Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business

and life you love. Now, you may have heard people say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,”

or, “Sleeping is for sissies,” and maybe you’ve even thought that yourself. Well,

my guest today has a very different perspective on the power of sleep.

Arianna Huffington is the co-founder, president, and editor in chief of The Huffington Post

Media Group, and the author of 15 books. In May 2005 she launched The Huffington Post,

a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely read, linked to, and frequently

cited media brands on the internet. In 2012 the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national

reporting. She’s been named to Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential

people and the Forbes most powerful women list. Originally from Greece, she moved to

England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an MA in economics.

At 21 she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union. Her 15th book,

The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time, on the science, history,

and mystery of sleep, became an instant New York Times bestseller.

Arianna, thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Marie, thank you so much for having me. Everything looks so beautiful and you have my favorite

flowers here too.

Yay, they’re mine too. So tell me, because last time you were here we talked about Thrive.

What inspired you to devote an entire book to sleep?

So I went around the world speaking about Thrive, actually. I did the first ever interview

about Thrive with you before the book was even out. And then as I went around speaking

about the messages of Thrive, redefining success to include wellbeing, wisdom, wonder, and

giving, and sleep was one of the foundational principles. And I realized that was what people

wanted to talk about more than anything, because no matter where they are in their lives, no

matter whether they want to meditate or not, they have to sleep. So sleep is kind of our

unifier. And I just realized that in the same way that in my life I had collapsed from sleep

deprivation, millions of people were burned out, exhausted, and sleep deprived. And a

lot of it had to do with the fact that we’ve been living under this collective delusion

that sleep is optional. That, in fact, in order to succeed, to achieve, we had to sacrifice

sleep. And it even became like a badge of honor. People, especially men, but then women

started emulating them, would brag. “I only need 4 hours sleep,” or, “I’m too busy

to sleep,” which became like code for, “I’m too important to sleep.” And then as a result

we had the greater and greater number of casualties of sleep deprivation in terms of health, in

terms of productivity, and in terms of our mental health and happiness.

You know, there is this cultural notion that you write about in Sleep Revolution, I’ll

sleep when I’m dead.

Yes.

Or, you know, sleep is for sissies. What do you say to those people who are like, you

know, I wanna hack everything and get as most done as possible. How do you combat that?

Well, I think the most important thing is to give people the data and the new scientific

findings about sleep, and that’s why I’ve structured the book this way. You know, to

start with a crisis so that you give people a clear awareness of the dangers of sleep

deprivation. Then move on to the science, you know. What gives me optimism is that the

new science of sleep, and it’s relatively a young science because the first big scientific

sleep center was not founded until 1970 at Stanford. But it’s so conclusive about how

sleep is a performance enhancer, how it affects every aspect of our health from diabetes to

cancer to heart disease to Alzheimer’s. And then the history of sleep, you know, we

need to understand how did we come to devalue it? Going back to the first Industrial Revolution

when we began to think that we can treat human beings like machines and just minimize downtime.

And one of my favorite chapters is the chapter on dreams, about the mystery of sleep, and

how it can become a gateway to a more spiritual dimension of ourselves. All that is the first

half of the book. And before we get to the hacks and the best practices and tips and

techniques, I really want to urge people to read the first half because if we don't change

our minds about the importance of sleep, it’s going to be much harder to change our habits.

Yes.

We need to convince ourselves of sleep’s importance. I kind of convinced myself the

hard way by collapsing from sleep deprivation, but I’m hoping that people can convince

themselves without having to go through a painful wakeup call as I did. And frankly,

Marie, I’m really grateful that I did. It could have been so much worse.

Yeah. One of the most shocking chapters for me was about the sleep industry. And I was

literally… I couldn’t believe what I was reading for folks who take medication, sleep

aids, to go to sleep and the devastating impact of the things that they don't know that they’re

doing. Getting up in the middle of the night and driving a car. I mean, this is insane.

So I was curious, have you had any pushback from big pharma?

No. You know why? Because there's nothing they can say.

Right.

And, in fact, America is the only country other than New Zealand allowed to advertise

sleeping pills. And so you have all these ads of happy, beautiful people frolicking

in the fields while a cheerful voice reads 92 devastating, adverse effects including

you may get in your car and drive without being aware of it. And it doesn't say that,

but it has happened. You may actually kill or hurt someone. And then a lot less serious

and sometimes people consider them amusing, but still stunning things - you may eat yourself…

Into a stupor.

Into a stupor without even having any memory of it. A friend of mine received 10 days after

she apparently ordered them, an entire packet of clothes which all turned out to be hooker

clothes that she had ordered without having any recollection of it. And so some of these

things are funny, but the idea that you can do all of these things without any memory

or consciousness and the fact that people nevertheless continue to be chronically dependent

on sleeping pills. I’m not talking about you went through a traumatic event and you

need to take a sleeping pill. I’m talking about people who literally cannot go to sleep

without one. And the impact on their health is devastating.

I was in shock when I read that. And frankly sometimes, you know, if I’m watching TV

and I catch one of those commercials. And, you’re right, there’s butterflies all

over the place and it’s like, you know, you may have an increase in suicidal thoughts.

And I’m like, “What?!” Like, this is insane. But I love that you painted that picture

so graphically in the first part of the book because I think it helps wakes us… it wakes

us all up.

Well, and it also prepares us for the second part of the book where I walk us through all

the natural alternatives.

Yes.

It’s not like we don't have hundreds of natural alternatives.

Yes.

Including if you have, like, some extreme case of insomnia, cognitive behavioral therapy,

which is incredibly effective and much more effective long term than any dependence on

sleeping pills. It’s just that we can’t be lazy about it.

Yes.

And we need to experiment with what works for us. And for me the key thing, Marie, is

creating a transition ritual between our day life and sleep. You know, most of us right

now literally are on our phones until the last moment, you know, texting, emailing,

checking social media, and then we turn off the light and we may go to sleep right away

because our bodies are exhausted but our brains have not slowed down. So they wake us up in

the middle of the night, which is normally not a problem except we can’t go back to

sleep easily because then we start processing our day or worrying about tomorrow. And if

our phone is by our bed, we are very likely to pick it up and start responding to texts

or checking notifications, etcetera. And that’s why I say in the book that the most essential

part of this transition ritual is turning off all our devices and gently escorting them

out of our bedroom. And for me, my ritual now is 30 minutes. But, you know, start with

5.

Yeah.

Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. You know? Start wherever you can. I’m a

big believer, as I know you are, from all your work, in microsteps.

Yes.

But for me it starts with turning off the devices and moving them outside my bedroom,

having a hot bath. I love the kind of ritual of water. It’s almost like a purification

ritual, washing away the day. And every day however blessed we may be in our lives is

a mixture of good things and not so good things, you know, obstacles, incompletions. There

has to be a clear demarcation line between all that and the time to recharge. And I love

having epsom salts in my bath, having candles nearby, low lights. It’s also like a way

of rekindling your romance to sleep. Instead of how many people see then let me tell you

Marie, everything I’m saying I’ve done, you know, for years and years. You know, basically

seeing sleep like enemy territory. How can we… how long can we avoid crossing that

border?

Yes. It’s… I loved hearing about your rituals. I think one of the other things that

I really found fascinating in your book was this idea that our brain is like a dishwasher

and all of the toxins that it removes while we’re sleeping. Again, this is nothing that

we’re ever taught.

No, and you know, it’s all relatively new science, again. We really used to be told

that sleep is a time of inactivity for the brain. In fact, one of the metaphors was it’s

like putting your car in the garage and turning off the ignition key. And now we know that

sleep is actually a time of frenetic activity for the brain. It’s more like your car becoming

a driverless car and running essential errands for you, and one of the most essential errands

is cleaning up the toxins that accumulate during the day. I actually also found that

one of the most fascinating scientific findings and, as you know, the book has 50 pages of

scientific endnotes not because I expect anybody to read them from beginning to end, but I

want to convince even the greatest skeptic that this is not like one woman’s opinion.

This is conclusive, scientific evidence. And it’s almost like, you know, we used to believe

that smoking was glamorous. In fact, you had doctors advertising cigarettes in the fifties

and saying things like, you know, I smoke menthols because they refresh my throat. And

then the scientific evidence about the dangers of tobacco became too overwhelming to ignore.

I think we’re reaching that tipping point now for sleep deprivation.

I’m really happy that you're talking about this so much and that you're such a sleep

evangelist and you’re bringing it out because one of the other, you know, bits of the book

that I appreciated and that actually got me thinking was about pilots and drivers and

all of us, you know, whether it’s an Uber driver or a taxi driver or ourselves with

our families taking a road trip and the extreme danger that we can put ourselves in and that

our society, we kind of force upon each other to work, work, work, work, work nonstop. It’s

unbelievable. It’s so important that we do start shifting our cultural ideas about

what it means to be well rested.

Well, in fact, that’s why we launched a partnership with Uber to raise awareness about

drowsy driving. Because we’ve raised awareness as a culture about drunk driving and we have

halved the crashes because of drunk driving, because of the designated driver campaigns,

friends don't let friends drive drunk. We need to do the same around drowsy driving.

Yes.

Because last year there were 8 thousand deaths because of drowsy driving and 1.2 million

crashes. And I think, in fact, what is even worse is that it’s pretty hard not to know

when you’re drunk, unless you’re unconscious. But very often people think they can power

through when they’re tired. Well, I’m going to get a Coke or a coffee and power

through. And it can take literally 2 seconds of microsleep for tragedy to follow.

So scary. So I’m curious, what are some of the biggest changes you made? I heard about

your sleep ritual that I love. What I’m curious about though now is you’re Arianna

Huffington. You’re this amazing powerhouse of a woman. Have you bumped up against any

struggles for yourself? You know, like, Arianna, can you speak here, can you come here, and

started to change your decision making based on what you’ve learned from all the research?

I’ve definitely changed my decision making, but what is interesting, Marie, is that, I

mean, I’m… I know we follow each other on social media, so you know that I’m very

active. I think the question is what do I say no to in order to be able to get my 8

hours sleep, which is what I need. You know, the consensus is that the vast majority of

us need 7 to 9 hours. You know, you may do great on 7 or you may need 9. Unless you’re

a short sleeper, which is a small minority of us who can do great on 4 or 5 hours. They

have a genetic mutation though, and you can’t train yourself to have a genetic mutation.

You either have it or you don't. So I… like tonight is a good example because after we

finish our conversation I’m going to do The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and after

that I was going to go to the public library Spring Gala, which is a beautiful event. But

tomorrow morning I have to get up really early to go to Minneapolis, so I cancelled going

today to the public library. So, you know, these are really the tradeoffs, but I didn't…

I don't have any sense of sacrifice about it because the alternative would have been

for me to get up at 5 in the morning to go to Minneapolis tomorrow and be a zombie for

the whole day. And I can’t stand myself now when I’m sleep deprived. I really don't