A healthy sleeper actually wakes up about a dozen or more times per night! Usually, these awakenings are brief enough that we don’t even realize they’ve happened, but it’s also very normal to remember a couple of longer awakenings (e.g., getting up to use the bathroom).

My favorite myth about sleep is the idea that we can or should “sleep through the night” without waking up.

It’s more helpful to have a flexible attitude about sleep hygiene, so that even as you’re giving your sleep a good chance of success, you’re also living your life (e.g., enjoying an extra cocktail sometimes, staying out late with friends). In fact, sometimes focusing too much on sleep hygiene can backfire for those with insomnia, because doubling down on having “perfect” sleep hygiene increases anxiety about sleep, which makes insomnia worse. Sleep hygiene practices can be good habits for preventing sleep problems, but it’s just like dental hygiene–it’s too little too late once there’s already a cavity (or persistent insomnia). Holding a rigid 8-hours-per-night expectation is not only unrealistic but unhelpful, because when sleep doesn’t meet this expectation, we become frustrated or anxious, which makes it harder to get good sleep.Īnother common myth is that sleep hygiene is the answer to insomnia. How much sleep we need also changes over time, as we get older and take on different challenges. Does this apply equally for Lebron James and couch potatoes? For pregnant women and nursing home residents? How much sleep we need differs between people, depending on our individual genes, lifestyles, and environments. Wu: One popular myth about sleep is that everybody needs to have 8 hours per night, every night. Wilding: What are the biggest myths about sleep or insomnia that we need to be aware of? I want them to know that there absolutely is hope, and that some surprisingly simple (but often counterintuitive) changes to their sleep-wake behaviors can turn their nights (and days) around. I wanted to help people rekindle their relationship with sleep, to approach it as if it’s a friend instead of an engineering problem. This is why I wanted to write Hello Sleep.

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