Have you ever stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night, convinced you haven’t slept a wink? Or dozed off the second your head hits the pillow, only to wake up feeling just as exhausted as when you laid down? Too often, our perceived reality of how much sleep we’re getting doesn’t match the truth. Anxiety and stress can completely distort our experience, leading us to believe we tossed and turned all night even if we technically slept soundly. My guests today are going to shatter these pervasive myths and self-delusions surrounding sleep. You’ll gain surprising insights into accurately understanding your sleep patterns and quality. But more importantly, you’ll discover simple yet powerful practices to start transforming your sleep and your life from this very night forward.
Sleep expert Dr. Chris Winter is going to shatter every myth you’ve ever believed about sleep, from the “8-hour rule” to the idea that good sleep has to be uninterrupted. He’ll share surprising insights into how obsessing over small sleep hacks could be doing more harm than good. Get ready to rethink your entire approach.
Then Arianna Huffington joins us, wielding a potent mix of cutting-edge science, cultural wisdom and personal reflection, exploring the unseen historical forces that shaped society’s dangerous delusion that sleep is dispensable and you’ll discover how prioritizing quality sleep is the gateway to peak cognitive performance, disease prevention, and redefining success itself.
Whether you’re an exhausted insomniac or just feel like you’re coasting through life on empty, this eye-opening conversation will leave you seeing sleep from an entirely new lens.
You can find Chris at: Website | Instagram | Sleep Unplugged podcast | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Chris
You can find Arianna at: Website | Instagram | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Arianna
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Episode Transcript:
Chris Winter, MD: [00:00:00] Paying attention to sleep and valuing sleep, but working on not stressing about it. Let’s control what we can control. Be in bed by 11:00. Be out of bed by seven. There. That’s what you can control. Those are tough choices to make. But that’s where we’ve got to be. And then understand that sometimes we’ll go to bed and not fall asleep right away. We’re okay. We’re normal. That’s fine. Like just being in bed resting can be wildly restorative for people. Find time to rest. And if rest turns to sleep, good for you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:34] So, have you ever found yourself just kind of staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, convinced you haven’t slept a wink or dozed off the second your head hits the pillow, only to wake up feeling just as exhausted as when you lay down? So too often, our perceived reality of how much sleep we’re getting it actually doesn’t match the truth of how much sleep we’re getting. And then anxiety and stress just completely distort our experience of sleep, leading us to believe that we’ve tossed and turned all night, even if technically we slept sound. My guests today are going to shatter these pervasive myths and others and self-delusions surrounding sleep. You’ll gain surprising insights into accurately understanding your sleep pattern and quality, but more importantly, you’ll discover some simple yet powerful practices to start transforming your sleep and your life from this very night forward. Sleep expert Doctor Chris Winter is going to shatter pretty much every myth you’ve ever believed about sleep. From the eight-hour rule to the idea that sleep, really to be good, has to be uninterrupted. He’ll share surprising insights into how obsessing over small sleep hacks could be doing more harm than good. So get ready to rethink that entire approach. And then Arianna Huffington joins us, wielding a potent mix of cutting-edge science, cultural wisdom and personal reflection, exploring unseen historical forces that shape societies really dangerous delusion that sleep is dispensable. And you’ll discover how prioritizing quality sleep is a gateway to peak cognitive performance, disease prevention, and redefining success itself. So whether you’re an exhausted insomniac or just kind of feeling like you’re coasting through life on empty, this eye-opening conversation will leave you seeing sleep from an entirely new lens. So excited to share it with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:02:23] So our first guest today is Doctor Chris Winter. And he’s here really kind of shake up everything that you thought you knew about sleep. He has practiced sleep medicine and neurology in Charlottesville, Virginia, since 2004, but his expertise goes back much further to 1993, when he first became involved with sleep research. He’s the owner of the Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine Clinic and CNZM consulting doctor. Winter is also the author of two books, The Sleep Solution Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It, and The Rested Child. Why You’re Tired, wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep disorder and had a help. And when he’s not helping countless patients and clients optimize their sleep, you can find him working with professional sports teams or hosting one of the top medical podcasts in the country. Sleep unplugged. In this conversation, Chris pulls back the curtain on why sleep is about so much more than just clocking enough hours and sharing counterintuitive insights that will challenge your beliefs about what good sleep really looks like. So get ready to rethink everything you’ve assumed about sleep, and wake up to a whole new way of experiencing this vital human need. Here’s Chris:
Chris Winter, MD: [00:03:28] When you look at research about anxiety and sleep, the way we feel about our sleep, the way we perceive our sleep tends to affect the way we perform and function during the day as much, if not more, than the way we actually sleep. So there’s a massive connection between stress and sleep, and understanding it completely can really help people out with their sleep, because what starts to happen is, is the stress impacts somebody’s perception of sleep, then the perception of the sleep becomes its own stress. I have gone years without getting a good night’s sleep, and no doctor can fix it, and no pill can help. That becomes its own stress, regardless of peace talks in the Middle East or what’s happening in Eastern Europe, or whatever you’ve got on your mind causing you stress. So I think the more people understand about sleep in general and that interplay between stress and our mental health and sleep, the healthier their sleep will become. Like you’ve gotten to know this entity, this beast for so long that to be challenged. And this happens a lot in the clinic when I tell patients, look, it’s impossible not to sleep well, maybe for most of your patients, but I don’t sleep, you know, they’re not giving me a hard time. They’re not lying about it. I got better things to do to be in my clinic and tell me things that aren’t true. That’s what they believe. So now you’ve got to unwind this thing and try to appeal to different parts of their psyche to help help them understand that you’ve got a problem. It’s a serious problem, but it’s not necessarily the problem you think it is. And it’s a problem that you’ve ultimately got control over. And you can see that in people who’ve struggled with insomnia and come out the other end. It’s often just a it’s a moment. It’s a belief. It’s an altered way of thinking about it. It’s not the right blue blocker glasses or the right pillow. It’s much, much deeper than that. It’s a fundamental reimagining and re understanding of what it means to sleep.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:27] Yeah. I mean, it sounds like what you’re describing is like sleep performance anxiety basically.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:05:33] It is for a lot of people. It is.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:35] But it also sounds like what you’re saying is that when this persists over an extended window of time and you have this like repeated things, like you start to tell the story to yourself over and over and over, it becomes a part of your identity. So And winding. The sleep issue also means that we need to actually talk about unraveling that identity that you’ve stepped into as a, quote, bad sleeper or disrupted sleeper. A person who never sleeps. Does that make sense?
Chris Winter, MD: [00:06:05] Oh, 100%. I’m surprised that you get that as a non sleep. That’s when it becomes really malignant. I have a belief that everybody has their thing, and it’s interesting for some people that their thing becomes the fact that they can’t sleep. That is a big part of their identity. That’s it’s almost like there’s seven steps to healing insomnia. There’s denial and anger and resolution. Whatever the steps would be. And some people are just further along than others, but that that personality identity is a big hurdle in the thing. Who wants to sit there and say, you mean for the past 14 years and all these sleeping pills and all this money and all this time and all this the specialists. It was just I was sleeping all along. All these stories I was telling my coworkers about going weeks without sleep. That was not true. It was just my perception of it. I can get why somebody would be like, screw you, man, you don’t know me. You know, I get it. That’s why it really takes some time to really work with people like this sometimes. And it requires a fair amount of motivation and openness and willing to put yourself in some, some tough spots. And, you know, everybody’s at different places when it comes to their ability or their readiness to do that kind of thing.
Jonathan Fields: [00:07:26] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Talk to me about how this true lack of sleep that accumulates over time, that where the deficit actually doesn’t go away. How does this start to show up in our psychology and our physiology, in the way that we live our lives?
Chris Winter, MD: [00:07:43] Yeah. I mean, I think it’s it’s slowly devastating. It’s Russ. I always think of it as rust. I mean, it’s a very interesting sword. Double-edged sword. In terms of our abilities to function within adequate sleep. We can do it. Some people do it much better than others. There’s some genetic factors that allow some people to thrive and others to not. And it is interesting that we tend to reward those people accidentally. The number of ways it’s hurting us are just they’re not able to be counted. It really is. I don’t want to sound alarmist, but if you’re somebody who’s like, look, I get five, I go to bed at midnight, I get up at 5 a.m. and work out and then go to the office. I don’t sleep any time outside of that. I really don’t sleep in on much of the weekends. You know, if I feel sleepy when I’m reading, you know, financial reports during the day, I just stand up in my office and walk around and drink a ton of coffee. Like, I can do it. I can do it like, sure you can. But at what cost? When you’re in your mid 50s? And we know individuals who shortchange themselves when it comes to sleep are more likely to get dementia and heart disease and die, you know, die of a car accident. I mean, it just becomes beyond maybe appealing to their rational sense, because I talk to a lot of smart people during the day. Way smarter than I am. I don’t believe they don’t believe it or know it. I think it becomes something like a habit or yes, I’m going to do that.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:09:05] When this project wraps up, I’m going to start getting the sleep I need, and that project never wraps up because it always leads to the next project or the next thing. And I wrestled with this too, Jonathan. This was my sleep struggle, which was I’m good at staying awake late and sleep depriving myself and being functional the next day. Really good at it, and I’m certain it allowed me to get good marks on certain rotations. I’m sure it helped me in high school. I could easily stay up all night and get work done and, you know, function well the next day in college. But at some point you do have to ask yourself Just because you can. Should you do it? I can do it. I don’t even feel like I’m struggling or suffering that much the next day. That’s the end of the spectrum that I have to work on. So I always look at people. Do you need to worry more about sleep, or do you need to worry less about it? So I’d probably be the person who needs to worry a little bit more. Read Matt Walker’s book and really consider it versus, you know, another person who might, you know, we were talking about earlier, the insomnia patient, maybe not read Matt Walker’s book and read my book, because if you read Matt Walker’s book, your level of anxiety about, you know, quote unquote, not sleeping is going to go through the roof. So you got to find the right tool to bring everybody to the middle, I guess.
Jonathan Fields: [00:10:25] No, that makes sense. So if you I mean, we’ve talked about this, you know, the perception gap, how getting really honest and actually maybe even getting some data to sort of like show you and actually, you know, things are maybe better than you think you are, maybe starts a process of reimagining and shifting your identity and maybe letting go of the anxiety. What are some of the more granular things, like the more basic things when you’re talking to somebody and says, okay, so have you tried this? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? Or like, here are the three, five, six, seven things that you want to get into the habit of doing either every day, every night that maybe no one of these is going to be a miracle cure. But if we start to, like, do them on a repeated basis, they’ll have a cumulative effect. What are some of the core things that we should be thinking about along those lines?
Chris Winter, MD: [00:11:10] Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I like things that are actionable. I think starting your day at the same time is really helpful. Our bodies just like that, we like nothing’s accidentally happening in our body. I didn’t just accidentally secrete a massive amount of testosterone into my bloodstream. It’s going to happen on some sort of. And that’s what’s so fascinating about the body, is that the timing of everything is just absolutely exquisite. And we can help our bodies do that by timing external things, and we call those external things thing, psychic or time cues. So if we look at a clock and we see, oh, it’s 6:00. That doesn’t really do much for our brain. But if we always eat our breakfast the first thing in the morning, that that stimulus of food going into our gut every day at the same time becomes a marker in time that we start to look at. And if you don’t believe me, eat your lunch and dinner and breakfast every day at the same time. And look and look and see when you start to feel hungry. I remember working at a summer camp one year, and we would always take the kids to the dining hall at this college at the same time every day, and I would find myself getting hungry on the walk over. In fact, it became a joke with the kids like, are you hungry yet, Chris? I’m like, no, not yet. It hasn’t hit me yet. But there it went.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:12:24] Like, I just got hungry, you know, because your brain’s like, okay, every day at this exact time versus when I was a college student, I never ate at the same time. Every day you talk to military people, they’ll tell you things like, I go to the bathroom at the same time every day because everything is so regimented and you don’t have to be militaristic about it, but starting your day off at the same time every day is really helpful, especially if you’re somebody who struggles with your sleep, because a lot of those people go through the thought process of, I had a bad night. It took me three hours to fall asleep, or I woke up at two in the morning and it took me hours and hours to go back to sleep. Therefore, on Saturday I get to sleep in until noon. That way I’m ensuring myself getting the right amount of sleep, when in fact that might be hurting you a little bit because now your brain’s not getting any sort of penalty for doing what it did in the night. So getting up at the same time every day and moving forward is a great way to kind of help to ensure your brain understands when sleep is supposed to happen. Because if you’re sleeping in until noon on Saturdays and Sundays, your brain’s kind of like, when do we get up? Sometimes we’re up at six. Other times we’re up six hours later. What is the wake-up time? If you’re messing with a wake-up time, you’re almost inevitably messing with the breakfast time.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:13:35] Sometimes we eat breakfast at noon when the sun is directly above our head. Other times, we’re eating it at 6:00 in the morning when the sun hasn’t come up yet. That’s very disruptive to a brain. I think the other thing that we can do is exercise. You know, listen, I think exercise should be like brushing your teeth. I don’t know that I’ve ever met somebody who says, look, I try to brush my teeth, but I’m pretty busy. Pretty busy guy here. Got a lot going on. So I get to brushing my teeth once every other week or so, if I’m lucky. No, I mean, everybody brushes their teeth probably twice a day. You might forget from time to time, but you didn’t choose to not brush your teeth because you were pushed for time. That doesn’t happen. And if you can brush your teeth for two minutes, you can walk on a treadmill for ten. Somebody says, look, every time the commercials come on. On my favorite show, I walk on a treadmill. Then you’re exercising, and I think we’ve got to get away from the idea. You know, for most people that exercising is optional. It should be right up there with brushing your teeth, especially if you’re struggling with your sleep, because it’s the exercise and that energy exertion that’s creating the drive to exercise. And the pro athletes that I work with, they can have really radically different sleep schedules in and out of season, because when they’re in season as a soccer player running up and down the field, it creates a drive to sleep.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:14:51] So if you’re somebody who’s struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep, exercise more, right? Chris already exercised 20 minutes every day. Exercise 40. It will help if you care. I think the other thing that we have to be careful of is we talk a lot about eight hours of sleep. That’s really a bell curve average of a distribution of a population. And a lot of people would say, you know, the average really isn’t eight, it’s seven. Seven is the number when you look at research, seems to be linked to the best health outcomes. As you go higher than seven, get to 8 or 9 or fewer than seven, you know, six, five. That’s where you start to see all the terrible things you talked about cognitive decline, heart disease, all that stuff start to go up. So, you know, I meet a lot of people who go to bed at 9:00 and their alarm set for six. I’ve got no problem with that. But you’re seeking nine hours, and you’re here because it takes you an hour or two to fall asleep. Well, if it takes you two hours to fall asleep, you’re still getting seven hours of sleep. That might be what you need. And that this idea that you need nine or can get nine is actually the problem.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:15:53] It’s sort of like getting having a bunch of buddies that are professional football players, and you get in your mind that to be elite, you have to eat a pizza and a half every night because that’s what they do. Well, you’re just a five foot eight sleep doctor, and now you’re going to your doctor needing an appetite, stimulating an appetite. Well, I can’t eat. Can’t finish my dinner. A not so great doctor will give it to you. A good doctor would say, well, why can you not tell me about your dinner? It’s a it’s a two pizzas. I can eat one large pizza and a half of another one. Why are you doing that? Because that’s going to make my health great. No it’s not. So you’re saying you get halfway through your first pizza and you don’t want any more food? That’s not a problem. That’s your body saying you don’t want any more pizza. You’re not A66 football player trying to gain weight and be on the O-line for the Packers. So I think we get this weird expectation because, again, of the media that if you’re not getting eight hours of sleep, you’re going to die a horrible death. And that’s a terrible pressure to take with you to bed at night. If somebody says, look, Chris, I get seven hours of sleep every night. When I try to get eight, I often struggle to fall asleep. And when I get my seven, I, you could give me an opportunity to take a nap during the middle of the day. I don’t think I could fall asleep if I tried. Then that sounds like you’re doing pretty well with seven and understand there’s a lot of people out there who’s seven is the number for them. It’s not eight. More is not always more. So I think you have to be very careful with that as well too. I think consistency of schedule extends beyond just your wake up time. If you can exercise in the morning every day, if you can try to eat your meals at the same time every day. If you can seek bright light in the morning and eat your lunch at the office outdoors and try to dim lights in the evening on the same sort of schedule. I think that 24-hour schedule can really impact people’s sleep quite well. And then the final thing that I think is really important is just get have a plan for having troubles with your sleep. If somebody if I meet somebody at a dinner party and they’re about my age and they say, you know, Chris, my entire life I’ve never had a bad night of sleep, I would find that fascinating and really jarring versus, yeah, you know, several nights a month I might struggle to fall asleep. I’m like, yep, well, there you are. You’re normal. That’s how normal people operate. Normal people sometimes don’t feel hungry for lunch, so they skip it and they think to themselves, weird because I like lunch, but I’m just not that hungry today.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:18:14] And they don’t question their appetite. There’s no dire consequence. Oh, God, I just skip lunch. I’m going to. I’m starving to death. That’s it. I think this is the beginning of the end for me. Like I should give away all my possessions because I skipped lunch. Nobody goes to that place with appetite. Man, you have two nights where you don’t sleep the way you’ve anticipated. You’re going to sleep. It can be really rough for some people versus. Oh, I had two nights of bad sleep. Oh, well, I’m sure tomorrow will be fine. So I think that paying attention to sleep and valuing sleep, but working on not stressing about it. Let’s control what we can control. Be in bed by 11:00. Be out of bed by seven. There. That’s what you can control, man. Gilded age got a new episode and I forgot about that. And it’s 10:00. It’s 11:00. I could watch that. See what happens with the railroad and the fight over the opera house. Or I could go to bed, get my sleep, and deal with watching the Gilded Age tomorrow. Those are tough choices to make, but that’s where we’ve got to be. And then understand that sometimes we’ll go to bed and not fall asleep right away. We’re okay. We’re normal. That’s fine. Like just being in bed resting can be wildly restorative for people.
Jonathan Fields: [00:19:21] Where do you fall on, um, screen time in its proximity to whatever it is that you’re doing to get into bed or fall asleep. Because if it seems like that’s become religion these days, you know, like you need to be off of computers, off of TVs, off of this, or put blue blockers on them and all this stuff. You know, one hour, two hours before you do this, or else it’s going to just profoundly disrupt your melatonin production or whatever. What’s your take on that?
Chris Winter, MD: [00:19:48] Yeah. I mean, to me it’s Usain Bolt shoes. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like it’s, you know, he’s getting ready to run a race and you’re like, well, you know, I got some better shoes. And those that you’re wearing will radically change the way you’re going to run. No they’re not. I mean, you might shave a quarter of a second off here or there. And then the flip side is, if I wear his shoes in the race, it doesn’t change anything about if I’m trying to get my running to the level of his. The shoes are the last thing. So to me, do these things make a difference? Yes. Are they making a big difference for the people who come to see me? Absolutely not. Oh, you know what, Chris, I couldn’t. It took me six hours to fall asleep. I’ve struggled ever since I was a teenager to sleep. And I got these blue blocker glasses, and it’s all fine now. Said nobody. Ever. So that’s not to diminish their importance. It’s just that. What are you looking to achieve, Chris? I’m a pretty good sleeper sometimes. You know, I do struggle a little bit to fall asleep. It’s not that big of a deal, but I have a job where I have to be on a screen pretty much late into the night, every night to get the game film ready for the coach the next day. Oh, okay. Well, here, try these blue blockers that might help you initiate sleep a little bit faster.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:20:59] Great. So I think that’s where we have to kind of be with these things. I always I always find this advice to some degree laughable. Like, okay, well two hours before you go to bed, screens need to be off. Great. Check screens off. What am I doing now for the next two hours, between 8 and 10:00 when I go to bed, just kind of sit here in the dark, look at my hands like, what? What are you? So the idea that we can’t sit down and watch a little TV before we go to bed, I think is absurd. Like, just dim the room, maybe not have a cup of coffee with it. But if you want to watch an episode of Yellowstone, see what ripping the guys in the barn house are up to before you go to bed, go right ahead. And if you’re doing that every night, it starts to become a marker of good sleep. To me, I’m just waiting for the person who said I’ve had disastrous sleep all my life, but I stopped watching television in the hour before I went to bed, and now that’s all gone. Like, I think these are details. These are like little fine tunings that we do like, hey, I’m Usain Bolt’s track coach. I’ve noticed that on your start, you’re hitching your left elbow. I want you to bring that a little closer to your body, because I think that’s going to give you a little bit more thrust in your start and maybe shave an eighth of a second.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:22:13] That instruction is not for the person who shows up at the track and says, I’ve never run before. Teach me. Okay, well, okay. You’re wearing work boots. Let’s start there and let’s stretch and we’ll do a very light workout. And tomorrow we’ll build upon that, and we’ll get you up to a place where that thing I just told Mr. Bolt will apply to you, but it doesn’t apply to you right now. It’s irrelevant to you because it’s just a it’s a and we spend so much time talking about these things in the media. Blue blocker glasses and dropping your temperature from 67 to 65. Meaningful. Yes. But for the vast majority of people who are buying that magazine at the checkout line because they’re really struggling with their sleep, you’re not there yet. We need to unwind a lot more things before we start working on which blue blocker glasses are going to work best for you. These are not really solutions to problems. These are adjustments we make to people who are already sleeping pretty well, but want that score on their aura ring to go from a 93 to a 95. That’s what those people are. That’s what that stuff’s for, I think. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:23:28] I mean, it’s interesting to hear you say that because it’s what goes along with that is a certain amount of just forgiving your humanity, you know, and saying, yeah, absolutely. I want to live in the real world. I want to like, grab this TV show with my partner lying on the couch with dim lights in the room. And of course, that’s going to be okay. And that rather than focusing on these tiny little things that might be tweaks or optimizers, why don’t we start out with the bigger things.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:23:52] 100%.
Jonathan Fields: [00:23:53] And simultaneously forgive those little things and the fact that we’re not doing them? Because if we obsess on them, they’re actually going to become another stressor, which then causes you piles onto the problem, of course.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:24:05] Absolutely. And there’s nothing wrong with trying. I mean, if somebody out there is listening, it’s like, nope, nope. I bought some blue blocker glasses from Swanwick and changed my life then. Great. I’m really happy for you. I just don’t think when I look at the population, that’s something that most people could bank on not to pick on them. I love Swanwick’s glasses. I think they’re great. I have no financial relationship with them. I’m just. But I don’t want to be disingenuous of like, oh my God, your years and years of sleep problems will be solved by this noise machine that you’re going to sit next to your pillow like that, unless you’re years and years of problems because of a dog that sleeps next to you makes a lot of noise, I don’t think it’s going to do anything for you. Pink noise, purple noise. Green noise. Brown. It doesn’t matter. It’s that’s these are just little tiny little adjustments here that we’re talking about. They’re not. Oh, it was because I was using a brown noise machine. I needed a pink noise machine. That was the reason why my sleep has been miserable for the last decade. Yeah. No, that’s not the way that works. Save your money.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:03] Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I love the fact that it was sort of like, you know, at the end of the day, it’s like, let’s get back to the basics. Let’s focus on the fundamental, like your basic lifestyle 100%.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:25:14] And media doesn’t want to hear about basics podcasts like Basics Media does not like basics because we got to get your attention on that cover. That magazine, if it says, hey, exercise is good for sleep, nobody cares about that.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:26] This feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. And it always wrap these conversations with the same question, which is in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.
Chris Winter, MD: [00:25:37] To live a good life, find time to rest. And if rest turns to sleep, good for you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:45] Mm. Thank you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:47] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So I love Chris’s insight and how he dispels so many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding sleep that cause unnecessary stress and anxiety. It’s kind of a refreshingly practical approach that reminds us that developing healthy relationships with sleep is more about lifestyle habits than obsessing over small tweaks. And next up is Arianna Huffington. Arianna wears many hats. She’s the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, a leading behavior change technology company working to end workplace burnout. She’s also the founder of The Huffington Post and the author of 15 books, including the international bestsellers Thrive The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom and Wonder, and The Sleep Revolution Transforming Your Life One Night at a time. She has been named one of time’s 100 Most Influential People, landed on the Forbes Most Powerful Women list, but it’s her unique ability to blend cultural commentary, scientific research, and spiritual wisdom that makes her insights so transformative. In this conversation, Arianna pulls back the curtain on why sleep deprivation has become a cultural epidemic. You’ll discover the surprising historical forces that shaped our modern delusion that sleep is somehow optional or a sign of weakness. And she shares groundbreaking science on sleep’s vital role in everything from cognitive performance to disease prevention and unlocking our full human potential. But she doesn’t stop there. So also get ready to explore a more philosophical understanding of sleep as a gateway to presence and wisdom, and redefining success itself. You’ll walk away with some simple yet powerful daily practices to transform your sleep and your life from this very night forward. Here’s Arianna:
Arianna Huffington: [00:27:28] Correcting the impression that that sleep is negotiable is hugely important, because I think it starts with that misperception. And I loved you retweeted Richard Branson saying that people used to believe the earth is flat. So I feel that our culture, believing that we don’t really need to sleep 7 to 9, nine hours, which is the accepted optimum number by every sleep scientist who study the subject. This is this is part of what our culture still believes in large numbers, though declining. And it is a completely false belief. So Changing the cultural norms around sleep is going to have such a huge impact on our health, on our creativity, on our mental health. And that I feel it’s a kind of, in a way, low hanging fruit in terms of fundamental changes we can make. So looking at the crisis, looking at the fact that over 30% of people are sleep deprived with huge consequences for their health and their and their cognitive performance. But then moving to the science, because I want to convince the most, the most stubborn skeptic that this is not just some new age evangelizing around sleep, but absolutely rooted in incontrovertible science, and that is growing every week.
Arianna Huffington: [00:29:01] We have new scientific data. And it’s fascinating because in 1970, the first scientific sleep center was launched at Stanford and now have over 2500 in the US alone. So you see that it’s a relatively new science, right? Right. Um, but then to answer your question, we moved to history because for me, it’s I had the same question you have. Okay. So the science is so convincing. The casualties are there for everyone to see. Why are we still holding on to this delusion? And the truth is that it really started with the first industrial revolution, which is when we started thinking. And you have amazing historical evidence that I include in the book to that effect, that we can really treat human beings like machines. And the goal with machines is how do you minimize downtime, right? So we forgot that human beings are not machines, and that even in the history of creation, God, who is after all, omni powerful, takes a day off, kind of almost to send a message to humanity.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:11] Right. Hey, if hey, if I have to do it
Arianna Huffington: [00:30:13] If i have to do it, if I work for six days and I create heaven and earth, and then I take a day off, you still have to do it. And the concept of the Shabbat is so deeply important. You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate the depth of this concept, which is basically having a day in the week when you don’t fully identify yourself with your job and your worldly pursuits. So that’s why understanding the historical context is so key. Because from the first Industrial Revolution, we went to the second Industrial Revolution, dominated by Thomas Edison and the and the invention of the light bulb. And Thomas Edison becomes a huge denouncer of sleep. I mean, here you have this man who was admired and adored and talking about how we’re going to eliminate sleep again. The earth is flat. An equivalent misconception, but perpetuated by somebody who was a cultural icon.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:15] Right. So then everybody wants to be like that person.
Arianna Huffington: [00:31:17] Exactly. And then. And then, um, captains of industry perpetuating the same illusion. Et cetera. Et cetera. And then we move to the third industrial Revolution, which is the digital revolution, which, of course, makes it even harder to disconnect and go to sleep, because we are all slightly addicted to technology. Some of us who are very addicted.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:39] I think slightly right.
Arianna Huffington: [00:31:40] Yeah. I mean, we’re like, we’re from slightly to excessively
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:45] Right. In the blink of an eye also.
Arianna Huffington: [00:31:46] And so how do we deal with learning to disconnect from our devices in order to reconnect with ourselves, which is essential if we are really going to have a deep and restful night’s sleep. So that’s a long answer to your question, but it’s a very important question to understand how we ended up here right now? Actually, we know so much that can convince us of the importance of sleep. I’m sure to your point, there is a lot more that’s going to be discovered now that we have so many scientists around the world investigating what happens when we sleep. But just of the thousands of studies that have been through, there are two that stand out for me. One was after the discovery of REM sleep. Basically, our whole idea of what happens when we sleep was transformed. You know, we used to think that it was a time of inactivity, right? And with the discovery of REM sleep, we came to realize that it’s a time of frenetic right brain activity. And, um, as, um, Bill Dement, who was part of the founding of the Stanford Sleep Center, said. We used to think that when you go to sleep, it’s like you put the car in the garage and turn the ignition off. And I like kind of the new metaphor, which is you go to sleep and your car becomes a driverless car that runs essential errands for you, right? And then there was a study that came out last year that explains, in a very graphic way what these essential errands are. And and I love it because it’s simple. It’s like the, the brain’s glymphatic system, which is really the the plumbing system of the brain is activated during sleep. So the brain can really do one of two things. It can either go through a day. Here we are. We are talking, we’re communicating, we’re getting stuff done. Or it can clean up the toxic waste that’s accumulated during the day. It cannot do both at once.
Jonathan Fields: [00:34:01] So interesting.
Arianna Huffington: [00:34:02] And as the the sleep scientist whom who came up with these findings put it, I think beautifully. It’s like you can either entertain the guests or clean up the house. You know, you can’t be doing both things at once. And we think that entertaining the guests is the only thing life is about. And as a result, this toxic waste accumulates. And the build ups are the cause of major diseases, including. Now they’re finding out Alzheimer’s, right? So the connection between the epidemic of sleep deprivation and the epidemic of Alzheimer’s is becoming clearer and clearer. I think that’s going to be one of the most fascinating things to keep uncovering. But also it’s connected with an enormous amount of other diseases. You know, it’s basically a lowering of our immune system, a rising of all the inflammatory indicators. So everything from diabetes and heart disease And obesity and cancer is affected.
Jonathan Fields: [00:35:01] Yeah. And I think that is one of the big surprises. It seems like the the connections that, you know, this body of research are showing between sleep and the breadth of effects that it’s having, from cognitive function to mood to disease risk to your risk for obesity or your metabolic effect. You know, it’s interesting. What’s interesting to me is that there’s so much there’s been so much focus on exercise and nutrition to get healthy, but sleep is playing catch up when it feels like sleep is almost like the unlock key that allows you to exercise more effectively and gives you the self-regulation abilities to actually control your behavior, to eat better and make better choices and go out and exercise.
Arianna Huffington: [00:35:47] Absolutely. I mean, ideally, there is a lot we need to do in the economy to make it possible for people to have a living wage, to be able to build a life without having to have two jobs and to have better health insurance. You know, all these things that we we need to do. And in another part of my life, when I’m wearing my political hat, you know, we are fighting these battles at the Huffington Post. But improving your sleep habits is in the hands of everyone right now, and it’s going to affect everything else, including your resilience. Because in a sense, the harder your circumstances, the more resilience you need. Sure. And we’ve seen, you know, people who have been able to tap into their resilience in the in the darkest of circumstances and the same, the same terrible event. Losing a job, for example, losing a loved one affects people dramatically different. And one of the factors in determining how it affects you is are you exhausted?
Jonathan Fields: [00:36:51] Yeah. It makes complete sense. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So when you when you look at somebody who’s really struggling to incorporate that, I think one of the other things that comes up a lot and you speak to it is are the challenges that people have sleep disruptions or insomnia or the various types of, um, disorders. I don’t know if we call them disorders. That’s the right word. Um, there’s one that actually you write about that came into my awareness a few years back, which I think is really surprising for most people, I think, which is the idea that we should have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. It’s actually kind of not the way that it was until fairly recently. It’s probably not biologically the way we would naturally sleep.
Arianna Huffington: [00:37:39] Yes. Well, I have a whole section in the book about segmented sleep, as it’s been known historically. So especially before the invention of the light bulb, people would go to sleep when it became dark, and then they would wake up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep. At the time when they are awake is a very special time. It’s not. It’s not the same as being awake during the day. It’s actually absolutely beautiful to read how there are special prayer books of prayers you would read in the middle of the night. If people wanted to have children, it was an optimal time to have kind of sex with the intention of procreating, to have intimate conversations in bed, to basically connect with your loved ones or yourself in a deeper way. And it’s actually something which I totally understand, because I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, and it used to make me anxious. It used to make me feel, because you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:41] Think we’re taught that there’s something wrong.
Arianna Huffington: [00:38:43] There’s something wrong, or I’m going to be tired in the morning. And now I consider it as a blessed opportunity to meditate without having a, it’s sort of a deadline. Like, I have 20 minutes to meditate or I have 30 minutes to meditate during the day or in the morning. And so, I mean, last night I woke up, and it happens more when I’ve been traveling and I’m kind of on my body is adjusting to different time zones. And I meditated for two hours and it was amazing. And then I invariably drift to sleep. Sometimes I may drift to sleep after 30 minutes, but whatever it is, it’s now a special time that I’m looking forward to rather than something that I’m dreading.
Jonathan Fields: [00:39:26] Yeah, I think when you when you understand that waking up in the middle of the night actually is actually it’s been the natural pattern for like a long, long, long time, except for this very recent little burst. It’s like it normalizes it. And it’s like you mentioned, the thing that keeps most people up when they wake up at that window is not that they have to stay up. It’s the anxiety that I’m up because there’s something wrong. And when you actually learn that, that’s actually completely normal. Let me just use this time to do something peaceful or whatever it may be. Exactly.
Arianna Huffington: [00:39:54] If you wanted to read but read, say, poetry or a spiritual book or something not at all related to work and you’ll find yourself drifting off to sleep. Unless you rev yourself up being stressed because you’re awake.
Jonathan Fields: [00:40:08] Probably keep the lights off with no blue lights and stuff like that.
Arianna Huffington: [00:40:10] In fact, they did. Said definitely don’t read on an iPad or your smartphone. The in fact, you know one of the rules. Rule number one in the second part of the book, which is about tips and techniques. But I always urge everybody not to jump to that part because it’s really important to build to that, to understand the science, to convince yourself why these behavioral changes are important, to convince yourself of why we are in this place in terms of our history. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:40:42] Because then you become invested in the behavior.
Arianna Huffington: [00:40:44] You become invested in the behavioral changes, because behavioral changes otherwise are very hard. But if we are convinced that it’s important and if we make the changes microscopic, you know that’s all the changes I recommend are tiny steps. You know, nothing overnight. And then you build little by little. And the first absolutely essential, non-negotiable change is turning off your devices before you’re going to go to bed and turn off the light. Are you guilty?
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:14] I thought we’re doing, like the baby steps first.
Arianna Huffington: [00:41:17] I can see a kind of guilt.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:19] No, I’m actually I’m. I’m really good with technology in terms of powering everything down. We don’t have a TV in the bedroom.
Arianna Huffington: [00:41:26] Do you charge them outside the bedroom?
Arianna Huffington: [00:41:27] No, but that’s the next step, actually, because I. I’ve been hearing more and more about actually still having those that electrical field.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:32] So basically you you power down and then you take all your devices and almost like, ritualistically move them outside your bedroom and let them charge. And you’ll meet them again in the morning. I promise you, they’ll be there. It’s the reason why it’s particularly important is because if you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re going to be tempted if your phone is within reach.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:57] Oh, no doubt.
Arianna Huffington: [00:41:58] To go to it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:59] Yeah. I mean, it’s that conditioning. You know, it’s the the intermittent, you know, we’re just if it’s there and, you know, it’s the reason why people check their phone. What’s the latest data I’ve seen like between 2 and 300 times a day. Now.
Arianna Huffington: [00:42:11] Yes
Jonathan Fields: [00:42:12] which is a little bit horrifying, but.
Arianna Huffington: [00:42:13] And, you know, related to that is the fact that if you talk to people who have really created the current technological world we live in, they will tell you, after a couple of glasses of wine, that the fact that social media consumes such a large part of our attention is not a bug of the system, it’s a feature. They actually intended to create a system that by giving us validation and affirmation, you know, likes, right, etc. and hoaxes.
Jonathan Fields: [00:42:47] Can we talk a little bit about some of the other sort of things that you can actually do? Because I think we have a decent sense of where we came from in the history and why this is really important. Powering down electronics is probably, like you said, big step number one. Um, what are some of like what do you consider the like the, the big three things that, you know, the, the, you know, that will make the biggest difference of the 8020 and the sleep world. What are the smallest number of things that you could do that make the biggest effect?
Arianna Huffington: [00:43:14] There are very specific things that then you can create these conditions even if you don’t sleep in ideal conditions. So ideal conditions are blackout curtains. Right. And the temperature that’s in the upper 60s. Yeah. But let’s say you don’t have blackout curtains and let’s say and the other thing is, um, no noise. But let’s say you live in New York City and you have no blackout curtains. I think temperature is easier to control, at least in the winter. So I think earplugs. I don’t go anywhere without earplugs and an I sleep mask.
Jonathan Fields: [00:43:57] Yeah, it’s a simple thing.
Arianna Huffington: [00:43:59] These are simple things that make a.
Jonathan Fields: [00:44:00] Huge difference, that.
Arianna Huffington: [00:44:01] Make a huge difference. And so you can carry them everywhere. I mean, I never fly without them. All these things, you know, are super easy to, um, to impose some change, some change, some appropriate change in your environment, even if the circumstances of your life and your environment are difficult at that time.
Jonathan Fields: [00:44:24] Yeah. No, I love that. And I wonder also whether, um, because the things we’re talking about, they’re not they’re revolutionary, but they’re not revolutionary. You know, they’re revolutionary in terms of the impact that they can have, but they’re pretty straightforward and accessible for everybody.
Arianna Huffington: [00:44:38] Absolutely. Which is my goal, to make them accessible for everybody. I think it’s just a lot of it is a matter of awareness. And remember, we are swimming in a culture where people praise the people who don’t sleep enough, where people at work are literally congratulated for working 24 over seven, which is the equivalent of coming to work drunk. We have the data now where men especially brag about how little sleep they need or how little sleep they got, and which is kind of another version of whose is bigger. You know, among men and and now women buy into it because they don’t want to appear to be on some kind of sleepy mommy track. So there’s a lot we have to change. And we chose in our campaign in April to, to to start with students in colleges because we feel if you can change habits and understanding among millennials, right. Their whole lives would be transformed.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:41] At an earlier point, right? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And also, if you can do that in millennials who are notoriously.
Arianna Huffington: [00:45:48] Exactly sleep deprived and who believe, like in the Jon Bon Jovi song, you know, Sleep When I’m Dead.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:54] That that’s a big shift. So zooming the lens out, you’ve you’ve done this intense deep dive a couple of years ago on redefining success. You’ve done this intense deep dive on on sleep, which seems like it was sort of a natural evolution of one of the biggest pain points from redefining success. And it sounds like you’ve started to answer this question in our conversation about, like, what do you really want to come out of, of this? You know, what’s what’s the what’s the legacy level impact that you would love to see happen from the conversation around sleep?
Arianna Huffington: [00:46:27] So I want to really, first of all, find people where they are, whatever their objectives are. If your objective is simply to be better at your job. I want them to understand that sleep is a huge performance enhancer, and that’s why I have so much information from athletes like Kobe Bryant and Andre Iguodala from the Golden State Warriors about how sleeping enough improved their game. So if all you care about is winning. Sleep is the way to go. But also, I hope that people may come for the job enhancing benefits and stay for the life enhancing benefits. Because of course, my ultimate hope is that whatever the entry point and however you got interested in this, you will also discover that we are more than our jobs and that our identity cannot be shrunken into who we are in the world. That, however magnificent what we may be doing in the world is who we are in our essence is more magnificent. And I feel that sleep is also a gateway to the mystery of being alive. And for me, that’s the most sacred thing about it. But you don’t have to start there. You can start at wherever you are, right. And kind of go on that journey. And by improving our relationship with sleep, we will unquestionably improve every other part of our lives.
Jonathan Fields: [00:48:06] Yeah. Beautiful. So I want to come full circle. The name of this is Good Life Project.. So if I offer that term out to you to live a good life, what does it mean to you?
Arianna Huffington: [00:48:14] For me, living a good life means being fully present in my life. And to me, that means not phoning it in, not multitasking to the point of missing the moment. And for me, that means being recharged in the course of my life. That makes me more empathetic. So I want to give more to others. I want to make every interaction count. I mean, I know that if I was here with you and I was sleep deprived, I would be looking at my watch and saying, how much longer is it? Instead, I don’t know how long we’ve been here. I’ve loved it, you know, and I’m I’m loving the exchange. But I know what the alternative is. And I’ve been there so much in my life that I think for me, that’s no longer a good life. That’s really kind of betraying and life’s goals and the full possibilities of life.
Jonathan Fields: [00:49:12] Thank you, thank you. So what a rich exploration into the fundamental human need for quality sleep. Doctor Chris Winter provided just a kind of a refreshing dose of practical wisdom, while Arianna Huffington elevated the conversation to new heights. I’m leaving this conversation with a renewed sense of clarity around cultivating sustainable sleep habits, but more importantly, maybe be a deeper appreciation for sleep’s vital role in helping me live a truly good life, and I hope you feel the same way too. And if you love this episode, be sure to catch the full conversation with today’s guests. You can find a link to those episodes in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor? A seven-second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.
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