This is why you aren’t able to sleep properly.
We all know how important is sleep in our life, it helps us in repairing our body, fueling our body with energy, shifting of knowledge from temporary memory to permanent memory and many other things. Now let us learn about how and why we feel sleepy.
Adenosine
There is a hormone known as adenosine which is the one responsible for making us fall asleep it keeps on accumulating in our brains in the wakeful hours of the the day and when it reaches above a certain limit then we start to feel sleepy.
what drinking caffeine does is to take the place of this adenosine molecule in our brains and block adenosine from being present in our brain and making us feel less sleepy.
Circadian Rhythm
It tells us that our body goes from low temperature to high temperature then again to low temperature and it takes 24 hours in doing so. When our body’s temperature is decreasing we feel sleepy and when it is increasing we feel awake.
Our temperature minimum occurs around 1.5 to 2 hours before we get up and in this time we are in very deep sleep as temperature is very important factor in sleep.
Sunlight
We do know that sunlight is very important and all it helps us to convert the fats in our body to produce vitamin D.
Do you know that sunlight can even change our sleeping pattern. If you view sunlight after 4 to 6 hours of your temperature minimum it tends to phase advance our clock , which means you will want to sleep early and get up early. If you view sunlight before 4 to 6 hours of your temperature minimum it will phase delay your clock which means you would want to sleep late and get up late.
Sleep Stages
We sleep in two cycles of sleep the first one in Non-REM or slow wave sleep and the second one is REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. They both are for bouts of 90 minutes and at the start of the night there is more slow wave sleep than REM sleep but it gradually increases as night progresses.
Generally motor learning occurs in slow wave sleep such as you trying to learn 10 finger typing so you practice for it every day but the brain makes the connection of neurons at night and the details of specific events also happen in slow wave sleep.
In REM sleep we try to unlearn the event but rather than unlearning we try to reduce the emotional content from the events for eg: suppose you had a fight with your friend today so till night before sleeping you will feel it was all his fault but after getting up you start contemplating the event and think it’s not only his fault but some of yours too and so as time passes you will remember the fight but not feel the bitterness you felt after the fight which you first felt.
Timings
We all have days when we want to fall asleep and we can’t why does this happen?
It is because we should try to fix when we get up, No I am not like your mother nagging at you to get up early here is science behind it.
In sleep the adenosine accumulated in your brain get’s washed up and when you get up late the time required for adenosine to reach to the level of making you feel sleepy increases for eg : Suppose you get up at 11 am in the morning and adenosine takes around 14 hours to build up to make you feel sleepy so you will not feel sleep till 3 am at night compare it to someone who gets up at 7 in the morning he will feel sleepy by 12 in the night.
This was my first article on sleep where I have tried to convey some things that I know about sleep now I will wish you to give me your feedback about it and how I should improve and thanks to all the people reading it.
