Sleep: Now or Never

SLEEP: DO I GET ENOUGH?

The Natural sleep patterns are routed in the brain. When is it time for sleep, when should I wake up? This is different for all of us. People have an internal clock or a (circadian rhythm). Brain structures and chemicals produce the states of sleeping and waking.  This mechanism, which gradually becomes established during the first years of life, controls the daily ups and downs of body temperature, blood pressure, and the release of hormones.

People have a desire for sleep which is strongest between midnight and dawn, and to a lesser extent in mid-afternoon. Most Americans sleep during the night as dictated by their circadian rhythms, although many who work on weekdays nap in the afternoon on the weekends. Exposure to light at the right time helps keep the circadian clock on the correct time schedule. However, exposure at the wrong time can shift sleep and wakefulness to undesired times. This is noted by Casinos which manipulate their environments to encourage wakefulness.

Clocks provide a cognitive pressure to stay on schedule. Levels of melatonin begin climbing after dark induceing drowsiness, and scientists believe its daily light-sensitive cycles help keep the sleep/wake cycle on track.

PHASES OF SLEEP:

Sleep is divided into quiet sleep (non-rem) and dreaming (rem). When you are awake, billions of brain cells receive and analyze sensory information and coordinate behavior. When you fall asleep, unless something disturbs the process, you will proceed smoothly through the three stages of quiet sleep. 

In making the transition from wakefulness into light sleep, you spend about five minutes in stage 1 sleep. Temperature begins to drop, muscles relax, and eyes often move slowly from side to side. People in stage 1 sleep lose awareness of their surroundings, but they are easily jarred awake. 

This first stage of true sleep lasts 10 to 25 minutes. Your eyes are still, and your heart rate and breathing are slower than when awake.  Scientists think that this phase has the process of memory consolidation. You spend about half the night in stage 2 sleep. Although more difficult to awaken, scientists believe that the brain is still processing stimuli like voices and noise.

Eventually, large, slow brain waves called delta waves become a major feature on the EEG, and you enter deep sleep. Breathing becomes more regular. Blood pressure falls, and the pulse slows to about 20% to 30% below the waking rate. The brain is less responsive to external stimuli, making it difficult to wake the sleeper. Deep sleep (Stages 3,4) seems to be the time that muscle repair occurs. Blood flow is directed less toward your brain, which cools measurably. At the beginning of this stage, the pituitary gland releases a growth hormone for muscle repair. Deep sleep is also felt to helps the body defends itself against infection. Normally, young people spend about 20% of their sleep time in stretches of deep sleep lasting up to half an hour, but deep sleep is nearly absent in most people over age 65.

Dreaming occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which has been described as an “active brain in a paralyzed body.” Your brain races, thinking and dreaming, as your eyes dart back and forth rapidly behind closed lids. Your body temperature rises. Your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate and breathing speed up to daytime levels. The sympathetic nervous system, which creates the fight-or-flight response, is twice as active as when you’re awake. Despite all this activity, your body hardly moves, except for intermittent twitches; muscles not needed for breathing or eye movement are quiet. Just as deep sleep restores your body, scientists believe that REM or dreaming sleep restores your mind, perhaps in part by helping clear out irrelevant information. This occurs 3-5 times per night for 30 minutes.

SLEEP QUALITY

The quality of sleep affects mental and physical health, including productivity, emotional balance, brain andthe immune system as well as creativity. No other activity delivers so many benefits with so little effort!Sleep isn’t merely a time when your body shuts off. While you rest, your brain stays busy, overseeing biological maintenance that keeps your body running in top condition.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you may not be noticeably sleepy during the day, but losing even one hour of sleep can affect your ability to think properly and respond quickly. It also compromises your cardiovascular health, energy balance, and ability to fight infections.

People often talk about sleep debt, can you make up for lost sleep? Although sleeping will help relieve part of a sleep debt, it will not completely make up for the lack of sleep. Furthermore, sleeping later on the weekends can affect your sleep-wake cycle so that it is much harder to go to sleep at the right time on Sunday nights and get up early on Monday mornings. It is better to be consistent with sleep.

There is a big difference between the amount of sleep you can get by on and the amount you need to function optimally. According to the National Institutes of Health, the average adult sleeps less than seven hours per night. In today’s fast-paced society, six or seven hours of sleep may sound pretty good. In reality, though, it’s a recipe for chronic sleep deprivation.

Just because you’re able to operate on six or seven hours of sleep doesn’t mean you wouldn’t feel a lot better and get more done if you spent an extra hour or two in bed. While sleep requirements vary slightly from person to person, most healthy adults need between 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night to function at their best. 

Can six hours of sleep work in the long run? Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that some people have a gene that enables them to function well on six hours of sleep a night. This gene, however, is very rare, appearing in less than 3% of the population. For the other 97% of us, six hours doesn’t come close to cutting it.

If you’re getting less than eight hours of sleep each night, you may be sleep deprived. What’s more, you probably have no idea just how much lack of sleep is affecting you.

How is it possible to be sleep deprived without knowing it? Most of the signs of sleep deprivation are much more subtle than falling face first into your dinner plate. Furthermore, if you’ve made a habit of skimping on sleep, you may not even remember what it feels like to be truly wide-awake, fully alert, and firing on all cylinders. Maybe it feels normal to get sleepy when you’re in a boring meeting, struggling through the afternoon slump, or dozing off after dinner, but the truth is that it’s only “normal” if you’re sleep deprived.

You may be sleep deprived if you…

1. Need an alarm clock in order to wake up on time

2. Have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning

3. Feel sluggish in the afternoon

4. Get sleepy in meetings, lectures, or warm rooms

5. Get drowsy after heavy meals or when driving

6. Need to nap to get through the day

7. Feel the need to sleep in on weekends

8. Fall asleep within five minutes of going to bed

Does this sound like everyone – at times yes. Many people in North America are chronically sleep deprived. The effects of this can include:

Symptoms

1. Fatigue

2. Moodiness and irritability

3. Decreased sex drive

4. Concentration, and memory problems

5. Reduced creativity and problem-solving skills

6. Inability to cope with stress

7. Difficulty managing emotions

8. Weakened immune system

9. Impaired motor skills 

10. Craving of sugary foods 

What we can do to get better sleep.

1. Stick to a regular sleep schedule (including weekends)

2. Get regular exercise (not too close to bed time)

3. No afternoon caffeine

4. Be smart with consumption of alcohol and sugary foods

5. Keep your bedroom dark, quiet and cool

6. Avoid phones and LCD lights beside your bed

7. Avoid eating or drinking heavily just before bed

SUMMARY: 

Sleep and exercise influence each other through complex, interactions that involve multiple physiological and psychological pathways. Physical activity is usually considered as beneficial in aiding sleep. Conversely, inadequate sleep also impairs a person's cognitive performance or their capacity for exercise and increase the risk of exercise-induced injuries either during extreme and/or prolonged exercise or during team sports.

When it comes to working out, you know that what you do in the gym is important. But what you do outside the gym — how you sleep, is crucial. In fact, you must sleep in order for exercise to actually work.

“We exercise for a purpose: for cardiovascular health, to increase lean muscle mass, to improve endurance, and more. All of these 'goals' require sleep,” says W. Christopher Winter, MD, the president of Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and the author of The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It. In other words, without sleep, exercise does not deliver those benefits, Dr. Winter explains. “If you don’t sleep, you undermine your body.”

Sleep gives your body time to recover, conserve energy, and repair and build up the muscles worked during exercise. When we get enough good quality sleep, the body produces growth hormone. During childhood and adolescence, growth hormone makes us grow (as the name implies, Winter says. “And when we are older, it helps us build lean muscle and helps our body repair when we have torn ourselves up during a hard workout,” he adds. “Growth hormone is essential for athletic recovery.”

The problem is, Americans have a major issue when it comes to sleep: More than 30 percent of us are sleep-deprived, which means we're not getting the recommended seven to eight hours a night required for adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (1,2) And that means approximately 108 million people in the U.S. are sabotaging their own fitness.