Sleep: How It Works and How to Fix It

About this course

A course on sleep for people who have read a lot of contradictory advice and want to know what is actually established. It starts with the machinery: sleep pressure and the body clock, and how almost every sleep complaint is one of them out of step with the other. That explains the specific pattern you have, whether it is being tired all evening and wide awake at bedtime, or sleeping eight hours and still feeling wrecked. Then what genuinely disrupts sleep, which is a shorter list than the internet suggests and dominated by a few items. Caffeine, and why "it does not affect me" is sometimes true and often not. Alcohol, which is the most misunderstood entry because it really does speed sleep onset and really does wreck the night that follows. Light timing, temperature, irregular schedules, and the association your brain forms when you lie awake. The evidence section is blunt about what works and what is sold. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia is the first-line treatment in most clinical guidelines and outperforms medication over time. A fixed wake time and morning light cost nothing and outperform most of what is marketed. Melatonin, blue-light glasses, trackers and supplements each get an honest paragraph rather than a dismissal or an endorsement. It closes with the conditions where a habits checklist is the wrong tool, sleep apnoea in particular, and a three-week plan that changes one thing at a time so you learn which one mattered. Read the first lesson before anything else. It says what this is, and when to stop reading and see a doctor.

What you will learn

• Explain sleep pressure and the body clock, and identify which one your problem involves
• Judge how caffeine, alcohol, light and temperature are affecting your own sleep
• Tell the interventions with real evidence from the ones that are mainly marketing
• Recognise the signs of sleep apnoea and other conditions worth seeing a doctor about
• Handle shift work and jet lag with the light timing that actually shifts a clock
• Follow a three-week plan that changes one thing at a time

Before you begin

• No background in biology or medicine needed
• Nothing to buy: no supplements, devices, apps, or subscriptions
• A willingness to change one thing at a time rather than everything at once