Summary

(2:32) Lessons from growing up in Fort Nelson Canada ‘ an extremely cold and sometimes harsh environment

• 1,000 miles north of Vancouver

• 1,500 inhabitants

• First watched TV aged 14

• Stargazing and the Northern Lights

(4:42) The negative reputation when first entering occupational health and safety

• Worked first in the occupational hygiene subfield: ‘recognition, evaluation, control’

• Learnt the devastating impact of sleep and fatigue after his nephew died in a car crash asleep at the wheel

• Working for the Canadian Registration Board of Occupational Hygienists

• ‘Nobody was talking about sleep and fatigue as a workplace or sports issue’

(8:13) Pat was the first to design a watch for use in sports performance

• Marrying together pieces of available technology

• It took ten years to make the technology, through his company of engineers

(10:07) Attributing the impact of sleep on performance

• ‘Humans are a complex and integrated system’

• Controlled factors when conducting research in sleep labs

• Correlating between length of sleep and reaction time

(11:10) The development of sleep science and why it took so long to evolve

• The 1950s with Nathaniel Kleitman, aka the Father of Sleep Research

• In 1992 a leading sleep researcher William Dement commented that America was a ‘vast reservoir of ignorance’ about sleep.

• Systems to measure brain waves that were developed by Dement are still in place today

• Lack of interest in the 1950s

• Technology has enabled the development of sleep science

(12:14) How to best analyse sleep

• Depends on the population size you are studying

• For athletes, the end goal is performance. Sleep is a way to increase their reaction time

• ‘Poor sleep is not a disease, it’s a symptom’

• There needs more research being diagnosing the issue behind an individual’s poor sleep

• Poor sleep typically comes from biological sleep disorders (e.g. restless leg syndrome), mental health issues, organic diseases (e.g. diabetes), lifestyle choices, medications, etc.

(18:31) The types of mental health issues that poor sleep can indicate

• Covid-19 has revealed how our mental health can impact sleep

• Typically depression, bipolar disorder, manic depression

(19:54) Advice for people who sleep badly due to factors beyond their control

• Lack of sleep training for medical doctors

• Comprehensively review the factors

• A sporadic nature of your work schedule

• Pat is currently researching into how AI can help diagnose poor sleep quality

(22:51) What is Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and why it is so relevant

• Eugene Aserinsky’s discovery of REM

• It’s the period of time in your sleep when you dream and your body freezes

(27:41) How do you approach treating something complex like paradoxical insomnia? Is there a way to convince the brain otherwise?

• Paradoxical insomnia: spending hours lying awake at night, even though, to others, they appear to be sleeping

• Impact of LED lights in urban environments, which contains blue light

• Humans are diurnal: conditioned to sleep at night and be awake during the day

• Melatonin is produced to help us fall asleep. Blue light stops this secretion of melatonin.

• Blue light triggers you to stay awake

(32:36) Sleep supplements

• Little research in sleep science supplements, ‘what they’re trying to do is sell you the dream’

• Sleep supplements aren’t regulated because they are considered benign

• ‘People are often looking for solutions when they don’t know what the problem is’

(35:20) Wearable sleep technology

• Treat it like a bathroom scale: how often do you want to stand on your bathroom scale?

• Main issue is that they’re not individualised

• Cheaper consumer models haven’t done the rigorous testing

• ‘You still have to do the work and figure out the problems’

• It’s helped raise awareness around sleep

(39:40) How much sleep do you actually need?

• It’s very rate, but some humans can get by sleeping four hours sleep a night

• Every human is different

• Typically 7.5 ‘ 9 hours sleep is the most sufficient amount

• Taking reaction time tests

• Sleeping too much indicates there’s a health issue that needs to be explored

• A simple indication is if you’re feeling tired during the day

(44:01) Learning from high performers and how they develop good sleeping habits

• Middle management supervisors tend to be the poorest sleepers in the workforce

• Executives value sleep quality to think better

(45:42) Impact of fragment sleep and napping

• ‘You’re better off with a period of shorter good sleep than a longer period of bad sleep’

• Afternoon naps is very effective in building up your sleep bank

• The downside with napping in the afternoon is that it can push back your evening sleep time

(47:51) The impact of shift work and your sleep

• Being awake at night is not normal, it goes against our DNA

• Solution is education and managing your time

• Avoid dangerous work at night

(51:29) The body’s circadian rhythm

• Everything goes in cycles with our body

• Sunlight plays a role in our natural circadian rhythms, so we need to avoid disrupting our biological systems

• Researching into how dark and light affects our decision making

(56:56) Can we manage our body’s temperature rhythms to improve our performance day to day?

• Kleitman discovered the correlation between body temperature and performance

• ‘The better reaction time you have, the higher your temperature, the better you’ll perform’

• Key is to recognise what time of day you perform at your best

• Be more body aware

• Envisioning sleep science being taught at school

(1:00:22) Early bird vs night owl

• Some research shows that most athletes are early birds

• ‘Don’t fight your biology: you are what you are’

(1:02:41) What advantages sleep has on athletes

• 80% of all research on sleep in athletic performance has been done in last ten years

• Work one-to-one with individual to identify their ideal sleep length

(1:06:51) Habit and routines coaches can instil in their programs

• Have consistent sleep times

(1:08:18) What to look out for in fatigue amongst your athletes

• Monitor their reaction time to then drill down the factors

(1:09:46) The current state of sleep: are we on the right track to better wellbeing?

• Treat it as an evolution

• It’s like how strength training was a new concept in the 80s, yet normal today.

• ‘We’re learning something new everyday’

(1:11:17) How can companies optimise performance using fatigue management?

• Started his research on the business side before he got into sport

• How is the work scheduled and are workers given enough time to recover?

• Sleep screening tests

• Set examples and policies, e.g. napping centre