Noriko Fukuda: Sleep Tips Learned from Shohei Ohtani

I wonder if everyone is satisfied with their own sleep. Every time I wake up in the morning, I think, "I want to sleep more deeply" or "I want to feel more refreshed." I once tried a sleep app, but it gave me a score of less than 60 out of 100 day after day. It seems that frequent awakenings during the night and the long time it takes to fall asleep after getting into bed (known as sleep latency) contributed to the poor score.

Sleep is an essential restorative activity for maintaining and promoting health throughout the life course. It is also involved in the onset and prognosis of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In Health Japan 21, target figures have been set for ensuring sufficient sleep duration and the percentage of people who feel rested by sleep, and nationwide efforts have been undertaken. Furthermore, sleep and mental health are related, and as someone specializing in psychiatric nursing, sleep is one of my research areas of interest. And as someone whose sleep quality has declined with age and who was given a "D" rating, sleep is also one of my own personal health challenges.

Now, Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers reportedly gets at least 10 hours of sleep a day and has a contract with a bedding manufacturer to customize his mattress and pillows to optimize his sleep environment. The reason he is so particular about sleep is to achieve peak performance. It is necessary to think of "optimal sleep" and "maximum alertness" as a set. In order for Ohtani to recover the energy consumed during daily training and games, sufficient and high-quality sleep is indispensable. It can be said that the reason he is able to update his world-captivating performance every day is that he spends half of his day sleeping and resting. This is the key sleep tip to learn from Ohtani.

Humans fall asleep through two mechanisms: "sleeping because we are tired" and "sleeping because it is night." We accumulate fatigue while awake and sleep at night according to our biological rhythms. In my case, I walk for about 40 minutes after dinner to work up a sweat, then take a bath and get into bed just as my core body temperature begins to drop. I noticed that when I do this, I fall asleep easily, the number of nighttime awakenings decreases, and my sleep improves significantly. In the coming season, while being mindful of heatstroke, I recommend moving your body and accumulating fatigue for the sake of good sleep. I look forward to the improvement in work performance the following day.