Introducing Giles Watkins our Sleep Consultant. He has started working with us to ensure we are giving the best advice to you! Look out for new blogs coming every month to help you improve your sleep!
But for now a quick bit about Giles!
Photo Credit: Stacey Mutkin
Can you explain in a few words who you are and what you do?
I work with groups & individuals – often senior business leaders - to help them sleep better at night.
What was the reason you decided to study sleep?
I was a leader of multiple businesses overseas and experienced more than a decade of sleep problems. I then had the chance to study – whilst still working – an Executive Masters in Change at the INSEAD business school in Singapore. The upshot was a thesis on my sleep issues and I basically solved my problems. The thesis became my book Positive Sleep: A Holistic Approach to Resolve Sleep Issues and Transform Your Life published in 2019 and a new business emerged.
What is one thing that people often don’t know about sleep or its effects?
That there is an emerging link between recurrent poor and short sleeping and Alzheimer’s.
Whilst writing your book ‘Positive Sleep’ was there anything that shocked you about sleep?
Apart from this link, I think the clear correlation between sporting injuries and poor sleep is another piece of research that really surprised me. And just how many people have sleep problems at some point in their lives – it feels like almost everyone!
Can you give us your 1 top tip to improve someone's sleep?
Finding your natural rhythm of sleep is absolutely critical. Are you a lark or an owl? Or neither? Discovering this is often best done on holiday, without an alarm clock. And once you get into that rhythm you may well find that – like me – you rarely actually need an alarm clock!