We live in a time where on one side there are these high achievers who sleep only 3 hours or so as a tactic to improve productivity; on the other side, the mobile phones, the endless scrolling keeps many up all night. In both cases, sleep is the one which get hit.
It is almost at a point where people can start sleep shaming the ones who need to sleep for 7-8 hours.
If you don’t think so, did you ever heard this quote “You will have all the time to sleep when you are dead”?
What science has to say about all these?
Is sleep something unnecessary?
The sleep scientists say, absolutely NOT. Sleep is one of the vital function to maintain your memory, save you from many diseases including diabetes, dementia and cancer.
This is a 2 part blog on sleep.
In this blog we will cover the mechanism of sleep, what happens in your body as you sleep and the phases of sleep.
In the next blog we will see how sleep help you reduce the risk of the diseases I mentioned earlier.
Both of this blog are based on the book “why we sleep” by Matthew Walker.
How do you sleep?
Circadian Rhythm, SCN and melatonin:
Our body naturally has this near 24 hour cycle which is called circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythm is adjusted based on the sun light falling in our eyes and the darkness of sunset. It is noteworthy that in modern life we are always on blue light which messes up with our circadian rhythm. No wonder, sleep issues are one of the ever increasing complaint and side effect of modern life.
The circadian rhythm of the body is governed by a tiny part in our brain called Suprachiasmatic nucleus or simple SCN. Based on the circadian rhythm of the body, when it is time to sleep, SCN send a chemical messenger called melatonin to body cells to inform them it’s time to sleep. Melatonin is just like our newspaper boy, who throws the newspaper at our porch. That is that, he is not going to force us to read the news. Same is with Melatonin. However, the Messager plays a major role in sleep cycle. This explains why when we are jet lagged and our circadian rhythm is messed up, taking melatonin supplements help to sleep.
Adenosine and caffeine:
Adenosine is the sleep pressure of the body. When we wake up after a good night’s sleep, adenosine level in the brain is at lowest. As we go about our day, the adenosine level keeps rising. Hence after almost 12 hours of wake time, adenosine level peaks and you feel sleepy. However, you are a coffee or tea drinker, the caffeine attach itself to the brain receptions which are responsible for receiving the message from adenosine. So the events be like,
Adenosine : I am SLEEPYYYYYYY
Brain : I cannot hear you!!!!!!!!!!!! What?????
However, once your body flush out the caffeine successfully from the body, adenosine takes over and you get this feeling of intense sleepiness or simply Caffeine Crash.
Phases of sleep:
We have 2 main phases of sleep, Non Rapid Eye Movement sleep (NREM) and Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM). We alternate between these phases multiple times during our sleep.
These two phases has distinct functions, the NREM sleep weeds out the unnecessary neural connects freeing up the brain cells.
REM sleep add details, integrate the new memories with old ones and strengthens the required neural connections.
The time spend on each phase varies throughout the life span.
Watch the full video from the below link:
