Matthew Walker says the odds of being one of those rare people who can thrive on less than 7-9 hours of sleep are about 1 in 12,000, lower than being struck by lightning. Chronic sleep deprivation increases your risk of mood disorders and cancer. Most of us need the full amount.
Questions this video answers
Seven to nine hours per night.
Lifetime odds of 1 in 12,000 (compared to being struck by lightning).
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another optimize plus 1. In our last couple plus 1s, we've had some fun hanging out with our suprachiasmatic nuclei and chatting about how to optimize our sleep. Let's continue that theme for a bit longer, shall we? First, stepping back for a moment, let's make sure you're properly introduced to our sleep genius, Matthew Walker. Matthew is one of the world's leading neuroscientists and sleep experts. He's a professor at UC Berkeley and former professor at Harvard who spent decades studying why we sleep and how to, as per the subtitle of this book, unlock the power of sleep and Dreams. As you know, if you've been following along, I made huge advocate of optimizing our sleep as a fundamental practice in optimizing our lives. See Sleep 101 in our collection of notes plus ones and interviews on the subject. For more this book has made me even more bullish about the power of sleep. Before we go further, how about a quick check in for those of you who may think you can get by on less than the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep? Is that you or someone you know? Well, get this. The odds that you fall into the bucket of people who can truly thrive on less sleep are incredibly low. As Matthew says, I quote, it is far, far more likely that you will be struck by lightning, the lifetime odds being 1 in 12,000, than being truly capable of surviving on insufficient sleep thanks to a rare gene. Another fun way he puts it round the odds down to the nearest whole integer and the odds of you being able to get away with less sleep are effectively zero. Now, the consequences of chronically depriving ourselves of the sleep we need, well, they're astonishingly devastating, dramatically increasing the odds of having everything from mood disorders to cancer and everything else. We don't want today's plus one. Let's do a quick check in. How much sleep are you getting these days if it's not the recommended eight hours and you think you're one of the genetically blessed sleep exceptions? One more question. Have you been struck by lightning lately? Practically speaking, what's one thing you already know you could be doing to optimize your sleep tonight, the night to move from theory to practice? +1z +1z +1z.
