“If sleep does not provide a remarkable set of benefits, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made.” –

• Matthew Walker

It’s 3:56 a.m. as I start writing this chapter of the book. I’d love to tell you that I’m up early because of my extreme motivation and dedication. Unfortunately, I’m awake because I can’t sleep, again.

I woke up over an hour ago. I’m not sure why. I can’t tell you anything about my dream tonight because I don’t remember it. I remember lying in bed for over an hour trying to fall back asleep. I even got up and walked around for a bit before heading back to bed, hoping that it would help me to sleep. It didn’t.

I’m thankful that I don’t remember what I was dreaming about tonight. For many years, I had dreams that were severely distressing. They would always involve lethal force decisions, where I would have to shoot people while working as a police officer. I would remember portions of them, but only briefly, which was why I started writing them down. So that I could understood them better.

Recently, I had a similar night to tonight. I woke up early before a dayshift, somewhere around 4:00 a.m. My heart was racing, and I knew right away that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. I rarely remember any of my dreams anymore, I think it is some way of my mind protecting me from what I was going through, but this one I could remember. So, here is what I remember from that dream:

I was working with my patrol squad on patrol in my town of Williams Lake, or as we call it in the RCMP, general duty. We received a report of a structure fire at an apartment complex. I responded with my lights and sirens and drove code 3.

The roads were terrible! There was snow everywhere and the roads were icy. I felt out of control while I was driving, even a sense of panic. I felt like I was right on the edge of getting into a massive crash at every moment (an anxiety that might be related to my own recent major crash or to multiple fatal collisions that I had attended.)

Next thing I remember is that I’m in the apartment complex. It doesn’t flow like a video camera was following me. One minute I’m anxiously trying to avoid crashing and the next thing that I remember is standing at the start of a hallway. I still feel a sense of panic, but it’s for a different reason. This time it’s that we need to get everyone out of here immediately. It’s not safe in there for us or for them.

I go to the first door on the right. It’s dark and there is smoke. It’s so hard to see between the smoke and the darkness. I’m telling everyone to get out. Multiple people are fleeing the building. They run right past me in a panic. My intuition picks up on something as they run past. I can’t tell exactly what they said, but I can tell that they are saying that the danger isn’t the fire. There is something else even more dangerous. Maybe they set the fire, but my intuition recognizes that there is a different type of threat.

I take out my gun. I am using my flashlight to try to see through the darkness and the smoke. It’s so hard to see anything. I’m worried that there might be someone else inside who might be hurt. Someone who might need our help. I’m calling out to let them know that it’s the police and we’re here to help.

Then I see someone with my flashlight. He’s crouched down, almost like what you would expect to see from a catcher, getting ready to catch a pitch in a baseball game. When my light hits him, he charges at me in a sprint. He knows that I have found him. It happens fast. It feels like a sprinter who was lined up in the sprinter blocks, waiting to explode towards me.

I’m looking for his hands. I’m trying to identify the danger that he poses to me. I know that the hands are what will kill you. I remember my recent crash during a high-risk arrest, where I was fixated on finding the suspects hands. I knew that the suspect had access to a loaded gun and my world had shrunk down into tunnel vision, where my senses tuned out everything other than seeking desperately to see his hands. Powerlines had fallen around me and there was a woman in my backdrop inside the vehicle, but I had been unable to process that information.

I felt a similar feeling in this dream. Every moment when you can’t make out their hands in a high-risk situation is a terrible feeling, just like in this moment. I can see that his left hand is empty, but his right hand is confusing. I’m trying to understand what I’m seeing. There is an object in his right hand, but I’m not sure what it is at first. The suspect has wrapped what appears to be a black T-shirt around what’s in his hand. I think it’s a black handgun under the T-shirt but it’s hard to be certain.

I decide that I need to shoot this man. Between the look on his face, the way that he’s charging at me, and what I think is a gun in his hand, my intuition tells me that he’s trying to kill me. I decide to pull the trigger. It’s different than it usually is. It feels like I’m trying to pull a 100-pound grip strength building piece of workout equipment, not a trigger of my pistol. It’s not just a little bit heavier. I’m pulling the trigger as hard as I can but it feels like it’s taking forever. It’s like time slows down and I can’t pull the trigger fast enough.

 My cover officer, who was behind me also shoots the man. He slumps down bleeding on the ground. He’s not responsive. I remember blood everywhere. It’s on me, it’s on the ground, but I can’t find where it’s coming from. I’m supposed to stop the bleeding, but I can’t find where it’s coming from.

The next thing that I remember is that I’m at a debrief of the call, with my teammates from my Emergency Response Team. I am trying to explain what happened. I try to tell them why I did what I did but nobody will listen to me. They are all talking. As I’m continuing to try and explain, one of my supervisors tells me how badly I messed up and how I’m in trouble.

And then I wake up. I look at the time on my phone and it’s 02:36 AM. It takes me a minute to process the information in my dream. I’m surprised that I remember any of it, as it’s rare that I remember my dreams anymore. I remember thinking that I don’t think I’ll be able to get back to sleep. It doesn’t matter that I’m tired and it’s the middle of the night. It doesn’t matter than I have to work another dayshift today. My stress hormones are activated, and my body is in fight or flight mode.

I lay in bed for over an hour, hoping that I’m wrong. Hoping to get some rest. I can feel my stress level is high. My heart is still beating quickly. Even though none of it was real, it felt real to me. I wasn’t remembering variations of my previous experiences; I was reliving them in my dreams.

Lessons Learned

Importance of Sleep

Sleep is one of the most important things that we do, but it’s also the one that we neglect the most. Lack of sleep can, and eventually will, literally kill you. That is no joke. Going without sleep is dangerous and bad for your health. It’s the reason that the Guinness World Records franchise no longer allows people to try and break the world record for lack of sleep. If you only remember one thing about sleep from this chapter, it should be:

Sleep is crucial, and you need to prioritize it.

From a biological perspective, sleep is dangerous, because we are not aware of our surroundings and are vulnerable to threats. Yet, nearly every living animal with a life cycle beyond a few days has a cyclical sleep rhythm. Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep. As he describes in his book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, sleep goes back at least 500 million years into our evolutionary history. Sleep has existed since before the dinosaurs. In comparison, the dinosaurs went extinct approximately 65 million years ago. That’s how central sleep is to the existence of life.

According to Walker, even some forms of bacteria have an active and passive phase that would be comparable to sleep. If sleep wasn’t absolutely critical to our health and life, we would have found a way to evolve without it. If you choose to neglect your sleep, then you do so to the detriment of your long-term health. However, shift work will often interfere with your sleep. In this chapter I will provide you with some information to help you mitigate those impacts on your life and health.

Dr. Kirk Parsley is a medical doctor who specializes in sleep and the author of Sleep to Win: How Navy SEALs and Other High Performers Stay on Top. He is also a former Navy SEAL himself and he has worked extensively with the Navy SEALs. On average, he says, people with chronic insomnia will die twelve years younger than people without insomnia. He explains this is similar to people who do shift work. Dying twelve years younger is terrible but you can mitigate some of the damage to your health from shift work. He recommends to shift workers, “Do everything in your power to mitigate the damages that you are going to unquestionably incur.” Police officers, like many other shift workers, have managed their sleep issues through drugs like caffeine to stay alert and through prescription “sleeping” medication to get some rest. However, I will describe some alternatives, such as improved sleep hygiene. These can help you by changing the signals that your body is receiving about sleep.

Your brain does not shut off while you sleep. It is the opposite. It is incredibly busy cleaning your brain, managing memories, repairing your body and regulating your hormones. You don’t get stronger from your workouts; you get stronger from the repair during sleep, after the stress on your body during the workouts. The fact that we as humans, like all other species, have evolved to disassociate from consciousness for hours at a time, shows just how vital sleep is for all life.

Our quantity and quality of sleep, along with the timing of sleep, will also have a significant impact on our mental health. As Matthew Walker writes, “I firmly believe that sleep loss and mental illness is best described as a two-way street of interaction, with the flow of traffic being stronger in one direction or the other, depending on the disorder.”

If you can learn this sleep science and manage your sleep better, chances are you will live longer and be healthier. Understanding the science of sleep is also vital to maintaining mental health.

Sleep, Shift Work and Policing

Policing is not a 9-to-5 profession. It never will be. The busier times for policing are in the afternoons and the early evening. Crime does not obey business hours. Most police officers will spend years working a variety of shift work patterns or being on call for long periods of time. Many officers will need to transition from two twelve-hour dayshifts, then have a 24-hour window, before moving into two nightshifts, which leads into “four” (or really 3.5) days off. You are generally working until around 06:00 AM and then driving home to sleep, so it’s hard to call the first one a day off.

Those same officers need to then readjust into normal hours for the days off to interact with their friends and families, before preparing to get ready for another early morning and a shift briefing that often starts before 06:00 AM. This is not a normal process for our bodies. We did not evolve to be early risers for two days per week and to be nocturnal for another two days per week.

There is ample evidence of the impacts on lack of sleep and cognitive function. Many officers will have times that they are continuously awake for 24 hours or more. They have the reflexes and reaction time that would be comparable to someone who is legally impaired by alcohol. Cops are not the only people who need 24-hour coverage. Nurses, doctors, firefighters, paramedics and a whole list of other professions also work throughout the night.

Some of those professions have developed greater ability to cope through naps. Within many shift-work professions, it is socially acceptable for them to sleep for several hours, perhaps even a full night at work. Nobody thinks twice if a firefighter sleeps at work. They are usually provided with beds at work so that they can sleep. Policing culture has not yet included the need to sleep within the policing profession. We must develop a better understanding of the science and improve our ability to manage this problem. One part of this comes from increasing education about sleep science and the cost of continuing to neglect our sleep requirements.

Human Physiology of Sleep

We naturally go through different stages during our sleep that combine to form a sleep cycle. These states and cycles of sleep form repeated and asymmetrical patterns. The amount of time that we spend in the different stages of sleep will vary depending on numerous factors. The different stages of sleep also carry different benefits. The amounts of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep will change throughout the night. It will also adjust based on our level of sleep deprivation.

Stages 1 and 2 are considered light sleep. Stages 3 and 4 are considered deep sleep. REM sleep is type of sleep when you are dreaming. Your eyes are moving rapidly from side to side. This is associated with our processing of memories. Early in the night we are getting more deep sleep and less REM sleep, whereas before waking after a good night’s sleep, we are getting much more REM sleep. The deep sleep is more important to repairing our body whereas the REM sleep is more important for the maintenance and health of our brain.

Naps

Nick Littlehales is the author of the book Sleep: The Myth of 8 Hours, the Power of Naps… and the New Plan to Recharge Your Body and Mind. He also works as a consultant for professional sports teams, including the English Premier league. He states that your body will typically need an average of 5 sleep cycles per night and that you should strive to get between 30 to 35 sleep cycles per week. It is not always possible to get 5 cycles per night, especially as a shift worker, but you can try to catch up on some amount of sleep through naps. Littlehales recommends tracking your sleep in 90-minute intervals, which he counts as one sleep cycle. Naps should be either 30 minutes or 90 minutes in length and can also count for an additional sleep cycle. 

Brain Waves Activity

Our brain wave activity is also vastly different depending on our stage of sleep. Our brain wave activity has a much shorter wavelength when we are awake. We also experience a fairly similar pattern during our REM sleep. However, during our deep REM sleep, the brain wavelength pattern is dramatically different, with much longer wavelengths. Dr. Parsley describes deep NREM sleep as the opposite of fight or flight. This is your body at the lowest level of arousal and at the highest level of recovery.

Hormone Activation

Dr. Parsley explains that 98 percent of our most important hormones, growth hormone and testosterone, will be secreted while we are in deep sleep. So, if we aren’t sleeping, our body is not able to recover. Sleep is far from just an absence of consciousness. You are not just lying around wasting time. Your brain and your body are actively working hard to repair the damage done during the day. It is making you stronger. It is improving your memory. As Dr. Parsley states, “the entire purpose of sleep is to get you ready for tomorrow.”

Circadian Rhythm

There are two mechanisms that regulate sleep patterns. The first is your circadian rhythm, which most people have heard about. Circadian comes Latin, with circa meaning “around” and dies meaning “day.” Together, “circadian rhythm” means a pattern repeated daily. So, it describes what your body is naturally programed to follow approximately every 24 hours. Think of it as a wave that completes one up-down cycle every day. Walker describes studies have shown your natural cycles can vary slightly in length and are often slightly longer than 24 hours. However, your body also reacts to the cues in your natural environment such as exposure to sunlight, which helps your body to reset to the 24-hour pattern in our surroundings.

These environmental factors such as exposure to varying temperature and lighting conditions will send chemical reactions through your body to prepare you for sleep. Unfortunately, as discussed above, most cops will experience shift work, which interferes with their body’s natural circadian rhythm and the timing of our environmental factors like sunlight. Humans are a naturally diurnal species, which means we are naturally awake during the day and asleep at night. This is in alignment with our biology. However, as cops we often can’t live in harmony with our biology and the best we can do is mitigate the impacts of shift work.

Sleep Pressure Build-Up

Matthew Walker describes a second sleep process as an increase in sleep pressure, which happens through the build-up of a chemical called adenosine. This section will provide you with an understanding of why you can’t stay awake at 03:00 AM but you can’t fall asleep at 11:00 AM, even after staying for several hours of overtime on top of your night shift. This metabolite, adenosine, has a signaling function. It will accumulate within your brain, building additional sleep pressure, telling your body that it needs to sleep. This process operates independently from your circadian rhythm. Think of it as a constantly rising arc. These two processes are fully independent from each other. However, they are both working on their own but they both combine for a powerful cumulative effect.

The interaction of these two sleep processes is important to understand for shift workers. Sometimes you will be coming off a night shift and will not understand why you are having problems sleeping, despite being up all night. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that these two different processes are telling your body different things. Your circadian rhythm is saying, “the sun is up, let’s get going,” but your adenosine build-up is saying, “it’s time to sleep.” You can also choose to alter environmental factors, which will impact the strength of these two forces. That’s why good sleep hygiene, which is a way of saying “intentionally adjusting your environmental factors to promote sleep” is crucial for all shift workers. I will cover sleep hygiene later in this chapter.

Tired but Wired

Intuitively, we would expect that the more time that we spend awake, the more sleepy and tired that we would feel. However, that is not true. Although your sleep pressure will continue to build with adenosine, your circadian rhythm can give you a “second wind.” This second wind can be affected by environmental factors such as exposure to sunlight, which would signal to your body that it is time to wake up. Your circadian rhythm will continue to cycle completely unaware that you have just worked a night shift.

Your circadian rhythm will respond to cues in your environment, such as light exposure, while attempting to activate the normal processes of wakefulness, in direct contrast to what your sleep pressure is demanding from your body. This can result in a feeling of being tired but also being unable to sleep, or tired but wired. A high percentage of applicants during the Navy SEAL Hell Week quit during the nighttime. This makes sense when you see the impact of adenosine and circadian rhythm combining, especially over several days.

Caffeine

Another environmental factor that can affect your urge to sleep is caffeine. Caffeine is consumed by many people, including shift workers. It’s important to understand that caffeine is a chemical that binds to the same neuroreceptors as adenosine. So basically, they trick your body into feeling that it isn’t tired, even when your body actually is tired. Caffeine doesn’t fix what is happening in your body. It doesn’t help to replace any of the lost sleep. It doesn’t regulate any of the needed hormones that happen during sleep.

Instead, caffeine will temporarily mask the feeling of sleepiness, by preferentially binding to the same neuroreceptors as adenosine. A good comparison is how pain medication can relieve the suffering that a person experiences from pain, but it does not fix the underlying issue causing the pain. It only provides temporary relief from the feeling that you don’t want to experience.

Caffeine will have its maximum effect approximately half an hour after you consume it. However, it has a long half-life, which means it takes a long time for the effects to wear off. On average, it has a half-life of about 5 hours, but it has some variability, depending on the person who takes it. So, if you have a coffee at 02:30 AM to get you through your night shift. When you try to get to sleep at 06:00 AM, more than half of it will still be in your system. Your body will also be experiencing the effects of the rise in your circadian rhythm. Some people will find it hard to sleep after a night shift, even though they feel tired, which is frustrating.

Melatonin

Melatonin is often used as a sleep aid; however, the role of melatonin in the sleep process is misunderstood. Melatonin is released by the pineal gland as a signal that darkness has arrived, which is a way that our body recognizes that it is time for sleep. However, melatonin does not actively initiate the sleep process. Some of the people taking melatonin are likely benefiting from a placebo effect. The act of taking something that you believe will help you fall asleep, will in fact help many people to fall asleep, even if the thing that you are taking does not physically cause sleep. Although many people are not aware of its power, the placebo effect has been scientifically proven countless times.

Sleep and Memory

Sleep plays a critical role in our memory. Sleep allows our brains to remember the things that we need to remember. There is also a cumulative effect. We don’t just use sleep to remember things from the events of that day. Studies have shown that disrupting your sleep will affect your ability to remember something from several days earlier, even if you had a good sleep on the first night after learning it.

As discussed in Chapter 6, sleep is also important for our ability to forget the things that we need to be able to forget. This includes not only trivial information that we no longer require but also the ability to forget painful and disturbing memories. This is a crucial aspect of understanding sleep for police officers. By the nature of our work, we will be exposed to highly traumatic incidents. It is in our best interest for our brain to be able to forget the harshest part of painful and traumatic memories. Prioritizing your sleep, especially REM sleep, will help you to accomplish that.

“Unconsciousness” Medication

Many sleep experts caution against the overuse of prescription “sleeping” medication. “Sleep” medication does not actually give you sleep. It gives you unconsciousness, so another term for it could be “unconsciousness” medication. As Matthew Walker writes, “Sleep is not the absence of wakefulness. It is far more than that. As described earlier, our nighttime sleep is an exquisitely complex, metabolically active, and deliberately ordered series of unique stages.”

Prescription “sleeping” medication renders you unconscious but also does not allow your brain to perform the complex and deliberate stages that are required. It does not provide you with the recovery that you need. As Dr. Kirk Parsley describes, sleep drugs reduce approximately 80 percent of REM sleep and 20 percent of deep sleep. To get technical about it, there are special biochemical GABAA receptors that occur in all organisms that have a nervous system, and these special neurotransmitters play a role in virtually all brain functions. He explains that sleep drugs engage your GABAA receptors in a hyper-intense way, at approximately 1000 times the strength that they normally receive.

It Isn’t Sleep

When you take prescription sleeping pills, you are getting disassociated from consciousness, but you are not getting proper sleep. Dr. Parsley explains, “Everything that sleep is good for doesn’t happen when you use sleep drugs.”

However, I want to be clear: there is a time and a place for prescription sleeping medication. Personally, I have my own prescription and I have used them, even after I wrote this chapter. Sometimes they are the best alternative. If my options are to get no sleep or use a prescription sleeping medication on a rare occasion, I will take the medication to get some rest.

However, prescription sleep medication can become a larger issue if they are taken on a frequent basis. The primary reason that I have a prescription is to relieve myself from sleep anxiety. I know that if I am not able to sleep for hours on end, I will set a time and take prescription sleeping medication (if I’m not on call). That safety has helped significantly to reduce my sleep anxiety, thereby limiting my need for the medication.

Consult a Doctor

Although I am sharing my experience with sleeping pills, along with what I have learned from sleep experts, it is important for you to consult your doctor regarding any changes to your health routine or medication. I am not a doctor. There is a value in sharing my experience, but I need to recognize my limitations.

However, sleep science is an evolving field. Not all doctors have been well-trained about sleep. I have spoken to multiple doctors who did not understand some key elements of sleep science, including the fact that prescription sleeping pills don’t provide you with the restorative cycles of sleep. I recommend reviewing the evidence for yourself and wisely choosing your healthcare provider to make an informed decision for your health. You can learn from many of the experts that I quote in this chapter to form your own opinions about what is the best for your sleep habits.

Emotional Control

Lack of sleep is devastating for our emotional control. Walker demonstrates a 60-percent increase in activity of the amygdala, which is responsible for fight-or-flight responses, in patients who have been sleep deprived. It seems that a lack of sleep leads to heightened emotional reactions that can be inappropriate for the context of the situation. Conversely, Walker observes that people who have a good night of sleep show a strong coupling between the pre-frontal cortex and the amygdala.

This is important to understand in relation to trauma because those two parts of the brain have crucial functions relating to our response to trauma. As described in Chapter 6, the amygdala is responsible for our fight-or-flight reactions. Greater action in the amygdala means a stronger reaction to a triggering stimulus in our environment. This includes maladaptive responses, for example responding to a car backfiring as though it were gunfire. Our pre-frontal cortex is our “thinking brain.” It will selectively override impulses from other parts of the brain. To continue the example, the pre-frontal cortex tells the amygdala, “Calm down, that bang is just an ordinary car noise.” Therefore, improving our ability to access restorative sleep should strengthen our brain’s ability to moderate maladaptive stress responses that can be painful for those suffering from traumatic experiences.

The strengthened coupling between the pre-frontal cortex and the amygdala means that people who experience restful sleep demonstrate better control of their emotions. Walker’s research has also shown that sleep-deprived individuals have increased activity within the striatum, an area of the brain which is responsible for impulsivity and reward. This is also believed to be associated with a decreased activity in the pre-frontal cortex. This leads to increased impulsivity and risk-taking, which can occur in people diagnosed with PTSD, who are often suffering from a lack of quality sleep. Therefore, sleep-deprived brains do not necessarily stay in a negative mood but instead can have wide emotional mood swings.

Future of Shift Work

It takes time for our body to adjust to a new time zone. Dr. Parsley estimated that for every hour you adjust your time zone, it will take you 1 to 2 days to adjust and recover. So, many cops are adjusting from a dayshift beginning at 06:00 AM to a night shift beginning around 06:00 PM two days later. Then they’ll rotate back to starting a 06:00 AM dayshift a few days later. They have 3.5 days to adjust back to their dayshift pattern, but the scientific evidence states that it will take their bodies 12 to 24 days to adjust to their changing shift pattern. Obviously, we do not have enough resources to give cops 24 days to adjust back to their dayshifts, but perhaps there are some other options that we could explore.

One option is to move away from the 2 days and 2 nights rotation. Working rotations with more consistency would be helpful to maintain a more regular sleep rhythm. Some police departments are already doing this. For example, patrol officers with the Vancouver Police Department cycle through a pattern with more consistent start times. That pattern has 4 continuous start times for their week, with each week getting progressively later. Then after working their latest shift, they start again with their week of dayshifts. Meanwhile, another group of patrol officers only work the earliest shift of the day without deviating to different start times. This pattern is more in alignment with our natural biology and is possible because they are a large police department.

Other work locations with less officers may have to find other solutions to the problem of shift work. Perhaps a pattern of one month of dayshifts and then one month of nightshifts? One month is an arbitrary number but it would allow for the bodies of the police officers to adjust to their nightshifts, where they can try to stay on more of an afternoon pattern of sleep for a time.

Another option could be a pattern of a week of days followed by a week of nights, which may be a better fit for the health of officers. It would also allow the officers a timeframe of straight dayshifts to maintain a normal shift pattern with their circadian rhythm for a longer period. This could minimize the disruption of their sleep, as officer would only need to adjust their body clock, from nights to days, half as many times during the year. It is worth experimenting with different options to find the best pattern for a given policing subculture, based on the resources that they have and the challenges that they face.

A second aspect to sleep and shiftwork is the ability to have a nap during your shift. This is already common in many professions. For example, it is common for most firefighters to get some sleep during their night shifts. Sometimes, they are fortunate enough to sleep through the night without a call. Paramedics, doctors, and nurses all have cultures where this is accepted. I worked with a police officer who left policing and transferred over to the fire department within the same city. He said that it was a better fit for his personal life because he could sleep some of his time at work. Nobody is bothered at all when these professions are able to get some sleep during a night shift.

There is no reason that it should be socially acceptable for this officer to sleep at work as a firefighter but not as a police officer, while employed by the same municipality. He is technically employed by the corporation for the same municipality either way. There is a mental model that says that it is fine for firefighters to sleep “on duty” but not for cops. It’s wrong and it needs to change. I’m not saying that cops need to sleep through the night on their shifts or that they all need their own bed at the office. However, we can make it socially acceptable for a cop to have a nap during their nightshift. Even a 30-minute nap during a long nightshift would significantly reduce an officer’s built-up sleep debt over the long term.

Many cops are starting their shifts from a place of severe sleep deprivation, especially officers with young children. They are then asked to stay awake and drive around all night in the dark. As Matthew Walker describes the impacts of sleep deprivation, some of these cops would be so tired that their cognitive capabilities would be comparable to someone who is legally drunk. These officers are then tasked with life and death decisions in that sleep deprived state. Like many officers, I have had moments where I am desperately battling falling asleep at the wheel while trying to drive, both in a police vehicle and on my way home after work.

I have tried rolling the windows down, cranking the radio up and many other things to prevent myself from falling asleep. Creating an environment where police teams are staffed to allow officers anywhere from a 30- to 90-minute nap during their shift would have immense benefits to the officers and the departments. I worked for a progressive police department that purchased a sleeping “pod,” which enabled officers to have a nap as needed. I expect that over the upcoming decade this will become the norm, as police leaders learn the hidden costs of sleep deprivation. If they read Walker’s statistics about the impacts each year from one hour of sleep deprivation during the daylight savings time change, leaders would quickly see the benefit to proactively managing this challenge.

Police leaders also need to understand that their officers have lives outside of work. I’ve had shifts where I’m up looking after my child before 06:00 AM and then I have to stay up all the way until my night shift ends after 06:00 AM the following day, and that’s if I’m lucky enough to get off on time. The research is clear: I’ll be as impaired by sleep deprivation as I would be if I were impaired by alcohol. For some of those shifts, officers will be stuck late on overtime and won’t get off work for several more hours. It’s a reality of shiftwork and our policing organizations have a responsibility to mitigate this issue. Motor vehicle collisions are a common cause of officer fatalities and it is reasonable to assume that sleep deprivation likely plays a role in some of those deaths.

Alcohol

I have included alcohol in this chapter on sleep for two main reasons. Alcohol has been a coping mechanism of choice for police officers for decades, as discussed in Chapter 5, often with devastating consequences. Secondly, it is important for police officers to understand the impacts that alcohol has on their brain and specifically on their sleep, so that they can make informed decisions. Alcohol is a sedative that will prevent your brain neurons from firing.

Alcohol will act to fragment your sleep, as you will have a disturbed sleep. This decreases the restorative aspect of sleep, even when you don’t remember waking up. Alcohol is also connected to the suppression of REM sleep, in part due to the production of aldehydes, which block REM sleep. This can happen even when you have only consumed moderate amounts of alcohol. As I described in my journaling from Chapter 6, I started sleeping way better when I stopped drinking. I didn’t understand the science well, but I quickly saw the difference in my own sleep.

For anyone who experiences sleep problems, the first thing that I would recommend doing is stop drinking alcohol.

10 Tips on Sleep Hygiene

Here are ten basic tips to help improve sleep for shift workers:

• Avoid stimulants like caffeine later in your day due to the long-lasting sleep disruption.
• Alcohol will hurt, not help, your sleep.
• Naps are a shift worker’s friend. Use naps to catch up on missed sleep cycles. Aim for 30- or 90-minute naps.
• Adjust your environment to help yourself sleep: Get blackout blinds and/or an eye mask. Have earplugs ready if you’re woken up.
• Temperature impacts sleep. It helps to sleep in a slightly cool room. You can also use heat therapy such as hot baths or sauna to prepare your core temperature to sleep.
• Sleep anxiety is a real problem. Have a plan for times that you can’t sleep. Also seek professional help if you are having problems staying or falling asleep.
• Set up your environment to minimize being woken up unnecessarily, especially from your phone notifications, pets or other distractions.
• Avoid overly stimulating things, like workouts or video games, before trying to sleep. They will make sleeping harder.
• If you wake up tired from shift work, working out can help you to feel better. It will bring you out of the bottom of the emotional rollercoaster described by Dr. Gilmartin in Emotional Survivaland back into a normal range.
• Getting natural light soon after waking up will help you to feel more alert and to set you up for a better sleep the following night.

*Bonus tip: Having regular sleep patterns is a key aspect of sleep hygiene but I do not include it in the list because it is often not possible for shift workers.

What Helped Me

I want to highlight some specific things that helped me with my sleep, which were surprising to me. However, I am sharing them in case they can help anyone else:

The first thing was that I learned to love watching the sunset. It helped to calm my nervous system. I didn’t understand but there are two ways that watching the sunset will help with your sleep. The first is the color of the light in the sunset tells our circadian rhythm that it is nighttime, and it prepares our body to downregulate our nervous system in preparation for sleep. The second reason is that having a wide panoramic gaze, instead of an intense focused gaze, helps to calm down our nervous system. Both these things help our body to prepare for sleep.

The second thing is that I started using a sauna before going to bed. This helps to activate my parasympathetic nervous system and prepare my body for a restful sleep. It also helps to relax your muscles, which helps me to get ready for sleep. Ask yourself why do we often give children a hot bath before bed? Because it will naturally help them sleep. We are the same way. A hot bath or a sauna will warm us up, which forces our core temperature to cool ourselves down, which prepares us for sleep. I have noticed that I have a more restful sleep after having a sauna at night. Temperature, like light, has an important impact on our ability to fall and stay asleep.

The last thing that I want to highlight was that I made intentional changes to my habits. I stopped drinking alcohol (mostly). I stopped consuming caffeine later in the day. I stopped doing things that got me worked up at night, like playing video games. Instead, I found things that would help me relax at night. I changed my sleep hygiene, so that my environment would help, not hinder my attempts to fall asleep.

Summary

Sleep is crucial to physical and mental health. Disrupted sleep leads to lack of impulse control and poorer judgment. Two processes, circadian rhythm and sleep pressure build-up, contribute to sleep patterns. Shift work will continue to be an element of police work because we must respond to emergencies at all hours of the night. As such, some officers will need to manage shift work and irregular sleep patterns. But we need to take all the steps that we can to mitigate that sleep deprivation and a growing sleep debt of missed sleep. This chapter explores the effects of caffeine, melatonin, and sleep medications. Read the ten tips on sleep habits and find which ones are the most helpful for you. Modify your use of stimulants (caffeine) and depressants (alcohol) to help yourself sleep better. Make up for lost sleep with naps when you can. We need to understand the biology of our sleep patterns. We need to practice good sleep habits, while trying to mitigate the damage from shift work. We can live healthier and happier lives from it.

Key Takeaways

• Understand the impacts that substances like alcohol, caffeine and prescription sleeping medications will have on your sleep. Use them wisely.
• Sleep is your brain’s chance to heal and clean itself. Sleep allows you to forget what you need to forget, which includes some parts of the traumas that you will see in policing.
• Sleep plays a central role in your physical and mental health. Prioritize your sleep like your life depends on it. In the long run, it does.