Great work, Ben! I appreciate the actionable suggestions & the structure of the post (i.e., summaries at the top and details in the main body). Excited to see the other posts in this series!
One suggestion: I think it would be helpful to distinguish between interventions that are helpful for people with poor sleep quality (e.g., people with insomnia) and those that are helpful for people with “average” sleep quality (e.g., people who don’t have any huge problems with their sleep quality but are trying to optimize their sleep quality).
In other words: let’s assume person A has diagnosable insomnia, and person B has “average” sleep quality but is trying to optimize (i.e., by going from 50th percentile sleep quality to 80th percentile). Would you suggest the same intervention for person A and person B?
My understanding is that many of the top recommendations are typically studied for insomnia, but there is much less research supporting their effectiveness for “people with ordinary sleep habits who are trying to optimize” (epistemic status pretty uncertain: I’m not a sleep researcher but have talked with a few about this topic).
A few questions:
In general, would you say the evidence for these interventions is strongest for people with insomnia/poor sleep quality?
Which intervention(s) would you recommend most strongly to someone with insomnia/poor sleep quality?
Which intervention(s) would you recommend most strongly to someone with average/good sleep quality?
Thank you! I think those are some quite reasonable suggestions/ questions.
Short response:
I think differences in effectiveness based on current sleep quality are likely outweighed by differences in individual behaviours (e.g. how much caffeine/ magnesium you already consume).
Long response:
I’m reasonably confident that the relative value of each of these interventions is likely to be similar for people regardless of their current quality of sleep, just with reduced effect for those currently with better quality sleep.
I expect that differences in value on that basis (poor quality vs average quality) are likely outweighed by differences in value based on personal circumstances as the individual effectiveness of several of these interventions depends based on people’s current behaviours. (e.g. current bright light exposure/ night-time window policy/ previous exposure to mindfulness/ quality of mattress).
The only exception to this is likely CBT-I given it’s specifically geared to insomnia, though I’d expect improved sleep hygiene and sleep restriction to still offer significant benefits to someone with more average sleep quality.
From the studies that I’ve looked at, I’d say that the evidence tends to be strongest for the effect of these interventions on insomnia. In general, I found research to be relatively thin for many of these topics which led me to largely combine findings for people with average sleep quality and those suffering with insomnia/ other sleep issues.
There’s definitely a risk of that skewing the results, which perhaps I should’ve discussed in the text, but it felt like a trade-off between that and either splitting the recommendations, perhaps making the article more taxing to read, or giving recommendations based on very little evidence (by discounting some of the studies used for being the wrong group).
Given all that, I’d likely stick with the same recommendations regardless of someone’s current sleep quality. I’d encourage anyone to choose what resonates based on their current behaviours and perhaps experiment with multiple interventions.
Great work, Ben! I appreciate the actionable suggestions & the structure of the post (i.e., summaries at the top and details in the main body). Excited to see the other posts in this series!
One suggestion: I think it would be helpful to distinguish between interventions that are helpful for people with poor sleep quality (e.g., people with insomnia) and those that are helpful for people with “average” sleep quality (e.g., people who don’t have any huge problems with their sleep quality but are trying to optimize their sleep quality).
In other words: let’s assume person A has diagnosable insomnia, and person B has “average” sleep quality but is trying to optimize (i.e., by going from 50th percentile sleep quality to 80th percentile). Would you suggest the same intervention for person A and person B?
My understanding is that many of the top recommendations are typically studied for insomnia, but there is much less research supporting their effectiveness for “people with ordinary sleep habits who are trying to optimize” (epistemic status pretty uncertain: I’m not a sleep researcher but have talked with a few about this topic).
A few questions:
In general, would you say the evidence for these interventions is strongest for people with insomnia/poor sleep quality?
Which intervention(s) would you recommend most strongly to someone with insomnia/poor sleep quality?
Which intervention(s) would you recommend most strongly to someone with average/good sleep quality?
Thank you! I think those are some quite reasonable suggestions/ questions.
Short response:
I think differences in effectiveness based on current sleep quality are likely outweighed by differences in individual behaviours (e.g. how much caffeine/ magnesium you already consume).
Long response:
I’m reasonably confident that the relative value of each of these interventions is likely to be similar for people regardless of their current quality of sleep, just with reduced effect for those currently with better quality sleep.
I expect that differences in value on that basis (poor quality vs average quality) are likely outweighed by differences in value based on personal circumstances as the individual effectiveness of several of these interventions depends based on people’s current behaviours. (e.g. current bright light exposure/ night-time window policy/ previous exposure to mindfulness/ quality of mattress).
The only exception to this is likely CBT-I given it’s specifically geared to insomnia, though I’d expect improved sleep hygiene and sleep restriction to still offer significant benefits to someone with more average sleep quality.
From the studies that I’ve looked at, I’d say that the evidence tends to be strongest for the effect of these interventions on insomnia. In general, I found research to be relatively thin for many of these topics which led me to largely combine findings for people with average sleep quality and those suffering with insomnia/ other sleep issues.
There’s definitely a risk of that skewing the results, which perhaps I should’ve discussed in the text, but it felt like a trade-off between that and either splitting the recommendations, perhaps making the article more taxing to read, or giving recommendations based on very little evidence (by discounting some of the studies used for being the wrong group).
Given all that, I’d likely stick with the same recommendations regardless of someone’s current sleep quality. I’d encourage anyone to choose what resonates based on their current behaviours and perhaps experiment with multiple interventions.