The Foundations of Good Sleep

You probably know the importance of good sleep for good health. If not, here’s a quick refresher:

• Why You Probably Need More Sleep
• How Sleep-Deprived Are You, Really?
• The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)

You should also definitely check out this quite famous book on the topic:

Why We Sleep – by Dr Matthew Walker

What helps, to get that good sleep

We’ve covered this a little before too, for example:

• Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
• Sleep Better With Better Air
• How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

How to level-up from there

One of the biggest barriers to good sleep for many people is obstructive sleep apea:

Healthier, Natural Sleep Without Obstruction!

We covered (in the above article) a whole lot of ways of mitigating/managing obstructive sleep apnea. One of the things we mentioned as beneficial was avoiding sleeping on one’s back, and this is something Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Somers agreed with:

Back Sleeping, And Sleeping Differently After 50

“But side-sleeping is uncomfortable”

If this is you, then chances are you have the wrong mattress.

If your mattress is too firm, you can get around it by using this “five pillow” method:

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If your mattress is too soft, then sorry, you really just have to throw that thing out and start again.

The Goldilocks mattress

While different people will have different subjective preferences, the science is quite clear on what is actually best for people’s spines. As this review of 39 qualified scholarly articles concluded:

❝Results of this systematic review show that a medium-firm mattress promotes comfort, sleep quality and rachis alignment❞

~ Dr. Gianfilippo Caggiari et al.

Read in full: What type of mattress should be chosen to avoid back pain and improve sleep quality? Review of the literature

Note: to achieve “medium-firm” that remains “medium firm” has generally been assumed to require a memory-foam mattress.

How memory-foam works: memory-foam is a moderately thermosoftening material, designed to slightly soften at the touch of human body temperature, and be firmer at room temperature. This will result in it molding itself to the form of a human body, providing what amounts to personalized support for your personal shape and size, meaning your spine can stay exactly as it’s supposed to when you’re sleeping on your side, instead of (for example) your hips being wider meaning that your lumbar vertebrae are raised higher than your thoracic vertebrae, giving you the equivalent of a special nocturnal scoliosis.

It will, therefore, stop working if

• the ambient temperature is comparable to human body temperature (as happens in some places sometimes, and increasingly often these days)
• you die, and thus lose your body temperature (but in that case, your spinal alignment will be the least of your concerns)

Here’s a good explanation of the mechanics of memory foam from the Sleep Foundation:

Sleep Foundation | What is Memory Foam?

An alternative to memory foam?

If you don’t like memory foam (one criticism is that it doesn’t allow good ventilation underneath the body), there is an alterative, the grid mattress.

It’s very much “the new kid on the block” and the science is young for this, but for example this recent (April 2024) study that concluded:

❝The grid mattress is a simple, noninvasive, and nonpharmacological intervention that improved adults sleep quality and health. Controlled trials are encouraged to examine the effects of this mattress in a variety of populations and environments.❞

~ Dr. Heather Hausenblas et al.

Read in full: Effectiveness of a grid mattress on adults’ sleep quality and health: A quasi-experimental intervention study

However, that was a small (n=39) uncontrolled (i.e. there was no control group) study, and the conflict of interest statement is, well, interesting:

❝Heather A. Hausenblas, Stephanie L. Hooper, Martin Barragan, and Tarah Lynch declare no conflict of interest. Michael Breus served as a former consultant for Purple, LLC.❞

~ Ibid.

…which is a fabulous way of distracting from the mention in the “Acknowledgements” section to follow, that…

❝Purple, LLC, provided financial support for the study❞

~ Ibid.

Purple is the company that invented the mattress being tested. So while this doesn’t mean the study is necessarily dishonest and/or corrupt, it does at the very least raise a red flag for a potential instance of publication bias (because Purple may have funded multiple studies and then pulled funding of the ones that weren’t going their way).

If you are interested in Purple’s mattress and how it works, you can check it out here ← this is a link for your interest and information; not an advertisement or an endorsement. We look forward to seeing more science for this though, and echo their own call for randomized controlled trials!

Summary

Sleep is important, and while it’s a popular myth that we need less as we get older, the truth is that we merely get less on average, while still needing the same amount.

A medium-firm memory-foam mattress is a very good, well-evidenced way to support that (both figuratively and literally!).

A grid mattress is an interesting innovation, and/but we’d like to see more science for it.

Take care!

As individuals, we can’t do much about the outside air. We can try to spend more time in green spaces* and away from traffic, and we can wear face-masks—as was popular in Tokyo and other such large cities long before the pandemic struck.

*The well-known mental health benefits aside (and contrary to British politician Amber Rudd’s famous assertion in a televised political debate that “clean air doesn’t grow on trees”), clean air comes mostly from trees—their natural process of respiration scrubs not only carbon dioxide, but also pollutants, from the air before releasing oxygen without the pollutants. Neat!

See also this study: Site new care homes near trees and away from busy roads to protect residents’ lungs

We are fortunate to be living in a world where most of us in industrialized countries can exercise a great degree of control over our home’s climate. But, what to do with all that power?

Temperature

Let’s start with the basics. Outside temperature may vary, but you probably have heating and air conditioning. There’s a simple answer here; the optimal temperature for human comfort and wellbeing is 20℃ / 68℉:

Scientists Identify a Universal Optimal Temperature For Life on Earth

Note: this does not mean that that is the ideal global average temperature, because that would mean the polar caps are completely gone, the methane stored there released, many large cities underwater, currently hot places will be too hot for human life (e.g. outside temperatures above human body temperature), there will be mass extinctions of many kinds of animals and plants, including those we humans require for survival, and a great proliferation of many bugs that will kill us. Basically we need diversity for the planet to survive, arctic through to tropical and yes, even deserts (deserts are important carbon sinks!). The ideal global average temperature is about 14℃ (we currently have about 15℃ and rising).

But, for setting the thermostat in your home, 20℃ / 68℉ is perfect for most people, though down as far as 17℃ / 61℉ is fine too, provided other things such as humidity are in order. In fact, for sleeping, 18℃ / 62℉ is ideal. This is because the cooler temperature is one of the several things that tell our brain it is nighttime now, and thus trigger secretion of melatonin.

If you’re wondering about temperatures and respiratory viruses, by the way, check out:

The Cold Truth About Respiratory Infections: The Pathogens That Came In From The Cold

Humidity

Most people pay more attention to the temperature in their home than the humidity, and the latter is just as important:

❝Conditions that fall outside of the optimal range of 40–60% can have significant impacts on health, including facilitating infectious transmission and exacerbating respiratory diseases.

When humidity is too low, it can cause dryness and irritation of the respiratory tract and skin, making individuals more susceptible to infections.

When humidity is too high, it can create a damp environment that encourages the growth of harmful microorganisms like mould, bacteria, and viruses.❞

~ Dr. Gabriella Guarnieri et al.

So, if your average indoor humidity falls outside of that range, consider getting a humidifier or dehumidifier, to correct it. Example items on Amazon, for your convenience:

Humidity monitor | Humidifier | Dehumidifier

See also, about a seriously underestimated killer:

Pneumonia: Prevention Is Better Than Cure

Now, one last component to deal with, for perfect indoor air:

Pollution

We tend to think of pollution as an outdoors thing, and indeed, the pollution in your home will (hopefully!) be lower than that of a busy traffic intersection. However…

• The air you have inside comes from outside, and that matters if you’re in an urban area
• Even in suburban and rural areas, general atmospheric pollutants will reach you, and if you’ve ever been subject to wildfire smoke, you’ll know that’s no fun either.
• Gas appliances in the home cause indoor pollution, even when carbon monoxide is within levels considered acceptable. This polluting effect is much stronger for open gas flames (such as on gas cookers/stoves, or gas fires), than for closed gas heating systems (such as a gas-powered boiler for central heating).
• Wood stoves/fireplaces are not an improvement, in fact they are worse, and don’t get us started on coal. You should not be breathing these things, and definitely should not be burning them in an enclosed space.
• That air conditioning, humidifier, dehumidifier? They may be great for temperature and humidity, but please clean/change the filter more often than you think is necessary, or things will grow there and then your device will be adding pathogens to the air as it goes.
• Plug-in air-freshening devices? They may smell clean, but they are effectively spraying cleaning fluids into your lungs. So please don’t.

So, what of air purifiers? They can definitely be of benefit. for example:

Air Purifiers & Sleep

But watch out! Because if you don’t clean/change the filter regularly, guess what happens! That’s right, it’ll be colonized with bacteria/fungus and then be blowing those at you.

And no, not all of them will be visible to the naked eye:

Is Unnoticed Environmental Mold Harming Your Health?

Taking a holistic approach

The air is a very important factor for the health of your lungs (and thus, for the health of everything that’s fed oxygen by your lungs), but there are more things we can do as well:

Seven Things To Do For Good Lung Health!

Take care!