleepy, tired and go to sleep. you know, if you have a fairly consistent get up time, then you might notice that you can do that, that it feels quite predictably the same time. But it's likely to be more all over the place and more confusing when you try to go to bed at 10pm, but actually your body's like, no, you had a lie in of a couple of hours this morning. We're not going to be tired till much later. But of course, you get anxious about this. And of course, what does anxiety do? It pushes sleep away further. And so before you know it, you're up for three, four hours tossing and turning, maybe longer, freaking out because you're not sleeping, when actually the idea was to get up at the same time so that you could build a consistent, predictable drive. Speaker 3 (11:11) Yeah, well, that just makes sense, actually. If you force yourself to get up at the same time every day, you will adjust at the other end to go to bed on time. Eventually, maybe today. It won't work. But tomorrow you'll probably go to bed a little earlier because you went to bed too late tonight. But like we said, it self-regulates. Speaker 1 (11:32) Exactly. Speaker 3 (11:33) So I've also heard that sleep hygiene, like a very dark room, cool, quiet, all those things are critical to a good night's sleep. Speaker 1 (11:43) So people over-focus on what we define, I guess, as sleep hygiene. everyone you speak to will say that list is slightly different and then it's often added to with lots of