Why We Sleep

Ironically, I'm wide awake. Struggling to sleep at 2am, so thought I'd republish this and remind myself why I should bother trying to sleep at all, (since you can do that when you're dead as the saying goes).

So, to go beyond our vague understanding of 'our bodies need to recharge', I read Why We Sleep by the expert Mathew Walker. I learned so many valuable things and I felt compelled to regurgitate it all into snippets. Reading a book with scientific content can be intimidating, you have to read several lines several times. But this one is well worth it.

First things first, the secrets of slumber

Walker discusses what happens to us when we sleep, why we need it, and how it affects us. He discloses how society is deeply impacted by our sleeping patterns and what we can do to change. Why should we care? Well, his findings reveal that 6000 fatal crashes happen each year from drowsy driving and that the annual cost of lost sleep is around £33 billion in the UK. Sleep deprivation impacts performance deterioration, hormone imbalances and reinforces poor cognitive thinking. Plus, we literally talk about being tired all the time. So it's probably worth thinking about a little more deeply.

In this joyous modern era, people are sleeping less because of work, school, or high stress/anxiety levels, even entertainment (as it is attainable 24/7) contributes towards it. Research suggests that babies need to sleep around 17 hours a day, school age children need about 9.5 hours and depending on the adult, we need 7-9 hours each day. If you are not meeting this regularly then your sleep debt continues to accumulate. You can never catch up on sleep. The sleep cycle continues regardless, of course we all deal with a few bad nights' sleep, or have a couple of late nights but it is crucial we think about our daily routine and respect our internal concept of time.

“If you wake up early and find yourself thinking “I could sleep until 10/11am” or you reckon you need coffee before noon to function, you are probably self-medicating your chronic sleep deprivation due to the lack or quality of quantity of sleep.”

Quick anecdote?

I used to work in a school. The pupils started at 8:15am and finished at 4:00pm. I found out that a lot of kids got up even earlier than me to get there on time. Some woke up at 5:00am. It left me wondering- how does this affect their health, critical thinking ability and emotional stability? They must be more exhausted than me each day. It made me appreciate my daily 6:30 alarm. Why not just go to sleep earlier? Well, our body clocks don't quite work that way, a better solution would be to evaluate school and other working environments’ opening hours. Walker stresses the significance of this in his book; getting up and starting work earlier can be ineffective and unproductive- it is not a matter of laziness but a matter of how our bodies work best.

“We are not all synchronised with our sleeping patterns, the variety of sleeping behaviour suggests we should change as a society to accommodate this fact. Workdays are favoured to start earlier- for some- this can be less productive, and their DNA hard wiring suggest that a body forced to wake up too early is at risk.”

So, we know we need sleep but why are we wasting so much of our lives with it?

Now, let us debunk the notion that sleep is an extravagant waste of time. In reality, it is a vital investment in our well-being. Sleep profoundly affects processes that safeguard our heart health, blood vessels, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and even inflammation. It is the cornerstone of a sound mind and body. On the flip side, individuals deprived of sleep are more prone to cardiovascular diseases, strokes, certain types of cancer, obesity, and increased vulnerability to infections.

During the night, our sleeping journey encompasses two distinct sleep types: Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and Non-REM sleep. In the early hours of the morning, we experience deep and lengthy periods of REM sleep. Non-REM sleep, on the other hand, entails a lighter sleep state, characterised by slowed breathing, relaxed muscles, and fading wakefulness. After several minutes, we plunge into a deeper slumber, marked by the cessation of eye movements. During this phase, our brain waves decelerate, leaving us feeling refreshed and ready to conquer the opportunities of a bright new day.

R.E.M. sleep occurs when our eyes move rapidly behind our eyelids. Our breathing and heart rate activity increases as if awake. Luckily (or rather thanks to biology), our body is mostly paralysed so we don’t kick/punch anything or anyone. During R.E.M. sleep a part of our brain named the thalamus: which transfers information from our senses to the cerebral cortex is active. The cerebral cortex is the part of our brain that processes information from short-term memory to long-term memory. In most sleep stages the thalamus is quiet but in R.E.M. sleep it is active and so allows us to experience vivid dreaming. Walker claims that R.E.M. sleep reinforces our creativity and cognitive ability to recognise and navigate socio-emotional signals and human culture. So, we learn how to adapt to our environment better. So far R.E.M. sleep is only beneficial, but there is more:

“R.E.M. Sleep aids our comprehension, recognition and processes new skills. It collides new skills with the catalogue of information of other stored information. Instead of visualising this process as adding another book to a library, see it as more strings being added to an already impressive scale of webs.”

Improve your sleep:

Warning: Absolutely all of this is probably something you'd rather not do. Who on earth wants to drink less coffee?

• It is important to maintain as much darkness as you can during the night as our eyes have specialised cells that detect light which controls whether your body thinks it's day or night. It’s easy to summarise that light exposure disrupts sleep as we have all experienced that in some form.

• Another tip from Walker is to install software on your iPhone and tablets that de-saturates the harmful blue LED light.

• Coffee (the second most popular commodity in the world) counteracts sleep so avoid that entirely in the afternoon; it’s a psycho-stimulant that masks your tiredness. Coffee doesn’t get rid of your tiredness, it only builds up until you crash. Same goes for alcohol, alcohol fragments sleep and suppresses R.E.M sleep. You are more sedated than actually sleeping when you fall unconscious with alcohol in your system.

• Try and get up as soon as your alarm rings in the morning; setting more alarms and snoozing unsettles your heart. The jump start acts like a mini-heart attack and over time this may build up to health issues.

Other factors such as your medical conditions, your sleeping environment, stress levels, and what you eat and drink affect your sleep, it's crucial to prioritise these issues and make our sleep better where we can. Another point made by Walker is to avoid sleeping pills if you can. Due to the higher risk of cancer and other health concerns it exposes in some medications, it’s important to learn about the risks of taking them. The best approach is to talk thoroughly with your Doctor.

To conclude all the above? Our adult brains are composed of over 100 billion neurons, our busy minds need to recover from being awake. Each day the chemical adenosine builds in concentration and creates sleep pressure making us feel tired, usually after about sixteen hours it takes full effect. For a healthier lifestyle, let that effect take place as often as you can. All humans need sleep, as do animals, and even worms need sleep to recover from their apparently exhaustive lives.