What has the COVID-19 pandemic done to our sleep and dreams?

healthHackers ep 45 with Christina Pierpaoli Parker - a sleep researcher, PhD student resident of clinical psychology at the University of Alabama, and committee member of the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine

No time to watch the video? Below is the Soundcloud audio version. You can also get the podcast on your iPhone here or check out Spotify here.

In this episode, we cover:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• what the COVID-19 pandemic has done to our sleep and dreams

• how the crisis could be helping your natural chronotype to emerge

• why you don’t need to go to bed at the same time every night

• is it possible to translate your dreams into real meanings?

• why you should go to bed when you’re sleepy - not when you’re tired (there’s a difference!)

• the “sleep tax” you pay for the privilege of aging 

• a treatment that can help change bad dreams

• how much sleep is needed for your age group

• what it can mean if you fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow

• what happens to your muscles and heart rate when you dream

• how sleep affects your weight-loss goals

• four science-backed tips for getting better sleep (that Christina follows every night!)

Running away naked with toilet paper? You’re not the only one having weird dreams during the pandemic

‘For many people, COVID-19 has invited several challenges to their sleep,” Christina Pierpaoli Parker - a sleep researcher and PhD student, told me in healthHackers episode 45, “namely with regard to issues initiating or maintaining sleep, sometimes traumatic nightmares, disturbing or unusual dream content.”

Christina, who’s a resident of clinical psychology at the University of Alabama and committee member of the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine, has been seeing her patients remotely since social distancing rules began and explained that, clinically and anecdotally, a lot of the latest COVID-19 dreaming themes revolve around vulnerability.

“Showing up to things naked, showing up to things late,” she told me. 

“I had one patient explain that she had this dream where she hosted a banquet and didn't have any food. I also have heard a lot of dreams clustering around themes of escape and safety, so running and flying away from things. Toilet paper, particularly when we had the scare about the scarcity of toilet paper. And then things like, looking weird or feeling weird or having unusual perceptual experiences where in the dream, you may smell something or see someone that you haven't seen in a really long time.”

It’s not just strange dreams that are cropping up. The global pandemic is also showing some of us who we really are - in chronotype terms, that is. 

Are you a night owl finally able to stay up late and sleep in later than you used to because you no longer need to allow for that one-hour commute? Or are you an early bird who can happily go to bed early now you don’t have to wait for your partner to come home late from their physical place of work?

“Sleep, while of course a natural process, is governed by social convention. So when we wake up, when we go to sleep, in large part gets governed by things like social responsibility.

“When those social conventions get relaxed, our natural chronotype reveals itself,” Christina told me.

Whether you’re an early bird, night owl or somewhere in the middle, your chronotype can adapt and vary as you age - even without global pandemics at play. I asked Christina, who also researches aging, how sleep changes as we get older.

“I often like to joke to my patients that even though sleep changes with aging represent the signatures of healthy and normal aging, it is the tax that you pay for the privilege of aging. We have nearly doubled the human lifespan in the 20th century. And so if the tax we have to pay for that is somewhat impaired sleep… that to me sounds like a good deal.”

According to Christina, older people typically take longer to fall asleep. 

Experts like to tell patients that a “healthy sleeper” needs about 15 to 30 minutes to fall asleep, she explained, “but with aging that can take a little bit longer.”

“In fact, if you're falling asleep at the drop of a hat, that actually indicates sleep deprivation,” Christina said.

We also sleep less when we’re older. If you’re wondering what the standard sleep times are supposed to be for your age group, Christina told me:

“The prescription of sleep for people over the age of 65 is between seven to eight hours. Whereas younger adults, so 18-year-olds, need seven to nine.” 

If you’re looking for some easy, science-backed steps to help you sleep better straightaway - watch healthHackers episode 45 with Christina (the four steps are in the second half of the video). There’s also a great explanation of why you should go to bed when you’re sleepy - not when you’re tired.

Living through a pandemic is enough to give anyone anxious dreams, but stress can invoke other undesirable changes of a physical kind that adequate sleep can help diminish. 

“We know that the relationship between sleep and weight gain is very, very strong, very robust and fairly consistent across studies,” Christina told me.

“If you want to lose weight - go to sleep,” she said, smiling. Obviously, there’s a lot more to this (as you’ll hear in the episode) but much of the reasoning comes down to the hormonal effects of sleep deprivation.

“When we are sleep deprived,  we see an increase in the hormone that increases our appetite and a decrease in the hormone that tells us we're full and satisfied,” she explained.

An unnecessary rise in the stress hormone cortisol, caused by a lack of sleep, can lead to “emotionally eating and eating impulsively.“

“The energy that we don't get from sleep, our body seeks out in food, and more specifically - certain types of foods. And what happens is that in the body's attempt to achieve homeostasis, it seeks out these quick and dirty sources of energy - the donut, the cheeseburger, the brownie, such that your blood sugar spikes, you get that energy that you need, and then you crash,” Christina told me. 

When considering the clear importance of sleep, it’s hard not to feel a level of imagined pressure to do it right or to get enough.  

“So many people with insomnia struggle with the performance of sleep having had issues initiating or maintaining sleep, experienced the sort of performance anxiety surrounding their sleep, because they feel like: ‘well, I must sleep, I need to go to sleep because I need to function the next day at work around my peers around my children and spouse’.” 

Fortunately, the removal of certain social responsibilities since many of us began living under various levels of lockdown may mean some insomniacs have seen anxiety levels around sleep reduce. While others may find their sleep routines have become more challenging (see aforementioned toilet paper nightmares). 

That said, just because your dreams have gone haywire - that doesn’t mean you have a problem.

“In psychology, we typically characterize something as problematic when it causes impairment and when it causes distress. So if you're enjoying your dreams, and they're not interfering - we have nothing to pathologize.”

Follow Christina on Twitter and Instagram.

A note for new healthHackers listeners and viewers: Anything you hear or see within healthHackers content should not be considered personal or medical advice. I’m sure you’ve all heard it before, so you know the score - always talk to your own health provider about your concerns.👌

Christina’s views are hers alone and not those of her employers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Birmingham VA Medical Center.