How important is sleep and sleep fitness in peoples' lives?

Research and science have long suggested that your overall health and wellness rests on three pillars: nutrition, exercise and sleep. The importance of nutrition and exercise have become so omnipresent in our everyday thinking that we feel pressure to maintain health in both areas. From intermittent fasting to marathon running, countless fitness movements and diet fads have spawned and flourished as a result. The government even legislates these pressures with taxes on sugary drinks and mandated hours of physical education in our schools.

With sleep, there is a different story entirely. As a society, we’ve grown to expect more from our waking hours. We’re made to think we need to hustle harder, work more, achieve greater things. We shrug off sleep as an activity that can be done when ‘you’re dead’. We’re reminded we need it only when we feel the stinging under our eyes and the mental fatigue setting in. In fact, people are sleeping less now than any time in the last century. Research from Gallup shows that Americans average just 6.8 hours of sleep per night, down more than an hour since 1942.

It is time to change the conversation around sleep entirely. We should view it as an activity with enormous power to improve the quality of the human experience. Sleep should be something that is prioritized, measured and worked on the same way that nutrition and exercise are.

Hi Alexandra! Introduce yourself to our readers.

I'm Alexandra Zatarain is the Co-founder and VP of Brand and Marketing of Eight Sleep, the world's first sleep fitness company. Eight Sleep has raised over $150M in venture funding and has helped over 50,000 people get sleep fit with its hardware and digital products. In 2017, I was named by Forbes to the 30 Under 30 list in Consumer Technology, and in 2020 I was named by INC as one of the top 100 Female Founders. I'm also an angel investor in female founded companies as a scout for Cleo Capital. I grew up in Tijuana, Mexico and now live in Miami.

Tell us about Eight Sleep and why you started this business.

We started the company after my co-founder Matteo began experiencing issues with his own sleep. He quickly realized that there were no products in the market leveraging technology to actually improve your sleep: mattresses and bedding provide comfort, pharmaceuticals don't give you real sleep and are damaging to your health, and lastly wearables give you data but no sleep improvement. So we set off to address this and that is what we do at Eight Sleep. We use the latest innovations in sensors, machine learning, AI, and behavioral science to help people get sleep fit.

How does a healthy sleep cycle impact all aspects of life?

Like exercise and nutrition, the advantages of being sleep fit are well researched and wide reaching. From improved physical performance to heart health, sleep fitness is a lifestyle choice that has the power to improve overall well being. People who are sleep fit are, sharper, faster, less likely to be depressed, less argumentative, less grumpy, have better social skills and perform both physically and mentally better. The benefits associated with being sleep fit can be summarized by heightened resilience in an individual.

What are some tips for better sleep health?

Sleep cooler, keep a consistent schedule, create the optimal environment for sleep with the right lighting, temperature, bedding, scents, air flow, and most importantly make enough time to sleep. □

Article Credits

Alexandra’s Instagram: @alexzatarainj

Eight Sleep’s Instagram: @eightsleep

Eight Sleep Website: eightsleep.com