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:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically

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!

How To Boost Your Memory (Without Supplements)

While we do recommend having a good diet and taking advantage of various supplements that have been found to help memory, that only gets so much mileage. With that in mind…

First, how good is your memory? Take This 2-Minute Online Test

Now, that was a test of short term memory, which tends to be the most impactful in our everyday life.

It’s the difference between “I remember the address of the house where I grew up” (long-term memory) and “what did I come to this room to do?” (short-term memory / working memory)

First tip:

When you want to remember something, take a moment to notice the details. You can’t have a madeleine moment years later if you wolfed down the madeleines so urgently they barely touched the sides.

This goes for more than just food, of course. And when facing the prospect of age-related memory loss in particular, people tend to be afraid not of forgetting their PIN code, but their cherished memories of loved ones. So… Cherish them, now! You’ll struggle to cherish them later if you don’t cherish them now. Notice the little details as though you were a painter looking at a scene for painting. Involve more senses than just sight, too!

If it’s important, relive it. Relive it now, relive it tomorrow. Rehearsal is important to memory, and each time you relive a memory, the deeper it gets written into your long-term memory until it becomes indelible to all but literal brain damage.

Second tip:

Tell the story of it to someone else. Or imagine telling it to someone else! (You brain can’t tell the difference)

And you know how it goes… Once you’ve told a story a few times, you’ll never forget it later. Isn’t your life a story worth telling?

Many people approach memory like they’re studying for a test. Don’t. Approach it like you’re preparing to tell a story, or give a performance. We are storytelling creatures at heart, whether or not we realize it.

What do you do when you find yourself in a room and wonder why you went there? (We’ve all been there!) You might look around for clues, but if that doesn’t immediately serve, your fallback will be retracing your steps. Literally, physically, if needs be, but at least mentally. The story of how you got there is easier to remember than the smallest bit of pure information.

What about when there’s no real story to tell, but we still need to remember something?

Make up a story. Did you ever play the game “My granny went to market” as a child?

If not, it’s a collaborative memory game in which players take turns adding items to a list, “My granny went to market and bought eggs”, My granny went to market and bought eggs and milk”, “my granny went to market and bought eggs and milk and flour” (is she making a cake?), “my granny went to market and bought eggs and milk and flour and shoe polish” (what image came to mind? Use that) “my granny went to market and bought eggs and milk and flour and shoe polish and tea” (continue building the story in your head), and so on.

When we actually go shopping, if we don’t have a written list we may rely on the simple story of “what I’m going to cook for dinner” and walking ourselves through that story to ensure we get the things we need.

This is because our memory thrives (and depends!) on connections. Literal synapse connections in the brain, and conceptual contextual connections in your mind. The more connections, the better the memory.

Now imagine a story: “I went to Stonehenge, but in the background was a twin-peaked mountain blue. I packed a red suitcase, placing a conch shell inside it, when suddenly I heard a trombone, and…” Ring any bells? These are example items from the memory test earlier, though of course you may have seen different things in a different order.

So next time you want to remember things, don’t study as though for a test. Prepare to tell a story!

Try going through the test again, but this time, ignore their instructions because we’re going to use the test differently than intended (we’re rebels like that). Don’t rush, and don’t worry about the score this time (or even whether or not you saw a given image previously), but instead, build a story as you go. We’re willing to bet that after it, you can probably recite most of the images you saw in their correct order with fair confidence.

Here’s the link again: Take The Same Test, But This Time Make It Story-Worthy!

Again, ignore what it says about your score this time, because we weren’t doing that this time around. Instead, list the things you saw.

What you were just able to list was the result of you doing story-telling with random zero-context images while under time pressure.

Imagine what you can do with actual meaningful memories of your ongoing life, people you meet, conversations you have!

Just… Take the time to smell the roses, then rehearse the story you’ll tell about them. That memory will swiftly become as strong as any memory can be, and quickly get worked into your long-term memory for the rest of your days.