It’s coming back

I haven’t published anything on the blog since 2017, and this is a test to find out if it all still works – more to follow.

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How sleep could save your life

Matthew Walker: we’re in the midst of a “catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic”
Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy, in 1976
“During NREM sleep, your brain goes into this incredible synchronised pattern of chanting, the cells all singing together”
Matthew Walker has spent two decades studying how sleep affects the human mind and body. His conclusion? The modern reluctance to go to bed is making us fat, ill and miserable. Rachel Cooke reports on a hidden epidemic
Matthew Walker has learned to dread the question “What do you do?” At parties, it signals the end of his evening; thereafter, his new acquaintance will inevitably cling to him like ivy. On an aeroplane, it usually means that while everyone else watches movies or reads a thriller, he will find himself running an hours-long salon for the benefit of passengers and crew alike. “I’ve begun to lie,” he says. “I just tell people I’m a dolphin trainer. It’s better for everyone.”
Walker is a sleep scientist. To be specific, he is the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute whose goal – possibly unachievable – is to understand everything about sleep’s impact on us, from birth to death, in sickness and health. No wonder, then, that people long for his counsel. As the line between work and leisure grows ever more blurred, rare is the person who doesn’t worry about their sleep. Indeed, it is Walker’s conviction that we are in the midst of a “catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic”, the consequences of which are far graver than any of us could imagine.
Walker has spent the last four-and-a-half years writing Why We Sleep, a complex but urgent book that examines the effects of this epidemic close up, the idea being that once people know of the powerful links between sleep loss and, among other things, Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, obesity and anxiety, they will try harder to get the recommended eight hours a night. But the individual can only achieve so much. Walker wants major institutions and law-makers to take up his ideas, too. “No aspect of our biology is left unscathed by sleep deprivation,” he says. “And yet no one is doing anything about it. When have you ever seen an NHS poster urging sleep? When did a doctor prescribe not sleeping pills, but sleep itself? Sleep loss costs the UK economy more than £30bn a year in lost revenue, or 2% of GDP. I could double the NHS budget if only they would institute policies to mandate or powerfully encourage sleep.”
Why, exactly, are we so sleep-deprived? In 1942, less than 8% of the population was trying to survive on six hours or less of sleep a night; in 2017, almost one in two people is. “First, we electrified the night,” Walker says. “Light is a profound degrader of our sleep. Second, there is the issue of work: not only the porous borders between when you start and finish, but longer commuter times, too. No one wants to give up time with their family or entertainment, so they give up sleep instead. And anxiety plays a part. We’re a lonelier, more depressed society. Alcohol and caffeine are more widely available. All of these are the enemies of sleep.” Walker believes, too, that in the developed world sleep is associated with weakness, even shame. “We have stigmatised sleep with the label of laziness. We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming how little sleep we’re getting. When I give lectures, people will wait behind until there is no one around and then tell me quietly: ‘I seem to be one of those people who need eight or nine hours of sleep.’ They’re convinced that they’re abnormal, and why wouldn’t they be? We chastise people for sleeping what are, after all, only sufficient amounts. We think of them as slothful. No one would look at an infant baby asleep, and say ‘What a lazy baby!’ We know sleeping is non-negotiable for a baby. But that notion is quickly abandoned [as we grow up]. Humans are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason.” In case you’re wondering, the number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population and rounded to a whole number, is zero.
The world of sleep science is still relatively small. But it is growing exponentially, thanks to new technology (such as electrical and magnetic brain stimulators), which enables researchers to have what Walker describes as “VIP access” to the sleeping brain. Walker, who is 44 and was born in Liverpool, has been in the field for more than 20 years. He started out studying for a medical degree, but switched to neuroscience and, after graduation, began a PhD in neurophysiology. It was while working on this that he stumbled into the realm of sleep. “I was looking at the brainwave patterns of people with different forms of dementia, but I was failing miserably at finding any difference between them,” he recalls now. One night he read a scientific paper that changed everything. It described which parts of the brain were being attacked by these different types of dementia: “Some were attacking parts of the brain that had to do with controlled sleep, while other types left those sleep centres unaffected. I realised my mistake. I had been measuring the brainwave activity of my patients while they were awake, when I should have been doing so while they were asleep.” Over the following six months, Walker taught himself how to set up a sleep laboratory and, sure enough, he found a clear difference between patients. Sleep, it seemed, could be a new early diagnostic litmus test for different subtypes of dementia.
After this, sleep became his obsession. “Only then did I ask: what is this thing called sleep, and what does it do?” Does his obsession extend to the bedroom? Does he take his own advice when it comes to sleep? “Yes. I give myself a non-negotiable eight-hour sleep opportunity every night, and I keep very regular hours: if there is one thing I tell people, it’s to go to bed and to wake up at the same time every day, no matter what. I take my sleep incredibly seriously because I have seen the evidence. Once you know that after just one night of only four or five hours’ sleep, your natural killer cells – the ones that attack the cancer cells that appear in your body every day – drop by 70%, how could you not?”
Should his eyelids fail to close, Walker admits that he can be a touch neurotic. When, for instance, he came to London over the summer, he found himself jet-lagged and wide awake in his hotel room at two o’clock in the morning. His problem then, as always in these situations, was that he knew too much. “I thought: my orexin isn’t being turned off, the sensory gate of my thalamus is wedged open, my dorsolateral prefrontal cortex won’t shut down, and my melatonin surge won’t happen for another seven hours.” What did he do? In the end, it seems, even world experts in sleep act just like the rest of us when struck by the curse of insomnia. He turned on a light and read for a while.
More than 20 large-scale epidemiological studies all report the same clear finding: the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. To take just one example, adults aged 45 years or older who sleep less than six hours a night are 200% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke in their lifetime, as compared with those sleeping seven or eight hours a night. A lack of sleep also appears to hijack the body’s effective control of blood sugar, the cells of the sleep-deprived appearing, in experiments, to become less responsive to insulin, thus causing a prediabetic state of hyperglycaemia. When your sleep becomes short, moreover, you are susceptible to weight gain. Among the reasons for this are the fact that inadequate sleep decreases levels of the satiety-signalling hormone, leptin, and increases levels of the hunger-signalling hormone, ghrelin. “I’m not going to say that the obesity crisis is caused by the sleep-loss epidemic alone,” says Walker. “It’s not. But processed food and sedentary lifestyles do not adequately explain its rise. Something is missing. It’s now clear that sleep is that third ingredient.”
Sleep has a powerful effect on the immune system, which is why, when we have flu, our first instinct is to go to bed: our body is trying to sleep itself well. Reduce sleep even for a single night, and your resilience is drastically reduced. As Walker has already said, studies show that short sleep can affect our cancer-fighting immune cells. And getting too little sleep across the adult lifespan will also significantly raise your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The reasons for this are difficult to summarise, but in essence it has to do with the amyloid deposits (a toxin protein) that accumulate in the brains of those suffering from the disease, killing the surrounding cells. During deep sleep, such deposits are effectively cleaned from the brain. What occurs in an Alzheimer’s patient is a kind of vicious circle. Without sufficient sleep, these plaques build up, especially in the brain’s deep-sleep-generating regions, attacking and degrading them. The loss of deep sleep caused by this assault lessens our ability to remove them. More amyloid, less deep sleep; less deep sleep, more amyloid, and so on. (In his book, Walker notes “unscientifically” that he has always found it curious that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, both of whom were vocal about how little sleep they needed, both went on to develop the disease.)
And then there is sleep’s effect on mental health. When your mother told you that everything would look better in the morning, she was wise. Walker’s book includes a long section on dreams (which, says Walker, contrary to Dr Freud, cannot be analysed). He suggests that dreaming is a soothing balm. Deep sleep – the part when we begin to dream – is a therapeutic state during which we cast off the emotional charge of our experiences, making them easier to bear. Sleep, or a lack of it, also affects our mood more generally. Brain scans carried out by Walker revealed a 60% amplification in the reactivity of the amygdala – a key spot for triggering anger and rage – in those who were sleep-deprived.
We sleep in 90-minute cycles, and it’s only towards the end of each one of these that we go into deep sleep. Each cycle comprises two kinds of sleep. There is NREM sleep (non-rapid eye movement sleep); this is then followed by REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. When Walker talks about these cycles his voice changes. He sounds bewitched, almost dazed. “During NREM sleep, your brain goes into this incredible synchronised pattern of rhythmic chanting,” he says. “There’s a remarkable unity across the surface of the brain, like a deep, slow mantra. Researchers were once fooled that this state was similar to a coma. But nothing could be further from the truth. Vast amounts of memory processing is going on. To produce these brainwaves, hundreds of thousands of cells all sing together, and then go silent, and on and on. Meanwhile, your body settles into this lovely low state of energy, the best blood-pressure medicine you could ever hope for. REM sleep, on the other hand, is sometimes known as paradoxical sleep, because the brain patterns are identical to when you’re awake. It’s an incredibly active brain state. Your heart and nervous system go through spurts of activity: we’re still not exactly sure why.”
How is it possible to tell if a person is sleep-deprived? Walker thinks we should trust our instincts. Those who would sleep on if their alarm clock was turned off are simply not getting enough. Ditto those who need caffeine in the afternoon to stay awake. “I see it all the time,” he says. “I get on a flight at 10am when people should be at peak alert, and I look around, and half of the plane has immediately fallen asleep.” So what can the individual do? First, they should avoid pulling “all-nighters”, at their desks or on the dancefloor. Second, they should start thinking about sleep as a kind of work, like going to the gym. “People use alarms to wake up,” Walker says. “So why don’t we have a bedtime alarm to tell us we’ve got half an hour, that we should start cycling down?” We should start thinking of midnight more in terms of its original meaning: as the middle of the night. Schools should consider later starts for students; such delays correlate with improved IQs. Companies should think about rewarding sleep. Productivity will rise, and motivation, creativity and even levels of honesty will be improved. Sleeping pills, by the way, are to be avoided. Among other things, they can have a deleterious effect on memory.
What questions does Walker still most want to answer? “It’s so difficult,” he says, with a sigh. “There are so many. I would still like to know where we go, psychologically and physiologically, when we dream. Dreaming is the second state of human consciousness, and we have only scratched the surface so far. But I would also like to find out when sleep emerged. I like to posit a ridiculous theory, which is: perhaps sleep did not evolve. Perhaps it was the thing from which wakefulness emerged.” He laughs. “If I could have some kind of medical Tardis and go back in time to look at that, well, I would sleep better at night.”
A longer version of this article first appeared in The Observer
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2017. Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker is published by Allen Lane at £20.
THE WEEK
4 October 2017

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The Best Nap Time For Big Mental Health Boost

An article from  PsyBlog

best nap time

The best nap time could keep your brain five years younger.

Taking a nap of around an hour after lunch is linked to the biggest long-term boost in mental health, new research suggests.

Almost 3,000 Chinese people over the age of 65 were included in the study of napping.

Around 60% reported taking a nap after lunch.

The researchers found that those taking an hour-long nap did the best on measures of memory and cognition.

The study’s authors explain their results:

“…a moderate-duration nap taken during the postlunch dip is associated with better overall cognition.

Older adults who did not nap or napped longer than 90 minutes (extended nappers) were significantly more likely than those who napped for 30 to 90 minutes after lunch (moderate nappers) to have lower overall cognition scores…”

In comparison, those who took shorter naps, longer naps or no naps were cognitively older.

It worked out that people who did not nap for around an hour were cognitively five years older:

“In the final analysis, no napping, short napping, and extended napping were associated with worse overall cognition than moderate napping.

The difference in overall cognition associated with these napping groups was similar to or greater than the decline in cognition associated with a 5-year increase in age.”

Best nap time

The study is one of the first to look at the benefits of longer afternoon naps.

The benefits of short naps are already well-known, the study’s authors write:

“…the short-term benefits of brief naps (e.g., 10 minutes) are well documented in previous studies and include greater alertness and accuracy and speed when performing a number of cognitive tasks, including psychomotor performance and short-term memory…”

The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (Li et al., 2016).

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We can wipe out mosquitoes – so let’s do it

Two young people, very close to me, are currently lying in hospital, seriously ill with Dengue fever.

Mosquito

Perhaps  Daniel Engber is correct, in what he says, in his article below.

“It’s time to kill all the mosquitoes,” says Daniel Engber. It was bad enough when these pests were spreading diseases such as malaria and dengue fever around the world, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people every year. But now they’re also spreading the Zika virus, which is believed to cause birth defects.

Enough is enough. Rather than just seeking to repel these “flying hypodermic needles”, or to control their numbers by spraying cancer-causing pesticides around, let’s go for the “nuclear option” and wipe them out entirely.

For the first time in human history, that option is now in our grasp. By introducing genetically engineered mosquitoes into the wild, it’s quite conceivable that we could totally eliminate at least the handful of really dangerous mosquito breeds, if not all 3,500-odd species. Eco-activists might blanch at such a step, but there’s little evidence that “mosquitoes form a crucial link in any food chain, or that their niche could not be filled by something else”.

When science journalist Janet Fang investigated this option for the journal Nature in 2010, she concluded that “life would continue as before – or even better”. So what’s stopping us? Let’s take on these agents of “bioterror” at their own game. It’s time for mass “mosquito-cide”.

Daniel Engber

Slate.com

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10 Ways to have a better conversation

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How to Live Longer

I have found the answer to eternal life. Well maybe not eternal, but certainly a long one.

But first let me ask you; don’t you just hate it when people say ‘What’s wrong with you Dog Tired of Phone Callstoday, you don’t look very happy?’

Maybe you don’t feel like smiling on that particular day, for no particular reason.

Or maybe you feel like punching them in the nose.

However, a report in American Psychologist states that:

Smiling and being agreeable influences the length of people’s lives in a positive way – Wow!

On the other hand, being grumpy increases the likelihood of a violent death, heart disease, cancer etc – oh dear!

And punching someone on the nose may result in a violent death!

If DC says it; it must be true

Dale Carnegie in his book – How to Win Friends and Influence People, says: ‘People who smile tend to manage, teach and sell more effectively, they also raise happier children.’

Are your teeth okay?

Another survey found that 75% of respondents thought that an unattractive smile would be bad for their career. While a whopping 92% said an attractive smile was a necessary social asset.

Watch out for the scary people

These sorts of reports have been around for years, but many of the people that I come into contact with don’t seem to have received the message.

I’ve attended business networking meetings where many non-smiley people look downright scary.

And they wonder why they don’t gain any benefit from their networking!

Many of the people at my local health club look downright unhappy. You’d think they were there as some form of penance rather than as part of their fun and leisure time.

Are you sure your teeth are okay?

Of course many people don’t smile because they’re nervous; they lack confidence or have low self-esteem. Some people on the other hand actually believe they’re smiling when the face they present to the world could actually turn milk sour.

Have a look at your face from your side

I’m not suggesting that we all go around with big smiles on our face grinning inanely at people we hardly know.

If you did that, then the men in white coats would soon be dragging you off to a place of detention.

However, I am suggesting that we think about the face we present to other people.

By sporting a warm smile at the appropriate time, we can only smooth the path for the people we’re dealing with.

We also boost our own confidence and it allows us to relax and make the most of a situation.

Here come the technical bit

Smiling stimulates the release of endorphins, the body’s feel-good chemicals, which has an ongoing positive effect. It’s a two-way neurological process; when you smile you literally become happier, and when you’re happier, you smile more.

If someone gives you an unsolicited smile, you smile back and in tteethhis way we directly affect each other’s moods.

Switching on a smile will only bring benefits – you’ll be happier and everyone else will be
happier – so keep smiling!

And in the words of W.C. Fields:

‘Start each day with a smile and get it over with’.

all books

Books available from Amazon and all bookstores worldwide

 

 

 

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The 8 Things The Happiest People Do Every Day

The 8 Things The Happiest People Do Every Day

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Can I Trust You

Because if I can’t there is no way you’re going to sell me anything, even although it’s the best product or the best service, at the best price.

And if you’re my boss, then you haven’t a hope of me being committed and engaged in

Welcome aboard

my job.

A whopping great 45% of people, who leave their jobs, do so due to a lack of trust in their employer.

This is according to Deloitte’s “Ethics and Workplace Survey”.

Do you trust me?

If I work for you, do you trust me to do my job to the best of my abilities; to turn up early and go home late?

Because, if you do; there’s a good chance that’s what you’ll get.

But if you don’t trust me to do that, and believe I won’t do the job to the best of my abilities, then that’s also what you’ll get.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Trust is a two-way street, and it has to start somewhere. So if you’re managing people or dealing with customers, why not let it start with you!

Alan’s Amazon Page

all books

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One Tip on How to Get Your Message Across

We all spend a great deal of our time communicating with other people. It could be our customers, our colleagues, our boss, and the people in our personal life.

So the tip is – use your feelings to get your message across to other people.

Conflict

Are you listening to me?

Do you ever get the impression that people are not really listening to you or understanding what you’re saying? It doesn’t matter if it’s face to face or in a more formal speech or presentation.

Most people are not particularly good listeners. They are easily distracted and interrupted by other stuff going on in their brain.

They might be:

  • Tired,
  • In a hurry,
  • Confused,
  • Physically uncomfortable,
  • Don’t understand your jargon
  • Maybe just thinking about what they will say next.

So if you want to get your message across, then it’s important to take into account all of these points. And it’s also important to ensure you are making the best of your speaking skills.

It’s all about the body

The problem is that the words you use, although essential, can be contradicted by your tone of voice and your body language.
Many people are now familiar with the results of research conducted by Dr Albert Mehrabian. This tells us that the impact of a message is dependent 7% on the words we use, 38% on tone and a whacking great 55% on body language.

I’ve read articles that take issue with these figures, suggesting that words are more important and have greater impact than Dr Mehrabian suggests.

I wouldn’t be prepared to put any figures on these three aspects of communication, however:

I am totally convinced that how you look, and how you sound, are far more important than what you say.

It was so exciting – not

Recently I conducted a one to one training session in selling and presentation skills for a director of a small computer software company. A video camera was used to record this director’s sale pitch to a potential customer, a role played by me.

When I replayed this recording, my director client was horrified to watch his presentation. In his pitch, he used words such as, ‘Young exciting company – staff with lots of enthusiasm for their product – lots of energy and passion for what they are doing.’

The only thing was that he, the person in the video, had about as much excitement, enthusiasm, energy and passion as a plate of cold porridge.

He was saying the words but they just weren’t convincing. He was dull monotone and boring, and he knew it.

The good thing was, that once he’d realised it, he could do something about it.

Don’t be shy

On occasion, people say to me. ‘I am as I am; I’m a quieter sort of person. I can’t leap up and down and get excited about something even though I feel it inside.’

My answer to these people is, ‘Don’t change your personality but do make a slight change to your behaviour.

Turn up the energy a little bit, put a bit more power in the enthusiasm, and warm up the passion just a tad more.

If you were to ask these same people about their football team, their children or their hobby, then just watch them get fired up – or at least, get a little bit warmer.

Honey baby

One quiet unassuming chap held me spellbound one day telling me about his hobby of beekeeping. It wasn’t so much what he was saying but how he was describing it.

His eyes were shining, he was speaking quickly and he was using his hands to describe this subject which he had now made very interesting.

He was buzzing (sorry, couldn’t resist that)

Here’s a little exercise for you

Say the following sentence out loud (okay wait till there’s no one around) There are 7 words; so say the sentence 7 times emphasising a different word in turn.

‘I didn’t say you stole my pen!’

Would you believe there are 7 meanings to this sentence depending on which word you emphasise?

Make it happen

Other people will respond more to your feelings than to what you actually say.

So if you want to get your message across to your employees, your customers, colleagues, or your family, then show more of how you feel.

And you do that through your tone of voice and your body language.

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And you’ll find this book at Amazon or other online booksellers

 

 

 

 

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How You Live is Up To You

The Father

I read a story some years ago about a brother and sister called John and Laura. Their father was a local businessman with a very dubious reputation.

He’d been in jail three times for crimes including robbery with violence and fraud.

He was married and divorced four times and had a string of affairs.

The Son

When John was sixteen, he made a conscious decision that he was not going to be like his father.

He worked hard at school, went on to college and graduated in engineering.

His career developed as an engineer and he eventually became a manager.

He owned his own house, and was happily married with two children.

He had a good social life and enjoyed playing tennis and sailing.

If you asked John, he would tell you that his life couldn’t be better.

The Daughter

Laura grew up resentful and feeling the world was all against her.

She was a clever girl but ultimately dropped out of school and never finished her education.

She worked in a series of menial jobs, either leaving them or being fired.

There were many boyfriends and no lasting relationships.

She was very unpredictable and moody with a violent temper.

She envied her brother and felt that he was just lucky.

When both of them were asked separately why their lives were as they were, they both gave the same answer.

‘What would you expect with a father like mine?’

Younot sure

There are outside influences that affect all of us. It is how we handle these influences that really matters.

How you live is up to you.

 

 

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