Making sleep stronger

In this episode, Greg Dickens and I discuss recent news around global trends in children with overweight and obesity and around how the resilience of our cells is programmed when we’re embryos. Today’s major topic is sleep - why we sleep, what happens when we don’t sleep, and why how we sleep in childhood sets the foundations for how we sleep in adulthood. We finish by suggesting ways that parents can help their children to sleep more easily through their lives by making sleep very slightly more difficult in childhood.

Topics covered

* What the future might be for child and adolescent obesity worldwide [1:21]

* How stressors on the embryo alters cellular resilience [4:40]

* Why we sleep [12:47]

* What’s different about sleep in other cultures [23:00]

* How we set our thresholds for acceptable sleep [26:10]

* How we can help our children set their sleep thresholds at a good level [37:05]

Resources mentioned in this podcast

* Global Burden of Disease report in the Lancet on worldwide prevalence of overweight and obesity:

* Paper on telomeres and embryo exposures: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57794-7

* Sensationalist earth.com article reporting on the paper above: https://www.earth.com/news/moms-health-shapes-how-well-an-embryo-develops/

* Sad lonely parrots and their telomeres: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3976323/

* Rat sleep deprivation study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2928622/

* Insomnia and sugar consumption: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8848117/