What the primal Blueprint means to me. Law#6 Get Adequate Sleep

Ah, sleep. Sometimes the most elusive of beasts, other times its all we can do to not fall asleep sitting at our desks. We've covered diet and exercise in the first 5 laws; now its time for the lifestyle laws. This primarily in my view where the paleo diet (the hint is in the word - diet) and the primal lifestyle differ. It is not sufficient to only eat and exercise well for optimum health, and laws 6 through 10 cover key, sometimes unspoken rules that when followed bring us closer to our cave-man ancestors and their capacity for amazingly good health.

See, even the most awesome folks need a nap every now and then

Why is sleep important? It seems a stupid question, but the importance of sleep goes beyond simply filling the time at night when we are tired and finished with mass streaming a new tv series on netflix. We don't only need sleep because we're tired, although tiredness is a good indication of when we need sleep.
Sadly, sleep is one of the most neglected elements of health as many don't understand its purpose fully. The other reason is that we focus so heavily on what we eat, and how much we exercise, as well as our jobs, family obligations, and so on, that we forget about getting enough quality sleep.

Now, I cannot claim to be an expert in the science of sleep, but I have some primal information that may help at least the uninitiated. In principle, it comes down to one key concept - recovery. We need to recover from our hectic lifestyles and rebuild ourselves for the coming day. Exercise is one of the best examples. Your exercise gains (muscle mass, strength gain, etc) do not come in the gym, they come from the recovery process. This is why doing weight training every day will not build muscle mass, because you're focusing to much on breaking your body down, that the re-building that strengthens it gets left by the wayside. When it comes to sleep, this is when the majority of our recovery and immune system behaviour kicks in (this is one of the reasons the flu leaves us unable to do much apart from rest - because we need it).

So how did our ancestors sleep, how did they do it? After all, they didn't have soft mattresses with snugly warm tog 15 duvets, or even alarm clocks to wake them up. They used the sun of course, sleeping following sunset and waking with the sunrise. It may not  have been unbroken sleep due to the need for awareness of nocturnal predators, but this isn't necessarily a great measure of quality sleep anyway. Oh, and without 9-5 jobs taking up the whole day, taking a mid-afternoon nap in the shade on a hot day would be perfectly fine and guilt free.

How do we emulate this today? Well, have a look at some of these awesome resources from marksdailyapple. As for what I have to say, here are some observations/ things I have been working on to help me get enough quality sleep.

Me, far too often with Uni at the minute

• Go to bed earlier - this comes from my and Claire's habit to stay up till 2/3am watching recorded TV and then sleep late the next day. Needless to say that this is no longer workable with full-time working weeks and early mornings. What I have noticed however is that simply going to bed when I am tired, rather than the oft-abused 'just one more episode' feeling has helped improve the amount of sleep I get.
• Fully wind down before sleep - I've noticed nowadays that watching TV, or being on the laptop/smartphone/tablet too close to attempted sleep messes up my sleep rhythm. Either it takes me longer to sleep, or I wake up constantly and don't get the quality of sleep I need. I am currently trying to read for 30 minutes before bed each night, and whenever I do my night's sleep is far more refreshing.
• Avoid blue light in the evenings - Blue light gets us up, and this is part of the reason that late-night TV/smartphones/computer screens disrupt our sleeping patterns. I have installed blue light filters on all of my equipment so that if I must check my phone, or be up late working on Uni coursework (most nights at the minute) then at least I reduce the negative effects these can have on sleep. 
• I keep the bedroom for sleeping - I try especially hard to treat the bedroom as a sleeping place, so it is not associated with day-time stressors and can be simply a space for sleep. I must admit that having a partner affects this greatly, especially if there is a particular series she wants to catch up on. But, its a work in progress.

I will likely think of more action points as soon as I post this, but as this post is already overdue because of sickness I'll keep it short. As usual, the best place to look is marksdailyapple, in particular at the definitive guide to sleep, and 17 ways to improve your sleep and embrace this crucial element of good health. Next time, we'll look at law#7 - Play and try to have some fun. In the mean time, here's a picture of cute animals sleeping.

Respectfully,

Sam