Sleep. We all know we need it, we all feel better when we have it, but we don’t know why. Worse, we rarely have time to get adequate sleep with all the work, responsibilities, and easy access to electricity and light. Despite this, sleep is one of the most important factors that determines your alertness, focus, happiness, and ultimately your success. By offering my own experiences, hacks, and the scientific evidence behind them, I’ll hopefully provide you with an informative and instructive guide to sleep.
Ancestral Slumbers
Ripping off a PaleoFX panel discussion name, ancestral slumbers refers to our evolutionary need for a certain type of sleep. For most of our species’ evolution, sleep has been a natural part of the 24-hour life cycle. The absence of light gave our ancestors no choice but to sleep 8 – 9 hours every night with seasonal changes. The invention of fire changed all of that, but only today has electricity made it possible to easily stay awake for days.
In the same way that I advocate an evolutionary approach to exercise and food, sleep falls under the same category. Our daily circadian rhythm and the seasonal changes in sleep are a neglected, but vital need for the human brain and body.
Hormones of Sleep
There are an incredible number of hormones and neurotransmitters that determine your brain chemistry and the overall function of your body. As I briefly mentioned in my free book, Brain Hacking 101: 12 Tangible Ways to Correct Your Neurotransmitter and Hormonal Balance Now, sleep is incredibly important for maintaining a proper balance.
When your body prepares for and undergoes sleep, it produces melatonin, which is one of the primary hormones associated with sleep. During the daytime, your body produces serotonin, but without the right amount of dark / sleep time, the balance is disrupted.
Shorter nights due to electricity and lights lead to less melatonin. In turn, the body has higher estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, and insulin. For some people, including myself, the boost in testosterone might be nice, but the other three hormones are not.
Any additional cortisol is detrimental to your body and brain while insulin production should be limited as much as possible to prevent impacts on your dietary habits.
From an evolutionary point of view, the lack of sleep and extended days means only one thing for your brain and body – summer time. Historically, this is the only season where we had an abundance of light and unfortunately for modern humans, it comes with increased body fat storage and appetite.
Summer meant putting on fat for winter in the cave man days. This is one of the reasons why sleep-deprived individuals often eat more carbohydrates to fill the absence of proper rest.
Your immune system is also governed by two main substances: prolactin and melatonin. Both are controlled by light / dark cycles, which indicates that sufficient sleep could impact your ability to stay healthy.
It should be the opposite!
The building blocks of brain and body health are hormones and neurotransmitters. While foods you eat are linked to diabetes, cancer, and mood disorders, few people recognize that your sleep patterns have an influence on your diet and hormones as well. Not paying attention to your sleep can come with profound consequences.
Stepping back from the science of sleep, there are simple terms to help you recognize what you are putting your body through. Without proper sleep there is an increased chance you will contract brain disorders, alzeihmers, heart disease, diabetes, and mood disorders like depression. Among these long term risks, you also face the short term lack of alertness and focus. Lethargy and drowsiness will prompt poor food choices, which only worsens your health.
Rest, Relaxation, and Neuro-Chemical Reactions
Aside from the hormonal benefits, sleep comes with a number of organizational and memory-based benefits as well. Your brain relaxes and organizes the events of the day and the events of your life while you sleep. More importantly, not all sleep is created equal and the better the sleep, the better the organization.
For anyone who is exercising rigorously, simply watching television is not the same kind of relaxation that comes with sleep. There is a reason why the morning after a hard gym session you become incredibly sore – this is when the body mobilizes everything in the arsenal to help you heal. No healing equals no growing.
You probably feel incredible after a long night of sleep or small nap. Your brain needs the rest to function as much as it needs food and water.
Getting More and Better Sleep
Now that you have an understanding of why sleep is so important for your body, I’ll help you understand some of the neat tricks that you can use in order to get better rest. Some of these are natural methods, warnings, and technological tricks that can improve the sleep that you get and methods of coping with sleep depravity.
Reduce Light Exposure
Lights have ruined modern circadian rhythms. Even though all lights can make it difficult to start melatonin production, blue wavelength light is particularly detrimental. By wearing blue-blocker sunglasses the last few hours of the night, you can kick start that melatonin production quicker.
For those who don’t want to go that far, just try to reduce exposure to television or computer screens as much as possible. If you plan on reading or meditating during the day, try to do them right before bed instead to have the least exposure late at night.
Regularization of Sleep Cycles
Just because you’re getting 7 – 8 hours of sleep doesn’t mean you’re getting optimized sleep. Well performed sleep studies have shown the power of a regular sleep cycle for the quality of your sleep. If you are going to spend this many hours sleeping every night, there is no reason why you can’t make sure they are optimized as well as you can. Get on a rhythm.
Food / Drink Consumption
Timing and avoiding certain types of food / beverages before bed can have a dramatic impact on your sleep. Personally, I never eat after 9:00pm and certainly not within an hour or so before bed. It’s best to have partially or mostly digested food when you sleep. Try to avoid spicy foods late at night too as they can create heartburn and other discomfort when trying to sleep.
Caffeine is another sleep killer, which explains its popularity. Adenosine is a sleep-inducing neurotransmitter produced closer to the end of your 24-hour cycle. Caffeine found in coffee, tea, and energy drinks blocks the adenosine from causing sleepiness.
Drink coffee with care throughout the day as the effects can last up to 5 hours. Caffeine impacts everyone in different ways, but it could be having an impact on the quality of your sleep even if it doesn’t prevent you from sleeping in the first place.
Activity / Exercise
A lot of people like to go jogging or biking at night to take advantage of the temperature. This and lifting weights could be making it harder for you to sleep by increasing testosterone and other hormones that cause alertness rather than relaxation. Even running around with your kids or playing a game that requires moderate to heavy activity could work against you when it comes to sleep.
Again, everyone is different and in some cases the activity might be so tiring that it puts you straight to sleep. It is still good to test your own body and see whether exercising earlier can improve your sleep.
Track and Test Sleep
After sleeping you might find that some days you are more tired than others with the same hours of sleep. There are other factors at play and being conscious of the factors can help you improve them. There are several methods of tracking and testing sleep with modern technology.
The Zeo machine is known to be one of the best, but they are no longer in production. I use the FitBit One, which can help me track how restless I am.
Do Not Supplement
People who drink caffeine due to sleepiness are often more willing to take melatonin supplements in order to induce sleeping as well. This is a bad idea because introducing excess and foreign hormones or neurotransmitters of any kind will hinder the body’s ability to produce its own.
If you can’t tough through jet lag, there are a number of methods you can use instead. Just don’t supplement melatonin.
There Is a Time for Everything
There are going to be times where not even I am willing to maintain my schedule in order to miss out on things that are important in my life. It is best to minimize these situations as much as possible. There might be certain goals or ideals that you want to get out of life and these are the most important and best excuses for destroying your schedule.
Neither grades nor partying are important enough for me to change my sleep schedule, but perhaps this is incongruent with your beliefs. By all means, use sleep to achieve what you want, but don’t abuse it. Missing sleep can be an effective tool for success, but only if you are willing to use it sparingly. When you do, don’t use caffeine or any unnatural supplementation to keep you up.
Get That MELATONIN
With electricity and light there have been countless inventions that have helped save the lives of millions of people over the past hundred years. The cost of these inventions has only recently become apparent. Increased medical costs, rates of cancer, diabetes, and a host of mood disorders are all connected to hormonal and neurotransmitter irregularities. Some are correlated with sleep directly, while others are related indirectly. You may only need 6 hours of sleep, others might need 10. Everyone will be different and everybody can get away with different things. Just be conscious of the impact sleep is having on your long term health and general wellbeing.
25 comments… add one
This article put me right to sleep.
duh dun TSHHHH
Oh so clever, Kyle!
If that is the case, I would assume you are sleep deprived! Get to it, boyo!
“People who drink caffeine due to sleepiness are often more willing to take melatonin supplements in order to induce sleeping as well. This is a bad idea because introducing excess and foreign hormones or neurotransmitters of any kind will hinder the body’s ability to produce its own.”
Yeah, I don’t think there is any evidence for this in the case of melatonin.
e.g. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-079X.1997.tb00301.x/abstract
In addition, this effect would only hamper the body’s ability to create its own melatonin, not any other hormones.
Agreed. However, inability to produce melatonin leaves an imbalance with other hormones.
Here’s a little thing I have been using for a while that helps with the computer at night issue: http://stereopsis.com/flux/
It will basically gradually alter the light output of your monitor so that it’s not keeping you as awake as it otherwise would. It’s basically like the “blue blocker glasses” mentioned in the article, just for your computer.
Also keep in mind that even with F.Lux installed, the computer screen still supresses melatonin.
Melatonin secretion is suppressed by blue light (470-480nm) and by overall brightness.
as someone who sleepwalks 4-5 times per week, this is troubling.
Does anyone have a link to research stating that getting on a routine can improve your sleep quality? I’ve never been one to fall asleep and wake up at the same times (especially during the summer), and I’m wondering how much I’m missing out on my recovery. I may try harder to normalize my routine if I know it’ll help.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I remember (and still use) more from my sleep psych course in college than any other course I took. On top of being one of the most interesting classes I took, it was also among the most informative and useful. Here are some basics that may answer your question:
Imagine that most physiological processes in our body run on clocks – these internal clocks are called circadian rhythms. The “master circadian clock”, which effects the onset/offset of different physiological processes, is governed by the superchiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The SCN is affected by light, as light decreases the amount of melatonin increases causing you to get drowsy/sleepy. This is why you are sleepy at night; the absence of light tells your SCN, where the body’s “Master Clock” is located, that it’s time to produce melatonin to get you drowsy. After consistently waking up and going to bed at around the same time every night, different physiological processes (i.e., hormone production, cell regeneration) become synchronized thanks to the “Master Clock”. If you disrupt this schedule, by say going to sleep at 1am instead of 10pm like you’ve been doing for the past 2 weeks, this synchronization will get muddled. When this happens, these regulated schedules will lose their harmony. Ever heard of Jet Lag? This is caused by a disruption in the circadian rhythms.
You should also note that there are different sleep cycles and getting Non-REM sleep can help repair tissues and helps build bone and muscle. Decreasing the amount of sleep or being inconsistent may inhibit these processes.
I hope that helps and please bear in mind that I am no expert, just someone who really loves sleep psychology.
Sources:
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/sleep-101.
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/circadian-rhythm-disorders-cause
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/sleep-and-your-body-clock-topic-overview
http://www.ndhealthfacts.org/wiki/Sleep
Unfortunately, I am one of those poor souls that can’t sleep worth shit. It’s relatively normal for me to get 2-3 hours a night at least twice a week. Average is about six hours, which is rarely straight through because the slightest thing wakes me up (and I have a cat).
It sucks. I’ve done everything outside of a sleep study. Nothing works.
I know you said you’ve tried everything but just in case i’d definitely give high dose magnesium a go. Buy some magnesium oil and be pretty liberal with it. I took up to 3,000 mg per day when i was really deficient.
has greatly helped myself plus friends and family with sleep.
SLEEP:
http://www.ericcressey.com/sleep-what-the-research-actually-says
http://examine.com/faq/how-important-is-sleep.html
This article talks about eating before sleep, I was wondering how bad is it to eat 30-60 min before sleeping? Sometimes I get home late and I eat quite some calories to make up for the day. This might be a dumb question but i’ve been wondering!
Yep this is super important. If you don’t get enough sleep your prevent optimal hormone secretion (natural hgh, testosterone)
What about importance of sleep on fat loss?
you actually burn a higher percentage of fat when you sleep..again, percentage, not overall fat calories
Great points! I know to be productive and fully active during the day I need to get enough sleep. For me it’s 7-8 hours each night. Something that has helped me before bed is to spend time reading before bed. It really calms me down and causes me to relax.
Absolutely, Dan. I try to do some reading and meditation before bed. First the reading to allow me to relax a bit and then the meditation so I’m in complete darkness to encourage melatonin production.
I really need to get some hard books, though. I’m reading on my computer screen, which isn’t so great within 1-2 hours of sleeping! Need to put more on my Kindle!
As far as the number of hours, I vary between 7-8. Sometimes I get 9. On days after a major weight lifting session I try to get 9 as best as I can, but sometimes my body doesn’t want it!
Great idea about meditation. I start doing that more. Ha, ya using your computer to read might not be the best for your eyes. I always enjoy hard cover books myself. Getting 9 on a consistent basis must be great. During my days off I try and sleep in a little so can get 9-10 hours.
Right on all accounts! I need to stop using the computer for sure. Should send those bad boys to my Kindle or get the hardcover even.
I’m sure allowing 9-10 is great and your body loves it!
Great post Mans,
I’ve always got around 6-7 hours sleep, sometimes less. Some people can function on less sleep whereas others can’t, and I’m sure there’s a lot of variables involved in this. I never wake up during the night though, sometimes 5 hours sleep feels great.
Thanks!
Hey Sam, thanks for your experiences. Everyone is different and some people not only “get away” with less sleep, but some people genuinely feel better. I would suggest that 7-8 is probably the best bet for the majority of the population, but it would be silly / incorrect for me to say EVERYONE!
Glad you’re getting all the rest that you need with that many hours. On your least days and my most, I’m getting almost double! Imagine the possibilities with that time!
The Hacked Mind is slowly turning into “Things Will Does Wrong”…
Take them naps, baby!