Professor Guy Leschziner
Appearances
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
The fact that we are essentially switched off from our external environment for a third of our lives. And actually, there's a whole host of evidence when you look at how... Certain animals have developed the ability to be able to sleep with only half their brain at a time.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
You know, animals like aquatic mammals or certain birds and dolphins that very much suggests, well, you know, that must be of great importance. If sleep is a risk for our survival, because if you're an aquatic mammal like a dolphin...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
and you're sleeping and you're unable to surface or unable to see what predators are around you, that evolution has designed a system whereby it enables you to sleep with half of your brain at a time. So that in and of itself tells us it's important. The fact that the circadian rhythm, so that 24-hour cycle that...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
whole host of biological rhythms have is so intrinsically linked to life itself that actually every single life form exhibits features of this 24-hour circadian rhythm tells us that this was something that was prioritized at a very very early stage in life's evolution on earth and So, yes, it's important. And over the last few years, we've understood precisely why it's important.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
I say precisely, but we know that it's important for pretty much every aspect of our waking lives, be it our immune system, be it our cardiovascular system, our blood pressure, risk of diabetes, etc.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
uh mental health so depression and anxiety even how we perceive pain so it really is fundamental to every system that we uh rely on during our waking lives having seen you know thousands and thousands and thousands of people that struggle with sleep that have been sent to your center do you think the the average person on the street
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
Well, I think it's changing. I think it was not that long ago where comments like sleep is for wimps was heard fairly frequently and that there were some bragging rights associated with how little you sleep. I think that there has been a transformation over the last 15 or 20 years whereby people have become much more aware of how important sleep is and have started prioritising it a little bit.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
I think that there is still in the general population an underestimation of how important sleep is, but I think there are certain segments of the population that are much more aware of it and perhaps even, dare I say, overestimate it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
And I think the danger is that if you overemphasize the importance of getting eight or eight and a half hours sleep every night, then you actually risk problems later down the line, exacerbating things like insomnia.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
Why? Well, I think the first thing is that we spend a third of our lives doing it, and yet whatever people like me will tell you, we still understand relatively little about it. We understand relatively little about sleep, what it's for, what it does to our biology. Obviously, that's changing very, very quickly now. It has a great deal of overlap with the world of clinical neurology.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
So I think that the genes that predispose to insomnia are pretty widespread. But obviously, you know, in pretty much all areas of medicine, there is an interaction between genetics and environment.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
And certainly poor sleep hygiene, and that's a horrible term, I hate that term, but it's the term that is most widely used and understood, can certainly put in place certain aspects of behaviour that then can give rise to chronic insomnia in the long term. So if you've got very bad chronic insomnia, then suddenly putting good sleep hygiene in place, it's unlikely to fix it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
But it may be that that poor sleep hygiene in the first instance gave rise or at least predisposed you to developing insomnia.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
So I think you would probably have to set up your home office in your bedroom. You'd have to have your TV on in your bedroom all the time. Be surrounded by electronic devices. Drink a lot of coffee late in the evening. Alcohol? Drink a little bit of alcohol. So alcohol in the short term, of course, is quite sedating. It's a central nervous system depressant.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
But it does dramatically worsen the quality of your sleep and for various reasons, the direct chemical effect, the fact that you've got a full bladder, the fact that you're probably snoring a little bit more. So alcohol is not a good thing. You know, not having a wind down period. So, you know.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
gambling on the stock market until 1am, switching your laptop and then trying to go to bed, those kinds of things. So that's, you know, the quintessential very, very bad sleep hygiene.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
So, you know, eating is perhaps less important, but avoiding a very large carbohydrate meal, carbohydrate rich meal before you go to bed for two reasons. One is that we know that it can cause some fluctuations in terms of your blood sugar. And also, if you've got a bit of reflux, it can make that much worse.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
Well, I think that for some people, and again, this goes back to no one rule for everybody, if you've got a sleep trait termed sleep reactivity, which is where your sleep is very liable to your environment, then obviously sleeping next to somebody who's snoring loudly or who gets up in the middle of the night two or three times to urinate can be very disruptive to your sleep.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
If you've got very little sleep reactivity, you may actually...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
Yeah, but the sun comes up at different times on different days, firstly. So if you were doing that routinely, you might find yourself really rather sleep deprived in the summer months. And also there is some emerging evidence that exposure to light at night in your sleep is not very good for you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
So there was a very recent study that implied that light exposure at night increases your risk of diabetes. So, it certainly is not good for the quality of your sleep, and the likelihood is that you won't wake up as soon as it's light. You'll wake up an hour or so after it's got light, but during that hour or so, it may have had a negative impact on the quality of your sleep.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
So, having a dark bedroom is really part of good sleep hygiene, as is having a quiet bedroom that is not too hot or too cold.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
Yes, it does. I mean, I wear a sleep mask. I think it's particularly if you don't have good blackout curtains or blinds in your bedroom, using a sleep mask, particularly in the summer months, is probably very helpful indeed.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
Well, I think that there were some rumours on the internet that there were light receptors elsewhere, but certainly the only ones that we know to be of significance in terms of defining our circadian rhythm are the ones in our retinas.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
So I also do specialist clinics in epilepsy, and I do specialist clinics in general neurology. And sleep and the brain intersect at every single level. Of course, it's not me saying this, but a famous statement is, Sleep is of the brain, by the brain and for the brain. It's intimately linked to every aspect of how our brain works.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Top Moment: The Real Reason You're Always Tired: Professor Guy Leschziner
So one of the really exciting things is that because it's a relatively new area, our understanding of it is exploding in ways that are not paralleled across other areas of clinical medicine. Is it important? Is it important? Yeah. I think it is of fundamental importance. You know, the fact is that if sleep wasn't important, it would be a very stupid thing for evolution to create in us.