This episode is all about the importance of sleep for optimal performance. Our guest is Dr. Michelle Jonelis a Sleep Medicine Physician. Dr. Jonelis specializes in behavior sleep therapy and has so many great things to say about sleep, why it’s important for your health and reaching optimal performance, and how we can get better quality rest.

Host: Fahad Shoukat

Guest: Dr. Michelle Jonelis, Sleep Medicine Physician
Dr. Michelle Jonelis is a Board Certified Sleep Medicine physician who practices in Redwood City, California at Redwood Pulmonary Medical Associates. Her focus is on the non-pharmacologic management of sleep disorders using techniques such as bright light therapy, circadian rhythm optimization and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. 

Show Notes

The Importance of Getting Good Sleep 

• There are 2 kinds of sleep deprivation: internally driven and externally driven sleep deprivation.
• Internally driven sleep deprivation is a consequence of stress. You have the opportunity to sleep, but you can't fall asleep. Being under chronic stress impairs the immune system, as well, but giving yourself the opportunity for rest is not as damaging to your immune system as externally driven sleep deprivation.
• Externally driven sleep deprivation is a consequence of not having the opportunity to sleep due to working long hours, a child awake during the night, healthcare workers on the front lines, etc. Externally driven sleep deprivation, when you don't have the opportunity for sleep, weakens our immune system.
• Our immune system recovers during sleep. If you shortchange sleep your immune system will be impaired and you're less prepared to fight sickness.
• Do as much as you can to allow rest and sleep during this global pandemic.

Latest Sleep Research

• For years sleep research was relatively inaccessible. There wasn't a lot that you could see, you couldn't access research. It wasn't until the development of the polysomnogram in the 60s that we were able to look at brain waves and breathing. That's when we became interested in sleep research.
• Sleep is behind other fields of medicine because it was introduced later.
• Ariana Huffington and Matt Walker's books have helped push sleep into mainstream view.

Sleep and Optimal Performance at Work

• When it comes to work and companies building software, there's a lot of ethical things in play and we want to be at our best performance. Sleep is so important to our creativity and helping our companies make better decisions.
• If you shortchange sleep, not allowing your employees to get sleep, they will not perform optimally.
• Beyond the amount of time available for sleep, you also need downtime. Performance tanks if you're working too long, especially if you're asking people to be creative and problem solve. If you go beyond the optimum length of the workday, you're compromising your performance. We need downtime where our minds can have creative thoughts.
• A lot of tech companies ask people to go beyond optimum work time and work longer hours, which is at the detriment of the company.
• For companies who have international offices, it's incredibly difficult for employees to perform well when they have meetings scheduled any time during the day or night. Working continuously with no break period is really unhealthy. If you're running with a company with international offices, try to group your teams together with similar sleep and meeting patterns.

Signs of Sleep Deprivation

• An employee sleeping on the job or yawning, it's not a sign of laziness, but a