wise athletes podcast #163 | Good Sleep: What is it & How to get it | Merijn van de Laar ("Sleep Like a Caveman")
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On today's show, Dr. Merijn van de Laar, a recovering insomniac, sleep therapist, and the author of How to Sleep Like a Caveman: Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night’s Rest, will tell us how learning about our prehistoric ancestors’ sleep (via studying the Hadza) can help us relax about our own imperfect sleep. He explains that the behaviors we think of as sleep problems are actually normal, natural, and adaptive. Merijn destroys the myth that you have to get 7-9 hours of sleep a night, and how being awake during the night is normal, and how efforts to change normal healthy sleep into "perfect" sleep scores is detrimental to our health.
Today’s episode is not for those few, lucky souls who fall asleep the moment their head hits the pillow, cruise through the night, and bounce out of bed in the morning ready to take on the world. Good for you—but seriously, get out of here. This one’s for the rest of us wise athletes who work hard to be fit and healthy—through exercise, through diet—only to be undone by poor sleep. The poor sleep that slows your recovery, ramps up your risk of illness, and leaves you reaching for caffeine just to survive the day, and then something else entirely just to shut down at night and squeeze 7-9 hours into the 6-hour window we allow for.
This talk is not a list of sleep hygiene factors and discount codes for fancy tools that work well to lighten your wallet without addressing the real reasons for poor sleep. Dr. Merijn van de Laar says "sleep is cheap" and that we've been sold a bunch of BS about sleep. This isn’t about chasing perfection. This is about letting go of the pressure and easing into realistically healthy sleep—the kind your ancestors would recognize—without needing to track every blink and breath.
So unplug, lie back, and listen up—because it’s time to learn how to Sleep Like a Caveman.
About the Guest
Dr Merijn van de Laar (https://merijnvandelaar.com/the-sleep-scientist/)
Merijn van de Laar studied biological psychology at the University of Maastricht and obtained his PhD on the subject of personality and sleep and the treatment of insomnia. He worked for years at Kempenhaeghe, Center for Sleep Medicine, and treated people with insomnia, parasomnia and delayed sleep phase syndrome. He is now adjunct director at the University of Maastricht.
Merijn’s professional and personal mission is to create restful nights across the world. His motivation to give people a better night’s sleep arose when he experienced what it was like to have chronic insomnia in his twenties. He did not receive the right care and, in retrospect, not the right scientifically substantiated information that could have helped him get rid of the problem much sooner.
Merijn’s slogan is “Sleep is Cheap”. By this he means that most people with insomnia do not need expensive products, apps or medication at all and that these often don’t help or even worsen the problem. For most people, a good night’s sleep can be achieved through natural solutions that cost little but are very effective. In many ways, we should learn to sleep like Cavemen again.
Episode Summary:
- Why do modern people report worsening sleep quality, despite the emergence of optimized sheets, mattresses, sound machines, and sleep trackers have emerged during that time, and despite the fact that the amount of time people are sleeping hasn’t decreased for over fifty years?
- If people aren’t sleeping less than they used to, why are they less happy about their sleep than ever before.
- Dr van de Laar says, to improve our experience of sleep, we’re better off looking past the BS modern advice and look back in time — to see how our ancestors (probably) slept.
- What is sleep, and why is it so important? Any parts more important than others?
- Why is an adults sleep so fragile while a child's sleep so easy and sound?
- What can we learn from how the Hadza sleep? Do they get 7-9 hours of sleep, sleeping straight though the night?
- What can we do to improve our sleep?
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*This content is never meant to serve as medical advice.