I'm a bad sleeper because I don't want to go to sleep.
If you listen to The Lee and Irene Show, you'll know I talk about my relationship with sleep a lot. There is always so much to do, I have a whole business to rebuild from scratch, and I've had an I'll sleep when I'm dead attitude for years.
If I do my wind-down at 10.30, I'll sometimes sneak out of the bedroom to check my phone at 11, because that's exactly when I get my second wind. It's a real thing, the circadian wake maintenance zone, when the body clock fires up its alerting signal in the couple of hours before bed. Mine hands me a tidy extra 30 minutes of work, and I take it, which is the whole problem.
I know that's bad. I know I'll be so much more productive if I turn off and sleep and recharge, so that's my personal challenge, and I'm working through it. This post is a note to self as much as anything. Moving our body and eating well matter too, but there really is nothing that compares to how we feel after a good night's sleep, so here are the five benefits that keep talking me into an earlier night and more quality sleep.
1. Emotional Wellbeing and Immune Support
According to sleep researcher Matthew Walker, sleep provides a form of overnight emotional processing. Getting the recommended 7 to 9 hours can take the edge off difficult or stressful experiences, making them feel less charged the next day. REM sleep in particular helps consolidate information and integrate memories, so we often wake with a clearer perspective on problems we couldn't resolve the night before.
Sleep is also central to immune function. Our bodies do a lot of their infection-fighting work while we're asleep, which makes it easier to catch a cold or bug when we're short on sleep. When researchers led by Sheldon Cohen exposed 164 people to a cold, those sleeping less than 6 hours a night were 4.2 times more likely to come down with it than those getting more than 7.
I feel this one every time. After a run of bad nights, especially the week after something big when my adrenaline finally drops, I'm always the one who gets sick.
2. Weight and Appetite
Sleep has a direct line to the hormones that control hunger. In a study by Karine Spiegel and colleagues published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, people getting only 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night saw leptin, the hormone that signals fullness, drop by 18%, while ghrelin, the hunger hormone, rose by 28%. Poor sleep also steers us towards carbs, sugar and salt, and makes cravings harder to resist.
After a bad night I crave sweet, sugary things far more than usual, and that sets off a whole knock-on effect. My eating isn't perfect at the best of times. I skip breakfast, and my morning routine is a double shot espresso with collagen powder, but I'm getting better, and I work on it every day.
3. Memory and Learning
Before learning, a good sleep primes the brain to take in new information. After learning, deep sleep files those fresh memories away. In a study led by Seung-Schik Yoo in Matthew Walker's lab, published in Nature Neuroscience, people who had stayed awake all night showed far less learning-related activity in the hippocampus on their MRI scans, and took in new information far less effectively than those who had slept.
I know this one from the inside. On no sleep I lose words mid-sentence on the podcast, walk into a room and forget why I'm there, and read the same email three times. Add perimenopause on top and it's a lot.
4. Brain and Body Health
While we're asleep, the brain's glymphatic system clears out the metabolic waste that builds up during the day. Most of this clean-up happens during deep sleep, and even a few short nights can disrupt it. Deep sleep is also when the body does much of its physical restoration work, renewing tissue and supporting overall recovery.
A bad night shows up on my face by morning, puffy eyes and dull skin. As you know, I'm a huge fan of night creams, because they're the best way to multitask when life gets busy. There's nothing better than waking up feeling refreshed, then walking past the mirror and thinking, damn, I look good this morning. That's sleep and the right evening night cream working together.
5. Mood and Emotional Resilience
A short fuse after a bad night has a neurological explanation. MRI research shows that sleep deprivation fires up the amygdala, the brain's emotional alarm system, while weakening its connection to the prefrontal cortex, the part that keeps us calm and rational.
A 2021 meta-analysis by Alexander Scott and colleagues in Sleep Medicine Reviews, covering 65 trials and more than 8,600 participants, found that improving sleep quality had significant positive effects on mental health, including reductions in depression, anxiety and rumination. A bad night always affects my mental and physical performance the next day. It's harder to do anything, pack orders, negotiate deals, create content.
How Do I Get a Good Night's Sleep?
I worked with Shea Morrison for years. She co-founded The Goodnight Co and she's a sleep coach and specialist. Sleep is her entire world: sleep consults, workshops, retreats and her podcast, Sleep by Shea. These are the three tips she recommends starting with.
1. Wake up at the same time each day. Waking at the same time each morning creates a rhythm for our internal body clock, which helps regulate melatonin production. Inconsistent wake times can confuse the brain and make it harder to fall asleep at night.
2. Take small breaks throughout the day. If stress hasn't been dealt with before we get into bed, it makes falling asleep difficult. Bringing our heart rate down with small moments of rest during the day prepares the body for sleep long before bedtime.
3. Create a sleep routine. This is the tip I'm obsessed with. Repeating the same actions each night signals to the body that it's time to wind down, and it doesn't need to take long. I love love love my magnesium baths, and I've built my whole evening around one: a warm bath first, then the phone goes away, then I journal my thoughts to get them out of my head.
And if you would like a little extra help falling asleep, these are my 6 tried and tested natural sleep remedies.
About the Author ~ Irene Falcone
Irene Falcone is a clean beauty writer and co-host of a wellness podcast. She has spent more than 15 years reading the back of beauty labels, and is a Telstra Business Women's Awards winner and a judge for the Clean + Conscious Awards.
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