The Science of Sleep: Why You're up at 3AM — And Why Worrying About It Makes It Worse | Sara Mednick

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing today? If you are interested in getting more and better sleep, there may be a temptation to think about it as strictly a nighttime endeavor. However, my guest today says you cannot think about improving your sleep just in the minutes before you go to bed.

Her neuroscientific research has led her to conclude that we need to think about sleep more holistically and as just one of the body's ways of resting and restoring. Dr. Sarah Mednik is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine. She's also written a book called The Power of the Downstate. In this conversation, we talk about what the downstate is.

the nuances of napping, what the science says about who should and should not take naps, whether there are practices that can compensate for a bad night's sleep, why heart rate variability is an important measure of your health, why sex is so helpful for sleep, when and how and whether to take melatonin, and much more. Just to say, I first did this interview way back in uh 2022, but I'm pulling it out of the archives today because we are in the middle of what we in the 10% happier cinematic universe are calling sleep week. And specifically over on the 10% app, we've just added 10 new sleep meditations. Sleep really is the apex predator of healthy habits.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (54 minutes, 9,143 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.