Most Advice About Your Sleep Is Ridiculous

The reason that most sleep tips are so exhausting.

Pictured: An awake person. I hope. It would be REALLY weird if someone took stock photos while their subject was actually asleep. Photo by Isabella Fischer on Unsplash

As any parent of young children or person with insomnia will tell you, sleep is vital. Without sleep, people simply cannot function. It is remarkable how quickly you can go from a normal, happy human being to a jittery mess with just a few wakeful nights where you didn’t get your usual 8 hours.

And as everyone knows, sleep is also vital for your long-term health. There is a new headline every week pointing this out. In the most recent news, sleep has been linked to a staggering 172 diseases, with a range of sleep traits responsible. The evidence seems overwhelming that getting better sleep can lead you to good health.

The problem with all the sleep advice — whether it’s from this new study or just the general background noise — is that it ignores how sleep works. It’s easy to say that getting more sleep might be beneficial for your health, but the reality is that sleep is interwoven with almost every other aspect of your life, and getting more/less of it isn’t nearly as easy as online gurus pretend.

Pictured: Not always easy. Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash