Could This Headband Help YOU Sleep Better? DR. MICHAEL MOSLEY put it to the test

I love the feeling of waking up after a really good night’s sleep. I only wish it happened more often.

For years I have struggled with insomnia, waking up in the middle of the night and then finding it difficult to get back to sleep. And I’m not alone.

We are in a sleep crisis, with one in three saying they frequently have trouble sleeping and about half saying their sleep has worsened during the pandemic, reports King’s College London.

I’ve explored this in a new documentary for the BBC, examining why so many of us are seeking help and the scientific breakthroughs that are bringing us closer than ever to understanding how to sleep better.

For years I have struggled with insomnia, waking up in the middle of the night and then finding it difficult to get back to sleep. And I’m not alone

As part of my research, I worked with researchers from Oxford University to create the largest online survey of the UK’s sleep habits, involving more than 200,000 people – and here’s a preview of what we found and what it could be mean to you.

Based on responses to questions about their sleep habits, each person who completed the census was given a sleep score ranging from 1 to 10—over 5 is “good”; My grade was 2.8.

Our participants reported sleeping on average just six hours and 48 minutes a night, well below the recommended seven to nine hours, with people living in the south of the UK getting more sleep than those in the north.

Interestingly, people from Guernsey scored the highest for sleep quality, which is just as important to good health as quantity.

One of the best ways to measure sleep quality is to calculate your sleep efficiency, which is the percentage of time you actually spend in bed asleep. If you go to bed at 11pm and get up at 7am, that’s eight hours in bed. But how much of that time did you sleep?

You can use a sleep tracker to gauge this, but I undertook a closer look by wearing an electroencephalogram (or EEG) on my head to detect my brainwaves. This identifies when you sleep and what stage of sleep you are in.

We are in a sleep crisis, with one in three saying they frequently have trouble sleeping and about half saying their sleep has worsened during the pandemic, reports King’s College London [File photo]

Normally this is done in a sleep lab, but the Oxford team loaned me a portable device that was being used outside of their lab for the first time.

There are four stages of sleep. In the first, our brainwaves begin to slow down. This is when your eyes start rolling and your head starts nodding. In phase two, the brainwave pattern looks similar to phase one, except for short, rapid bursts of activity that prime your brain for learning and memory consolidation.

The third phase is deep sleep, which is characterized by larger, more widely spaced brain waves, or “slow” waves. Not only is getting enough deep sleep important for your memory, it also helps improve the effectiveness of your immune system, flushing toxins from your brain and repairing them.

Finally, there’s REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when our brainwaves return to a shorter, faster pattern, similar to when we’re awake, except our body is paralyzed. This is where most of our vivid dreams occur, and it is important to our emotional well-being.

It’s important that you get enough sleep as well as enough of each of these phases.

My EEG readings showed that I have relatively poor sleep efficiency, actually sleeping only 75 percent of the time I’m in bed (ideally it should be over 80 percent). And I seem to have little deep sleep, which accounts for only 12 percent of my sleep (20 percent is ideal).

There are many tried-and-tested techniques to improve sleep (and sleep more deeply), including going to bed and waking up regularly; Avoid bright lights and social media before bed; and follow the “fifteen minute rule” (get out of bed if you don’t fall asleep within 15 minutes or if you wake up and can’t go back to sleep). This helps your brain associate “bed” with sleep (and sex) and nothing else.

I already do most of these things and more. Along with regular early morning exercise (morning light helps reset the body’s internal clock) and a Mediterranean diet (high in fiber and low in sugar, it’s been shown to improve sleep quality). I also avoid caffeine after 10am and rarely drink alcohol.

But I was particularly drawn to a cutting-edge technology I’ve stumbled upon, which is being tested by researchers at Cardiff University’s Brain Research Imaging Centre. It consists of a headband with electrodes that detect when you’re in deep sleep (when the brain is making long, slow waves); It then makes a faint sound near the peak of a wave, and this effectively stimulates your brain to create slower, deep waves.

So far, researchers have found the headband to work well in young people, but when I tried it it didn’t have much of an effect – unsurprisingly to neuroscientist Professor Penny Lewis, who leads the research team.

She told me that in “older people” (I’m 65) “there’s a reaction, but it’s tiny”. That’s because these slow waves aren’t as big or as effective as they age, meaning the target the noise waves are trying to hit is smaller and easily missed.

As for me, despite my EEG results, I feel like I’m sleeping better now – the key for me is trying not to worry, and using breathing techniques and mindfulness certainly helps.

To take our sleep census, search “UK Sleep Census” online.

How to Sleep Well with Michael Mosley, BBC2, March 31, 9pm.

I know running is good for me, but I hate it – it’s something I do with my teeth clenched. But maybe I should try to smile.

Researchers at Ulster University have found that smiling makes running easier and more efficient. In their study, they fitted 24 regular runners with masks to measure how much oxygen they used during six-minute runs on a treadmill — and got them to smile, frown, or run as usual.

To their surprise, the runners used 3 percent less energy (as measured by oxygen uptake) smiling than frowning.

The runners said that smiling also made running easier for them.

One theory is that smiling makes you feel more relaxed, which helps you run more efficiently and also seems to make you feel better.

boys or girls? It’s in your father’s genes

I am one of four children – three boys and one girl. And I have four children, also three boys and one girl.

Is that a coincidence? Apparently not. A Newcastle University study based on the family trees of half a million people found that if you have more brothers than sisters, you are more likely to have sons. And vice versa. At least if you are a man.

So, what’s up? Sperm contains either X or Y chromosomes – if a sperm containing an “X” fuses with a woman’s egg (which always contains an X chromosome) then you will have a girl (XX); or if a Y chromosome sperm connects to an egg, it is a boy (XY). The researchers believe there is a gene – or genes – that determines whether a man produces more X or Y sperm.

This could help explain a strange phenomenon after the two world wars. Slightly more boys are usually born – in the UK there are around 105 males for every 100 females.

The reason you don’t see many more men than women is because boys are more likely to die in infancy and at almost all other stages of life – men are not only more reckless, but they also have weaker immune systems. But after the two world wars there was a particularly large boom in boy births.

Because if you’re a father with many sons going to war, there’s a better chance that at least one of your sons will come home than if you’re a father with just one son. Any surviving sons would inherit the tendency to have sons – so get a male baby boom for a while.

Eventually, when the ratio of males to females has corrected, things will return to normal. Which shows you how clever nature is. I warned my sons to expect boys…