Welcome to the first video in our series about sleep.
Part 1: What is Sleep?
Let’s start with what we know. Our bodies need sleep, just like they need food and water. It doesn’t actually save energy, it’s an active process. it’s about restoring our bodily functions, and processing thoughts and memories and cleaning the brain. It is like the support team in the pit for an elite racing car.
The truth is, we don’t fully understand why we sleep but we do know that we need it.
Lots of things happen to our brains whilst we’re asleep, I want to start by explaining 2 concepts that are the key to unlocking your sleep.
The first concept is called sleep pressure. Imagine a tank that fills up the longer we are awake. The fuller the tank, the more likely we are to have a deeper sleep. For example, if you have a power nap during the day, the tank empties a little, and it becomes harder to fall asleep later.
Let’s apply this idea in stages.
As we go to sleep, we start off awake, and then our Sleep Pressure causes us to descend through the various sleep stages as though walking down a staircase until we reach the deepest sleep stage: Slow-wave sleep. When we’re in slow wave, our bodies begin to restore physically and mentally. As we go through the night, we enter a stage of lighter sleep, before going into what’s known as REM sleep.
REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, because our eyes dart around very quickly during this stage. This is when our most vivid dreams happen. During REM sleep, we’re paralysed, otherwise we’d act out our dreams, which wouldn’t be very helpful when it comes to having a good night's sleep.
These stages run through in sequences and become a sleep cycle lasting around 90 minutes. Remember the pressure tank we spoke about earlier? As it empties, we spend less time in the deeper stages, and more time in the lighter ones, and REM.
We sometimes wake up for a short time in between these cycles, but we don’t tend to remember these moments. It’s been suggested that these wakings happen to check that we’re safe during the night.
The second concept is called The Circadian Rhythm. This is like a clock we have in our bodies. This clock is mainly set by the amount of light that we get, with daylight being the most effective source of light. Mealtimes, socialising, and exercise also fine-tune the clock. When the light levels drop in the evening, we naturally release a hormone called melatonin which makes us feel sleepy.
So to sum up, there’s two processes that control our sleep: sleep pressure is like a sleep fuel tank, and the circadian rhythm is like a sleep clock.
Part 2: What is insomnia?
If you’re finding it hard to fall asleep, are spending a long time awake at night, or if your sleep is regularly disrupted, this could be what’s known as insomnia.
Insomnia doesn’t just affect your sleep, it affects your entire waking day, because your body hasn’t done the restoring and recovering it usually does during deep sleep. This can make you feel drowsy and have difficulties with concentration, which can affect your mental health.
This can lead to a negative cycle. The less sleep you get, the more you might to experience worry, which can make sleep even more difficult. Pretty soon, even the act of getting into bed becomes attached to a worry, which can make you feel tense and anxious, which makes the problem worse.
Because of this, people who have difficulty sleeping tend to spend a lot of time in bed without sleeping. This sends conflicting messages to your brain, as it’s not quite sure what it’s supposed to do. This damages the link between bed and sleep.
There are sleeping medications designed to help in the short term, but you’ll need something more effective in the long term. We’ll talk more about this in our upcoming episode about medication.
The good news is that all of this can be addressed.
These modules contain, in different parts, several long-term strategies and solutions to help you improve your sleep routine, helping you feel happier and healthier. We’re all different; some strategies will work for you, some wont. Luckily, we’re on hand to talk you through them all.
Talk to you next time / See you next time / Bye for now (whatever feels more comfortable)
Comments