Sleep hygiene is all the rage, especially around January 1 when people are examining their habits and things to improve on for the coming year.

It’s the most important part of you and your clients health that can be improved upon the quickest – essentially the lowest hanging fruit out there to be picked.

But it’s really hard to make drastic changes to something you don’t quite understand, or at least don’t understand the magnitude of its importance.

If clients push back on the importance of sleep, which is less likely nowadays but it still happens, try framing it in a slightly different way.

Matthew Walker does this quite well in his book Why We Sleep.

He frames sleep as an evolutionary survivor, an activity human (and animals) have always done, still do, and will always do in spite of some immediate drawbacks to survival.

Sleep is the ultimate “sacrifice the present for the benefit of the future” activity.

Think about it – when you’re asleep you are completely exposed and vulnerable to threats.  This may not seem like a big deal in your suburban house or your thrice-locked apartment, but on the savannah 2000 years ago this was a really big deal.  You were completely vulnerable, and no doubt plenty of humans have been and will be killed in their sleep by a host of enemies or threats.

You also can’t do any of the other things survival requires while sleeping. 

You can’t find food, you can’t eat food, you can’t procreate, you can’t immediately protect your family – for hours and hours at a time.

How then did sleep survive the evolutionary cycle and stick it out this long?  Wouldn’t all the people being killed in their sleep and starving in their sleep die off and the ones who stayed awake longer live on to procreate and eventually we’d evolve to be sleepless zombie persons?

Turns out that sleep is pretty fucking important and that’s why we’re still doing it.

The short term and long term benefits drastically outweigh the immediate risks of sleep and we know this because we still really need it and it’s survived evolution.

We now also know that the greater risk is a long term lack of sleep.

Lack of sleep can contribute to cancer, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimers, and pretty much any other malady out there that you don’t want.

So before you go and give your clients the sleep hygiene checklist of dark room, cold room, no blue light, no phone, no alcohol – give them some context.

Let them know that evolution is the master here, and it says sleep is here to stay.