Easiest way to improve your live
Is sleep really necessary? Well, it is absolutely critical for us as human beings and not only. Just think about the evolution of our species. Through evolution the human evolved in order to get better and better at what he was doing. But sleep did not go away. We still sleep and feel the need to sleep even against our will sometimes. Let’s find out why this happens and why sleep is so important.
My notes come from the great book I recently read. It’s called “Why we sleep” by Matthew Walker.
The circadian rhythm
Your circadian rhythm dictates your desire to sleep and it also influences your metabolic rate along with emotional ups and downs. As each person is different, then everybody has a different circadian rhythm. Some of us are night owls and some of us are morning rises.
Since we don’t control our circadian rhythm, it is not possible for us to decide whether we want to be night owls or morning risers. At least not with the consequences caused by depriving us from sleep. And we all know that the whole society is oriented around early rising people. You go to school early, you go to the office early. That’s just an absolute pain to the night owls, making them sleep-deprived and more likely to suffer from a range of illnesses including depression, cancer and diabetes.
Pillars of good health
There are three pillars of good health: diet, exercise and sleep.
It is presented that sleep is crucial in having good cardiovascular health. Once you have a cardiovascular disease, there’s no need to take expensive healthcare programs, you just need more sleep. This was scientifically analyzed on a diverse group of more than 500,000 people from multiple countries. And the result was indeed that sleep deprivation causes an increase of 45% of getting a cardiovascular disease.
Every time you don’t get enough sleep, the pressure in the veins goes up. A few hours lost here and there counts. In time the veins will get stretched and damaged.
Sleep transitions
There are three stages of sleep: deep sleep, light sleep and REM sleep (rapid eye movement).
During the deep sleep period, the brain is transferring things that have been learnt during the day. The information is simply directed from the hippocampus towards the right parts of the brain in order to be stored.
Most of our deep sleep occurs at the beginning of our sleep. This is why it is not recommended to stay up late. You need this deep sleep to let the information you gathered through the day settle.
During the light sleep period, your hippocampus is getting cleaned. When you’re awake during the day, your hippocampus is gathering information through your senses. And since it cannot store a lot of information, it needs to be prepared after the night for another day of gathering information. That is why the hippocampus gets cleaned during the light sleep period.
Most of our light sleep occurs at the end of our sleep. This is why it is counterproductive waking up very early to study. You might be in the posture of reading the same sentence over and over again.
During the REM sleep, the new information that came from the hippocampus to a specific area is connected with existing information from the brain. At this stage the brain is making the connections and this is how breakthroughs occur while asleep. Dreams also occur during the REM sleep. And as Matthew says, dreams are a form of therapy for humans. And thinking about our childhood we are recalling memories that we’re linked to an intense emotion. However, it is the memory that was not forgotten while the intense emotion cast off. Therefore without our dreams, we would all suffer from chronic post traumatic stress disorder.
Based on these explanations we should consider sleep as a high priority in our lives. It is very important to have good sleep hygiene. Try to sleep each night at the same hour in a dark and cool environment.
Dark and cool environment
The dark environment even before going to sleep is recommended such as you won’t suppress the production of melatonin. This substance generated by our bodies is the one that helps us getting into the first stage of sleep. For this you might stop using blue light, but yellow instead both on your bulb and on the devices you use. One solution would be the blue light blocking glasses. And after you really go to sleep, use an eye mask for full darkness.
The cool environment guarantees a better sleep quality. This is one of the reasons you might feel tired in the morning. Check out your thermostat and lower it.
For more studies performed by doctor Matthew Walker, check out his book “Why we sleep”. I am also eager to find out what quality sleep patters you implemented so far. Share your thoughts in a comment below.
