The Better You Sleep, The Longer You Live (Part 1)

Jul 14 (edited) in Self Improvement & Motivation

Did you know that you'll spend nearly 1/3 of your life in the realm of sleep? That's around 26 years of your life for the average human. Yet, for most people, sleep is a mystery. They don't know the first thing about what is actually happening when they sleep, and it's hard to improve something that you don't fundamentally understand.

A good night's sleep can brighten the world with endless possibilities. A bad night's sleep can turn simple tasks into overwhelming challenges. And overall, the better you sleep, the longer you live.

Once you understand the Sleep realm, you unlock all the secrets to a better night's sleep. You will discover the reasons why you had a good night or bad night's sleep and how your sleep can be optimized.

This post was inspired by Matthew Walker's amazing book "Why We Sleep". We're going to do a detailed summary and dive deep into topics like the Sleep Cycle, circadian rhythms, plus heaps more. Make sure to stick around until the end of the post where I go step by step through how I've personally been using this book and how you can start applying it to your own sleep.

Part ONE - What is Sleep?

Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day. It's Mother Nature's best effort yet at contra death, as Matthew Walker puts it.

Sleep Architecture: A Journey Through the Sleep Cycle

Let's go on a journey through the sleep cycle and become familiar with the stages and core components of sleep. Every night when you close your eyes and gently drift away from the land of wakefulness and into sleep, you go on a magical journey.

Stage 0 - Awake

The journey begins at the Gateway to Slumber, otherwise known as Stage One.

Stage 1 Sleep

This is the lightest stage of sleep. Stage One occurs right after you fall asleep, and you will usually spend less than 10 minutes here. You're dipping your toes into the void of sleep. When you're here, you're in a very light sleep from which you can be awakened easily. Here, you experience the gentle transition from the world of wakefulness into the realm of sleep.

Stage 2 Sleep

As we dive deeper, we reach Stage Two: The Fortress of Silence. Your body enters a more subdued state. Your temperature drops, your muscles become more relaxed, and your breathing and heart rate slow down. At the same time, your brain waves show a new pattern, and your eye movement stops.

When you're here in Stage Two, on the whole, brain activity slows, but there are short bursts of activity. Here, the brain produces sleep spindles and K complexes. These phenomena, like magic spells, not only help to decrease sensory inputs, protecting your sleep, but also aid in memory consolidation and information processing. Someone with a higher frequency of sleep spindles will be more resilient to outside noises and being awakened easily.

Stage 3 & 4 Sleep

You then travel even deeper, where you reach the mysterious realms of Stage Three and Stage Four, the deepest stages of sleep. This is the land of restoration. Your brain waves become even slower, your body tissues heal, your immune system restores, energy is replenished, and growth hormones are released. This is where your body heals and grows.

If I were to wake you up right now, you would feel disoriented and groggy. If you don't spend enough time here in this stage, you will feel physically tired, your immune system will become weakened, and your cognitive function will decrease.

REM Sleep

Finally, you travel up out of the deep depths of Stage Three and Four, pass again through the land of Stage Two, and arrive at the most magical part of your journey: the theater of Dreams - Rapid Eye Movement sleep, or REM sleep, where your dreams come alive.

Here in REM, our brain activity is bustling with activity, creating the fantastical stories that you experience as dreams. Although dreams may occur in any sleep stage, this is where your dreams most frequently occur. The dreams in this stage are vivid and often bizarre. Your eyes are moving randomly and rapidly, your brain waves become similar to those of when you're awake, and the muscles in your body become paralyzed, which keeps you safe and prevents you from acting out your dreams in your sleep.

Scientists believe REM sleep is vital for memory consolidation, learning, mood regulation, and creativity.

The Full Cycle

This is the end of the cycle, and just like that, a new cycle begins, taking you on a magical journey again and again. The cycle repeats itself around every 90 minutes until the morning light calls you back.

The Most Important Thing to Know About Your Sleep

If we look at five sleep cycles over 8 hours, it is important to notice the peculiar dynamic that occurs. The balance between deep sleep and REM sleep shifts over the course of the night. With each sleep cycle, deep sleep decreases and REM sleep increases. Most of your REM sleep will occur in the last few hours before you wake up.

It is important to understand this dynamic because even a seemingly small reduction, say from 8 hours down to 6, could actually deprive you of up to 70% of your REM sleep.

If you aren't spending enough time in REM sleep, you can expect decreased concentration, irritability, mood swings, increased stress levels, reduced creativity, and reduced problem-solving ability.

And that is the magical journey of a sleep cycle. Sleep isn't just a retreat from our busy lives, but a vital journey our body undertakes to keep us healthy, sharp, and ready for each new day.

The Circadian Rhythm

Two principal factors regulate your wakefulness and your need for sleep: your internal circadian rhythm (also known as your body's 24-hour clock) and a chemical known as adenosine.

The circadian rhythm dictates rhythmic patterns including moods, eating and drinking preferences, core body temperature, and hormone release, among other things. It even impacts processes like athletic performance and the timing of births and deaths.

This internal clock operates in an approximately 24-hour cycle and communicates its daily circadian rhythm signal to every region of the brain and every organ in the body. It is produced by the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain, which uses light levels to calibrate your body clock.

Studies have shown that every animal species, including humans, possess an endogenous circadian rhythm. This innate rhythm may be slightly longer or shorter than 24 hours depending on the species. For example, humans' internal clock averages at about 24 hours and 15 minutes. However, the most reliable external cue, daylight, helps to reset our internal timepiece back to exactly 24 hours daily.

How Melatonin Works

This internal rhythm is controlled by melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone produced in your brain that regulates sleep and wakefulness. Its release into the bloodstream typically begins at dusk, signaling to your body to prepare for sleep. This release is gradually reduced throughout the night until the dawn sunlight cues your brain to halt the release.

While daylight is the most dependable resetting signal for our biological clock, other recurring signals such as temperature changes and social interactions can also serve this purpose.

Morning Larks VS Night Owls

Due to our genetic makeup, our individual circadian rhythms differ. Some people, referred to as "morning larks," feel most energized in the morning, while others, the "night owls," function best at night. The societal preference for daytime work often leads to misunderstandings about night owls, who may be misjudged as lazy. They often have to compensate for their unproductive workday by burning the midnight oil.

How Adenosine Works

Adenosine is a second key factor in sleep regulation. It progressively accumulates while you're awake, resulting in sleep pressure. After being awake for 12 to 18 hours, this pressure decreases as you sleep and is generally fully purged after 8 hours of sleep.

The consumption of caffeine can mitigate the effects of adenosine, but it does not prevent the chemical's buildup. This can lead to a dependency cycle, as you may feel worse once the effect of caffeine wears off. Moreover, consuming caffeine in the evening can disrupt your sleep, as 50% of it remains in your system 5 to 7 hours later.

Your WAKE Drive VS Your SLEEP Drive

Both the circadian rhythm and adenosine work independently, powering your wake drive and sleep drive respectively throughout the day. Adenosine levels increase as you're awake and decrease as you sleep. The combined effects make you feel wide awake at noon after a good night's sleep, as there's only a minor gap between the two drives. Conversely, a large gap between the two drives at 11:00 p.m. makes you feel the urge to sleep. The larger this gap becomes between the two drives, the more sleep pressure you will feel.

Architecture of the Brain for Sleep (7 Parts)

Let's briefly take a look at seven parts of the brain that are related to sleep:

The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN): Located in the hypothalamus, the SCN controls the circadian rhythm, which we looked at earlier. It regulates the sleep-wake cycle by signaling other parts of the brain to release hormones, control body temperature, and perform other functions that can make a person feel sleepy or awake.

2. Pineal Gland: The pineal gland, located deep in the center of the brain, produces the hormone melatonin when it's dark to help promote sleep.

3. Thalamus: Think of your thalamus as the gatekeeper between wakefulness and sleep. During most stages of sleep, the thalamus becomes quiet, letting you tune out the external world. But during REM sleep, the thalamus is active, sending the cortex images, sounds, and other sensations that fill our dreams.

4. Hypothalamus: The hypothalamus contains neurons that control sleep and arousal and is an important part of the brain for sleep regulation.

5. Pons: Located in the brain stem, the pons contains neural pathways that connect the brain and the spinal cord. It has a significant role in generating REM sleep and is involved in the regulation of breathing, hearing, and taste.

6. Medulla: The medulla, also part of the brain stem, helps control autonomic functions like heart rate and blood pressure, which are essential for maintaining a state conducive to sleep.

7. Basal Forebrain: The basal forebrain promotes sleep and wakefulness. The release of adenosine by cells in the basal forebrain supports your sleep drive.

Why Should You Sleep?

As Shakespeare put it, sleep is "the chief nourisher in life's feast." Let's explore the benefits of sleep and why it's so crucial for our overall well-being.

Memory VS Sleep

Sleep plays an invaluable role in the consolidation of memory. Prior to learning, it refreshes our ability to form new memories, and post-learning, it solidifies these memories, reducing the likelihood of forgetting. At its core, sleep functions as a memory aid that operates on a daily cycle.

When it comes to memory and sleep within your brain, you can think of your hippocampus like a thumb drive with limited storage and your cortex as your main hard drive. During the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep stage, short-term memories stored in the hippocampus (a limited capacity brain region) are shifted to the cortex, a larger capacity long-term memory store. This transfer process serves dual purposes: freeing up space for new information absorption and preserving valuable information for long-term use.

Motor Tasks VS Sleep

The unique ability of sleep to consolidate and strengthen different types of memories extends to the domain of motor tasks, commonly known as "muscle memory." The term is slightly misleading as the memory resides in your brain and not in your muscles. In instances where a motor task proves challenging, such as executing a complex piano sequence, sleep aids the brain in practicing the skill and smoothing out the wrinkles. Therefore, waking up without sufficient sleep could lead to losing valuable sleep hours that contribute to the consolidation of these motor memories.

Creativity VS Sleep

Furthermore, sleep nurtures creativity by associating disparate memories, experiences, and skills, thus enabling the birth of fresh ideas and insights. This creative enhancement is particularly linked to the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage.

REM sleep, often associated with dreaming, functions as an informational alchemist, merging diverse knowledge stores and facilitating innovative problem-solving abilities. REM sleep's influence extends to some of the most transformative thinking in human history.

Sleep Deprivation VS The Brain

In terms of cognitive performance, lack of sleep notably impairs focus and concentration. After 9 hours of wakefulness, an individual can exhibit cognitive function equivalent to a legally intoxicated person. While power naps can provide temporary relief from fatigue, they cannot substitute regular sleep.

In a state of exhaustion, individuals might experience microsleep episodes - momentary periods of unconsciousness lasting 1 to 2 seconds, potentially leading to fatal outcomes in risky situations such as driving. Astonishingly, fatigue-related errors cause more traffic incidents in the US than those from alcohol and drugs combined.

Moreover, despite compensatory mechanisms our brain activates during sleep deprivation, we fail to accurately perceive the extent of our sleep deficiency.

Emotion regulation is another facet severely impacted by sleep deprivation. It heightens activity in the amygdala, the brain's emotional center, overpowering the logical prefrontal cortex. This imbalance results in alternating extreme moods, including negative ones associated with aggression and bullying, and positive ones that can lead to risky behavior and addiction.

The detrimental effects of sleep deprivation also extend to memory consolidation, as the hippocampus, which is crucial for memory formation, appears to shut down without sufficient sleep. Long-term sleep deprivation can inflict lasting damage to our DNA and learning-associated genes, disrupting our capacity to learn and retain new information.

Sleep deprivation is a formidable disruptor of brain function, affecting every facet of human life. Not only does it deteriorate cognitive abilities and emotional stability, but it also contributes to long-term brain health issues, including Alzheimer's.

In conclusion, sleep is not just a passive state of rest, but an active process crucial for our physical health, cognitive function, emotional well-being, and longevity. By understanding the intricate processes that occur during sleep and the vital role it plays in our lives, we can appreciate its importance and take steps to improve our sleep habits. Remember, the better you sleep, the longer - and better - you live!

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