Magazine / SLEEP: How Understanding Your Body’s Clock Can Revolutionize Your Health (with Russell Foster)

SLEEP: How Understanding Your Body’s Clock Can Revolutionize Your Health (with Russell Foster)

Health Podcast Science

Sleep can enhance your creativity, lift your spirits, improve your sense of humor, and amplify your sociability. So why do so many of us struggle to get a good night’s rest? This week on The Next Big Idea podcast, we’re digging into that question with the help of award-winning scientist Russell Foster. 

Russell is a professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford,  director of the U.K.’s Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute, and author of the new book Life Time: Your Body Clock and Its Essential Roles in Good Health and Sleep.

In this episode, he takes our host, Rufus Griscom, on a whirlwind tour of the history of sleep, from its origins billions of years ago to the modern health risks of tossing and turning, culminating with his science-backed remedies for catching a few z’s.

Topics

  • The “eight hours a night” myth
  • The axis of health (diet, exercise, and sleep)
  • Acute impacts of not getting enough sleep
  • Why night shift work may be carcinogenic
  • Link between sleepiness and traffic accidents
  • Understanding your chronotype
  • How socioeconomic status can impact sleep quality
  • Using sleep to treat mental illness
  • Whether you’re a morning or evening person depends on your genes
  • Teenage sleep patterns 
  • Why we sleep in the first place
  • The clocks inside all of our cells
  • Caffeine and alcohol
  • How to become a morning person
  • Evidence-based strategies for getting a good night’s sleep

 

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Next Big Idea App

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