Recently, a friend posed a question. We like to bounce ideas off each other- he’s an accomplished Western medical professional, I hold down the Eastern side of things and we both share an interest in biohacking and all things human potential.
“What do you think is more important? Getting enough quantity of sleep or getting up consistently at the same time?”
This is a great question- pertinent at all times, but especially for modern humans in the fall. Many of whom are already angsting about the departure of the light and summer.
To answer these questions, we need to understand the role of sleep. And to do that, we go back to the fact that we are inherently animals that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years on a little ball of rock whirling around the sun. The patterns of night and day are encoded within our very cells. We are primates who started off swinging around (and sleeping in) trees. (Yes, before that we were fish and if you want to follow that trail deeply and well, read The Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century.1
We optimally spend a third of our life sleeping- reckon it’s biologically important? So here are some guidelines. Feel free to hate them, it won’t bloody help.
We need a good eight hours of sleep a day. Below that, our risk for a variety of diseases increases. Not to mention the fact that a poor night’s sleep doesn’t just mean you’re tired. It impacts the proper functioning of every system in the body.
We need a mix of deep, light and REM sleep.
The largest chunk of deep sleep happens before midnight. This is also when the largest amount of human growth hormone is released.
REM sleep increases as we approach dawn. REM is our psychotherapist in situ. It is a known reality that patients in critical care whose sleep is constantly interrupted by their medical needs can manifest ‘ICU delirium’. Yes, lack of REM sleep will make you bonkers.
Light sleep interweaves between the two helping us to integrate memory into deeper storage.
From the standpoint of Chinese medicine, we also know that there are different systems functioning at different times of the night. (I’m going to frame this in terms of daylight savings because we are insisting on moving towards that as a default. Interesting fact- part of the pressure towards this default directly results from the fact that people buy more crap during DST. Yep, that’s a darn good reason to make a change. For sure. Really?!? Incidence of heart attacks increase up to 24% the day after we move into daylight savings.2)
10pm to midnight is governed by the Triple Heater which functions to harmonize all other systems. If you can’t wrap your head around the Triple Heater, refer to the interstitium.3
Midnight to 4am is governed by the Liver and Gallbladder. From a more esoteric standpoint, this is when we download the grand plan from the divine. Download does not happen if you’re wandering around the house, watching Netflix and carving out your personal time (that’s a different problem entirely).
4am to 8am is Lung and Large Intestine. Note that many spiritual traditions have you up and practicing at 4am…But regardless, you want to be up and rolling by 8am.
So, it’s interesting to note that both Western and Eastern science state that specific processes happen at particular times. Not all the time. This is also why shift work is a killer. You can go outside the confines of night and day but the price is high. So yes, my friend, getting up at a regular time is important. Getting up when the sun comes up (or nearly so) is really important. Getting sunlight in your eyes before 10am is really important. (And no, your windshield does not allow for this to happen.)
I could go on. I could do a great job (or not) of regurgitating everything I learned from Matthew Walker and his lovely book, Why We Sleep. We could debate and measure and exercise the right side of our brains until the cows come home. (Lucky bastards- they can sleep standing up.)
But this is the wrong question. Asking whether to prioritize regularity versus hours is the equivalent of dithering over whether we sit in the pink deck chair or the blue one on the Titanic…
So here are some different questions I might ask myself (dear friend, you are off the hook. I’ll refer to my own life.)
What are my values? Do I value productivity? Health? Longevity?
What is so darn important that I am willing to jeopardize my overall health?
Am I trying to cram 75 pounds of shit in a 50 pound bag?
Why did I think that moving into a charming but inexpensive apartment above a meth addict was such a good idea? Is money more valuable than good sleep?
When did I fall for the prevailing thought that you get to do ALL the things, you know, more more more, just add to the to do list, keep going, this is never going to end…
We like to think that as humans, we’re the top of the food chain. And certainly top of the brain chain. But we’ve lost our animal selves. People say pets are stupid, but you don’t see them wandering around bleary eyed, bleating for their next cup of coffee…Our soft animal selves want to sleep well and deeply. We want a dark, cool, quiet safe space where we rest, refresh and rebuild. Dogs don’t pull all-nighters, cats don’t need Ambien and the squirrels know how to make a cozy warm bed in the deep of winter. Take notes, people.
So now it’s autumn. The dark is increasing yet we keep living like it’s summer. We don’t want to go to bed earlier (FOMO). There are too many funny clips from Our Flag Means Death on Youtube. As modern Western humans, we’ve been inculcated to not like or trust our bodies. We’ve been told that they will lead us astray. Maybe they might just lead us home to our place as just one of the ten thousand beings, a warm beating heart amongst the multitude. Just another furred creature curling up to sleep.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver