“Only sleep when you are dead.” That’s the rationale that tribes of people, from party animals to early morning exercise devotees, have used to explain their sleep habits. But we may be putting more at stake than we realise when we regularly cut our Zs short because sleep is not just a black hole of downtime. Most adults need about seven to nine hours of sleep a night for optimal performance and health—six if you are among those who really don’t need much shut eye.

So, in this episode of MEDICUS – the Podcast, we explore the science behind good sleep, what goes on when we are sleeping and the hidden cost of cutting corners.

We also get some handy tips and strategies to help improve our sleep routine and deal with jetlag.

We’re discussing all this with:

• Associate Professor Joshua Gooley, who leads the chronobiology and sleep lab at Duke-NUS
• Ms Hana Yabuki, a research assistant in Gooley’s lab who sometimes sacrifices her sleep to study the state we spend a third of our lives in

Liked this episode, check out our other ones, in which we explore topics including how to die a good death, what mosquitoes have to teach us when it comes to finding effective vaccines and treatments for diseases like dengue and Zika or how we can stay a step ahead of the next deadly virus outbreak. And so much more: