In this article we are going to talk about sleep a little bit more. we are going to talk about how much sleep we should get every night, effects of sleep in our day to day lives.
Probably you have seen that video of Steve Harvey yelling : " rich people don't sleep 8 hours a night". and it resonates with some people and make them think: I am wasting my life by sleeping 8 hours per night. but is that true? we are going to answer this question whether we can thrive on 6 hours of sleeping or 5 hours of sleeping. I talked about sleep before, ( https://www.silver-shine.ca/post/how-to-self-improve-by-optimized-sleep ). how to improve by optimizing sleep. This article is the second part on the subject of sleep.
We are going to talk about the wonderful things that happen when you sleep enough as well as horrible things that happen to your body by lack of sleep to your brain and body.
Human's superpower : Sleep
I like to start with Testicles... Men who sleep 5 hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep at least 7 hours. Furthermore, Men who routinely sleep 4, 5 hours a night, their level of testosterone is equivalent to a person 10 years older than them. Lack of sleep makes you age by a decade. Not only Men, but women's reproductive system suffers by the lack of sleep. Sleep has a significant importance in learning process. You need sleep to save all the thing you studied in your brain. but, You also need sleep before learning. without sleep, your memory circuit in your brain, cannot absorb new memories.
A study was done with two group of randomized participants. 1- sleep group 2- sleep deprived group. The sleep group was given 8 hours of sleep, the other group, however, They were kept awake under supervision, ( There is no naps of Caffeine). The next day both group were to use an MRI machine and they were given a list of new facts the learn while scans were being taken from their brain. Later on the participants were to take a test to see how effectively they learnt the facts. The results were astounding. The sleep deprived group had 40% lower ability to make new memories.
There is an area in your brain called Hippocampus which is very good at receiving memory and saving them. the participant who had 8 hours of sleep had great Hippocampus activity, meanwhile, the sleep deprived group had no significant signals. this shows sleep deprivation shuts down your memory inbox. Furthermore, the sleep group were given head mounting electrode and what was found out is, there are big spikes in brain wave when you are sleep, burst of electrical activity. the combination if these deep sleep brain waves that acts such as a file transfering machine sending information from short memory part of our brain to the long memory part.
Study with rats: In a study, They placed electrodes in the centre of the rats brain and released them into a maze and measure the brain cells' firing pattern as the rats are running around. and With computers, they assign a tone for that firing pattern. As the rats are learning about the maze, there was a specific pattern recorded by the electrodes and the computer. Amazingly, when those rats slept, the same pattern was recorded but in a much faster speed(20x faster) as if the brain was recreating the exact same sequence. Later on, The rats were doing the maze much better and more efficient. This study shows that practice with Sleep makes perfect. when you sleep enough, you are going to be better 20% better compared to the end of the workout that you had before.
There is a phrase that says "Sleep on it". If you ever practiced playing an instrument, when you were practicing and you were frustrated, after a while you would leave. later tomorrow you could play it better. That is sleep at work. Not only in English but also other cultures they also have this phrase too. This shows that benefits of sleep go beyond cultural boundaries. The French would say "La nuit porte conseil" which means the night is a council that gives you advice the next morning.
In The context of aging, it is not a secret that as we age our ability to save new memories declines. however new evidence shows, that lack of deep sleep, contributes to memory and cognitive decline. Worse sleep = worse memory.
Sleep and cardiovascular system: There was a global experiment on 1.6 billion people across 70 country twice a year. (daylight savings time) . In Spring when we lose 1 hours of sleep, there is a 28% increase in heart attack the following day. However, in Fall, There is a 21% reduction when we gain 1 more hour of sleep. If you are getting 6 hours of sleep or less, Your time to physical exhaustion drops up to 30%.
Your peak muscle strength, vertical jump height, lung capacity, all of these are compromised by the lack of enough sleep.
Your balance is compromised by the lack of sleep. In one survey of injured athletes, the researchers asked about the amount of sleep they had during the season. there was a linear correlation between the amount of sleep and the number of injuries.
Sleep lose and immune system: There is something in your immune system called natural killer Cells ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18425107/#:~:text=Natural%20killer%20(NK)%20cells%20are,spread%20and%20subsequent%20tissue%20damage. ) These cells are your body's killing agents. They identify dangerous unwanted elements and eliminating them. What you want is to have these killing assassins in your body all the time. In another study, there was almost a 70 % drop of these cells in participants when the subjects only for 1 night slept for 4 hours.
Sleep and Genes: In another study, they took a group of people and asked them to sleep 6 hours a night for 1 week, later on, they were asked to sleep for 8 hours of sleep. in both situation,
in the first week, 711 genes were distorted in their activities. ( https://healthtree.org/myeloma/community/articles/lack-of-sleep-and-the-effects-of-cancer#:~:text=After%20one%20week%20of%20subtly,of%20sleep%20for%20a%20week. )
Half of these genes had increased activity and the other half had decreased activity. The genes that had reduced activity, were associated with immune system.
On the other hand, the genes that had an increased in activity, were associated with, inflammation, Tumor promotion and cardio vascular disease.
Sleep and Hunger:
There are two hormones in your body called Leptin and ghrelin. the first one signals your brain that you are full. you are satiated, Ghrelin does the opposite. it is the hunger hormone, it signals your brain you are not full and you need more food. in a study, when the participants slept for 4-5 hours for a week, ghrelin hormone spiked up and on the average they consumed 300-400 calories per day which is about 70000 calories a year which is 10 to 15 lb of body weight, however, leptin dipped down. Furthermore, when you are sleep deprived, you aim for simple sugar and simple carbs.
How to achieve better sleep:
in another article, I, vastly covered how to get optimized sleep. ( https://www.silver-shine.ca/post/how-to-self-improve-by-optimized-sleep ) read this and it will serve you for the rest of your life.
You need regularity of sleep in addition to a great sleep procedure. go to the bed time at the same time whether it's weekdays or weekends.
Keep it cool. Your body need to drop 2-3 degrees in temperature.
conclusion:
The shorter your sleep, The shorter your life, Short sleep predict all caused mortality. However: very long sleep also cause this. the good amount of sleep is 7-8 hours per night. ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5634263/ ).
Sleep loss, will penetrate every fiber of you body, and damage various systems in your body. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. I can write pages from the scientific literature on the importance of sleep. yet, you will see celebrities talking about how you should sleep for 6 hours or 5 hours. sometimes you would hear, you can sleep when you are dead. these advices are terrible for us. The mother nature did not created sleep without a reason. If you think about it, sleeping doesn't contribute to keeping children safe, providing food, reproducing. if it weren't important then it would be the evolution's biggest mistake.
By sleeping we can optimized our health and performance, learn new skills , live longer and better and happier.
Cool Facts about our brain and sleep :
In new environments, one half of our brain do not sleep as deeply as the other one. Such as hotel rooms. When the surrounding is strange to us this happens. Some Animals have a fully functional brain side when they sleep so they can sense the danger around them. such as dolphins.
Alcohol consumption and smoking weed, block your dreaming in sleep, and your brain stays in the hunger to get back that sleep. when you stop alcohol consumption or smoking, You are going to have intense dreams. Your brain wants to get back all the dreams it lost, so you would have intense dreams.
People who constantly Drink and lose the dreaming process during the night, something interesting and horrible happens to them; Because the brain cannot get the dreams it wants ( blocked by alcohol consumption) it will get the dream when the person is awake. dreams spill out when the person is awake. this is called "Delirium Tremens" . The waking state gets mixed with REM sleep wave. so the person starts to hallucinate.
Peter Tripp Managed to go 8 days without any sleep. He was broadcasting from Times Square. By the day 3, He started hallucinating, He would see spiders in his shoes.
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