4 Things Astronauts Can Teach You About A Good Night's Sleep

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4 Things Astronauts Can Teach You About A

Good Nights Sleep

Who knows about sleep? Astronauts.

They have to. Their bodies are cut off from many of the normal external cues that remind us what time it
is.
But actually, its even worse than that.
In orbit they can experience a dozen sunrises and sunsets a day which makes their circadian rhythm
go completely haywire.
When youre in a tin can floating through the cold darkness of outer space, being off your game due to
lousy sleep can have very bad results.
When sleep deprivation has you so messed up you dont notice youre taking photos of the walls instead
of Earth, yeah, that could present a problem.
Via Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration:
cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev reported in his diary that he had a tendency to make mistakes on days
following an unusually late bedtime; on one occasion he took fifty Earth-observation photographs
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4 Things Astronauts Can Teach You About A Good Night's Sleep

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through a closed porthole before realizing his error.

So NASA started doing some serious research.

3 Big Insights On Sleep

They quickly realized a few things:
1) Youre a slave to external cues
Without light, darkness and other contextual signals, your ability to regulate sleep times can be a mess.
Via Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration:
Lacking the normal circadian cues of daylight and darkness, individuals, when permitted, tend
to become desynchronized; that is, they retire to bed at a later hour and remain awake longer
each night.
2) Your body doesnt naturally stay on a 24hr cycle
Without something to rein it in, youll work off a 25.4 hour day. This drift compounds and eventually your
sleep cycle can totally spin out of control.
Via Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration:
If the individual is isolated without access to any time cues, however, the sleep/wake cycle and body
temperature rhythms drift toward later times each day and are expressed in free-running
periods of 25.4 hours; at this rate an individuals sleep/wake cycle could drift nearly 10 hours per
week in the absence of diurnal cues In extreme cases, an individual can cycle completely
around the clock.
3) Youre not very good at judging sleep quality
You may think sleeping with the lights on doesnt affect you, but it does. And you wont necessarily
notice your reduced performance the next day, either.
Via Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration:
it is a folklore belief that all people adapt to regular sounds and are not affected by noises
perceived during their sleep. In fact, the sleep of most people is disturbed by even the most regular
sounds; for some individuals, the quality of sleep can be reduced without conscious recognition or
complete awakening.
This info is more valuable than you think. Why?

Were All Astronauts Now

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4 Things Astronauts Can Teach You About A Good Night's Sleep

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As John Durant points out in his fascinating new book, The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for
Lifelong Health, due to modern technology, were all living more like astronauts now.
Via The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health:
Today our bodies have become thoroughly confused by the artificial signals of modern life.
Light is no longer a cyclical function of the sun, but of always-on indoor lights, TV screens, and
computer monitors. Temperature no longer follows a dynamic cycle of cooling at night and
warming during the day but sits at a static level set by the thermostat. Human chatter and
social interaction used to follow a natural ebb and flow, but now we are more likely to live and
sleep in isolation from real people, even while we have 24/7 access to artificial people (faces on
TV, voices on the radio). Then, after utterly confusing our circadian rhythm, we try to take
back control with stimulants (caffeine, nicotine) and depressants (alcohol, sleeping pills). Is it
any wonder that a third of Americans are chronically sleep-deprived?
Maybe you think this doesnt affect you or at least not much.
Youre wrong. Remember #3 above.
Research done on non-astronauts has shown the same thing. After 2 weeks of 6 hours of sleep a night,
youre legally drunk:
by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another
Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight the cognitive equivalent of being
legally drunk.
But what did the chronically sleep deprived say when asked how they felt? Its not affecting me.
Even 14 days into the study, they said sleepiness was not affecting them. In fact, their
performance had tanked. In other words, the sleep-deprived among us are lousy judges of our own
sleep needs. We are not nearly as sharp as we think we are.
So if you are having reduced performance due to sleep issues, you may not be aware. This is a problem.
So what answers did NASA come up with?

What You Need To Do

In the past Ive rounded up sleep research and documented my own sleep-hacking experiments. Lets add
some astronaut knowledge.
Given you probably dont have to deal with the thruster jets of Skylab waking you up or the sounds of the
hull of your ship expanding and contracting, Ive edited the recommendations down to four points:
Maintain a consistent schedule, even on weekends. Keep in mind the free-running problem.
Your body will push later if given the chance.
Take an hour to wind down before bed. Yes, youre busy. But your time is not more precious than
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4 Things Astronauts Can Teach You About A Good Night's Sleep

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an astronauts. So take the time to wind down.

If you dont have strong day/night cues, add them. Get sunlight in the morning. Dim the lights at
night. Turn electronics off as bedtime approaches or use an application like f.lux.
Keep your bedroom dark, cool and free from noise. Even if you think the light doesnt bother
you or the noise isnt that bad it can still reduce sleep quality.
Durant offers another solid piece of advice I follow myself: forget the alarm clock in the morning; set
an alarm to remind you to go to bed at night.
Via The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health:
A useful technique is setting an alarm clocknot to wake up, but to get ready for bed. Set an
alarm for an hour before bedtime. When it goes off, finish up any work on the computer, turn off the
TV, turn off any unnecessary lights, and start to wind down for the day.
This prevents you from cheating yourself on sleep and allows you to wake up naturally.
(Even if naturally happens to be on the surface of the moon.)
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Related posts:
How little sleep can you get away with?
What six things make for a great nights sleep?
I experimented on myself. Here are 4 things that did help me sleep.
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Written By: Eric Barker

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