A couple of months ago I spoke about how cool and awesome sleep is for us. I probably touched on all sorts of topics. But, as is my want, I left them at touched and rambled on about other stuff. I like tangents but, apparently, they like me more…
One of the things I touched on (I hope) was the concept of brain health and what that needed to look like to ensure its not a thing that comes back to bite you. Ironically, I’m remembering a conversation I had a while ago about this, where I was talking about brain health only to be countered by the question “if your brain health sucks, wouldn’t that mean zombies are less likely to eat your brain?” I was momentarily taken aback by this idea that brain health might prevent you getting bitten (ha ha ha…), until I countered their counter by suggesting that brain health would mean you’d outwit the zombies in the first place. Checkmate, Ms. Zombie Apocalypse Nerd.
I did say about the tangent’s didn’t I?... Sorry
So, brain health. There is a few different ways we can look at brain health when it comes to sleep, but the starting point is the glymphatic system. If you’ve heard of the lymphatic system that exists as a waste drainage system around the body, then you have a decent starting point to understand the glymphatic system. But the glymphatic system doesn’t work without sleep and gravity.
But maybe I’ll begin with WHY the system exists in the first place. When you are awake, the brain and all its awesome neurochemicals become progressively inundated with adenosine (one of those cool chemicals. It’s sort of a chemical messenger but as always waaay more complicated than that). This stuff binds to gradually more and more receptor points for neurochemicals in the old grey matter over the course of the day, progressively overwhelming it until its starts to obviously slow down the brains functioning because it can’t have other neurochemicals bind to the already taken up spots hogged by adenosine. Rude…
Obviously, this can’t stay like that, because who wants to be foggy when driving/working/sexing/living and at the same time wanting to survive, if not enjoy it. Worse, the more this accumulates in the brain, the more you start to experience something called sleep pressure. The higher the concentration of adenosine, the more sleep pressure you can feel building… You know when you are stupid tired and exhausted, and you feel dirty and gritty? That’s not your body, that’s actually your brain feeling unclean from being covered in adenosine dirt. Weird huh?
So, here’s where sleep comes in. It’s the carwash for your head! Providing you give it enough time to marinate, of course. When you sleep, what position do you assume? Hopefully you said laying down, otherwise you might already BE a zombie… The reason sleeping is better down laying down is because that initiates the car wash cycle.
As you lay down, the glymphatic system is able to use gravity to allow a whole wash-load of cerebrospinal fluid flooding up from the spinal system to wash things like adenosine and beta amyloids (whish I’ll bore you about later). Very cooperatively, your brain shrinks itself like a sponge to squeeze out all of that unwanted rubbish into that fresh Brain-B-Clean spinal fluid too. Then, once the rinse cycle is complete, the fluid heads back into the body to drop that nasty stuff into the various filtration and excretion organs. Must be said, all very civilised and neat. You brain wakes up the next day, fresh and uninhibited to go about your next day surviving the zombies who didn’t get their brains cleaned…
Which brings up what happens when you don’t sleep and use the handy rinse cycle. That adenosine builds up gradually, adding to what wasn’t cleansed the day before and heightening that sleep pressure. You know how when you have a long flight, and you try to get some sleep sitting up? Well, not all of the crappiness of jet lag is caused by interrupted circadian rhythms… No cleaning + interrupted sleep cycles = feeling like arse…
Then, maybe you have some coffee or energy drink to get over the hump. Well, that’s great for the short term. The caffeine aggressively kicks off the adenosine and binds to those neuroreceptors, which charges you through the day and keeps you winning. And it lasts for a while, longer than we realise anyway. But where did that adenosine go, you might ask? That’s exactly right, Pete.
Nowhere.
So, we replace the sense of fatigue and fogginess for a while. Then what? Adenosine comes back with a vengeance. This time, its personal(?)… Hence the caffeine crash in the afternoon which inspires another cup and then another. When I said caffeine lasts longer in the system than we realise? The initial buzz wears off, but we need to consider the half-life of caffeine. The short explanation is, even if we don’t feel the buzz, its still hanging around in the system ticking us over.
If you keep topping up on the coffee, you keep topping up the caffeine you can’t feel which still prevents the adenosine from binding and telling you to go to sleep. What happens when its bed-time then? Right again, Pete.
Nothing.
No sleep because the caffeine is still bouncing. Which means no brain flush, which means more suck tomorrow when you try to not be a zombie… Any of this sound familiar?
I haven’t even started on the emotional regulation, physiological recovery, insulin resistance, immune function, neurogenisis and memory management part of sleep. Later posts.
Speaking of memory. I mentioned beta amyloids before. If you have leaky gut (DEFINITELY another blog later), those migrate from the gut to the brain. If you are getting inadequate sleep, you can’t flush them like you would the adenosine. And those beta amyloids build up.
On the parts of your brain that regulates sleep and memory. Can you guess at what disease afflicts an astounding amount of the aged population and their cognitive function?
Alzheimer’s is the unfortunately accurate answer, Pete, well done… As you may have guessed, not only does it affect cognitive function, but it makes the ability to do the thing that can tangibly help and slow the onset of the condition waaaaay harder…
Not nice. And given what the direction most of the working world is moving towards (I’m looking at you, shift work and workaholic, ignore-sleep-for-more-productivity-and-sales environments), this could be a much larger issue to come. Have I sufficiently scared you enough to take your sleep seriously yet?
The ironic part, I’m hopefully not causing you some anxiety over this that causes less sleep. If I do… I’m sorry. Try and relax, read my next couple of sleep posts, and you will be fine. Promise.
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No barfights.
“That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.” Aldous Huxley
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