How many times have you been told to get more sleep? By everyone, including your own whiney brain and body?
Eh, catch it up on the weekend, right? How often does that actually work? Throwing out you normally crappy sleep cycle with an also crappy overcompensation to keep you think you’re all even stevens?
Sorry guys, circadian rhythm doesn’t really work like that. Chronotypes don’t really work like that either. But that stuffs a bit technical for what I really wanted to drone on about today. Well, I won’t be entirely ignoring it, but skimming over the detail-y and boring bits at least.
First thing first.
Circadian rhythm is what describes the natural waking and sleeping patterns we all have. Why we wake up when the light and temperature changes from the sun being up. Why we have hormonal ebbs and flows (namely melatonin) based on what our physiology is trying to tell us to do based on what the sun is (or isn’t…) telling us to do.
Chronotypes are how inclined you naturally are to be a morning lark or a night owl. Some people run better early in the morning, some people make moves in the night. Which version you are is worth knowing, if only because it allows you to figure out what kind of lifestyle might just possibly be more fulfilling for you. There’s a few theories that suggest that this is based on evolution in tribal life, that half the tribe is awake later in the night and the other half is awake earlier in the morning so there’s less time eyes aren’t on the lookout for marauding packs of wolves and rats and various night-ish things that want your tribes stuff…
Personally, I’m a night owl. And totally proud of my late-night debauchery. But accommodating for what things like life actually ask of you is kind of necessary too. So getting up at a ridiculous hour like… say, 7am (yes, I know I’m saying absurd stuff there. I thought it was funny anyway…), needs some accommodation from my sleeping cycle. And if I want a suitable amount of sleep, bedtime needs to reflect that.
7-9 hours is the range most people want to be looking for, but there ARE weirdos out there who do actually need more. Or can function extremely… adequately… on as little as 4. I say that, knowing there are a lot of people out there who have convinced themselves that they can live with little sleep that has nothing to do what their health based sleep needs and everything to do with ego. But that, as always, is another episode.
So, if I want an appropriate amount of sleep for my myriad health needs that I want and love, I pick my battle. Bedtime is roughly 8 hours before I want to be getting up. Cool, that’s fine. But it means I need to adjust a few other things about what I’m doing prior to then too. Otherwise, the night owl puts a dampener on my well laid sleep plans.
And, yes Hilary, we finally get to the point.
How do we get better sleep, with a time that actually works for us?
Well, some of it is actual practical stuff. But some of it is the attitude we have about sleep.
How much candy crush or online shopping or facebook scrolling of tinder swiping do you do while waiting to fall asleep? How likely do you think a brain that’s compelled to be active in its addictive dopamine hits genuinely is ready for sleep? Takes a while to switch shit that off, right?
There’s this idea that the reason we do that stuff late at night is because a part of us believes that we didn’t get to do all that we wanted to do during the day, so we need to catch up at night. Then it turns into an addiction, that’s only there because we are trying to switch off from the stuff we HAVE to do during the day, conveniently forgetting that the stuff we do to unwind is contributing to not sleeping. Fun times, huh?...
Maybe we just have too much overthinking going in on general though, devices aside. Even tried journaling? Its like venting that swirling stuff rolling around that anxious head into a book to clear out the noggin. Waaaay less reason to stay awake if you’ve purged the system. Winning!
Thinking this head space idea through and how it may relate to you is a good start to better sleep. Depending on what answers you come up with, it leads into the next thing you could be doing.
During the day, the sun emits light of 3 main colours. The one we’re concerned with right now is blue light. When you are using those electronic devices that emit these light spectrums, they are convincing the pineal gland (now THIS is a cool bit of brain that I’ll go into more in a sec) that its still daylight outside and its not time for sleep, regardless of how tired and ready for sleep you actually are.
So, if those electronic devices are keeping you stimulated AND convincing your pineal gland that’s it’s not time for sleep, kind of double downing on the crap sleep shuffle right?
That pineal gland? Its responsible for some really cool stuff, but the one that matters right now is that its what triggers the release of that fancy sleep hormone melatonin. All things being equal, the average person experiences a release and rise in melatonin around 9:30 pm, telling you its time to start bed prepping. But if you are stimulating the rest of the brain, and flooding the pineal gland in blue light, it doesn’t know to do the cool shit.
This is an issue for sleep quality, regardless of when you become unconscious. Can’t start proper sleep based upgrades and cool stuff until the brain turns on those proper sleep cycles. And yes Lou, there is a massive difference between sleeping and unconsciousness. Using alcohol and sleeping pills to medicate yourself to unconsciousness is NOT the same thing. And if you spend 2 hours being unconscious before you get to actual proper sleep, that’s 2 hours of proper restorative sleep you aren’t getting.
Even woken up tired, even though the clock said you got 8 hours? Yep, that’s how… Sorry in advance, guys.
So, we can reduce the blue light we expose ourselves too, and the stimulus. Cool cool. Great start of not doing stuff to make it harder to get enough quality sleep.
“What about making it better?” you ask loudly and impatiently, like you didn’t get enough sleep last night…
Well, here we go.
If we drop out the blue light from our devices by turning on night mode (dig around in the settings guys. Its there, promise) and maybe just putting the damned things down a bit earlier, its means we have more amber light coming in.
What kind of light is amber light, you may ask Nat?
Well, what kind of light did humans throughout history evolve to use at night? Ideally without burning anything down anyway…
Fire light is the correct answer. Points to your sleep smart total Hilary, nice work.
Candlelight, fire light, even replacing the typical white light globes in the majority of your house increases the volume of amber light you’re stimulating that epic pineal gland with, means more and sooner levels of melatonin. Plus, amber light is just plain nice. We’re literally built to thrive on the amber light. There a few theories on the idea of the stimulated pineal gland being responsible for the coolest (or weirdest/insightful/fun) dreams, and that’s kind of cool right too? Right?...
Okay, so that’s some light stuff. Decent block out blinds also helps to stay asleep in the morning if that’s how you want to roll too, because as much as the eyes are where most of that blue light gets in, you also have receptors on your skin to tell you the quality of light that is washing over you. getting up too early is in some ways even worse than going to bed too late. Which leads in to a complicated ToddTalk about REM sleep, but that’s another day too.
Which leaves the last thing that’s handily available to us to do.
Temperature time! The sun and our circadian reaction to it isn’t just based on light. The sun heats stuff too. And we can manipulate this in our sleep-based reactions to it too.
Its called thermal dumping, which is supposed to be reflective of what happens at night once the sun goes down. The temperature drops and this is another signal for the body and brain to wind down into its sleep preparations. And we manipulate this with… a hot shower about 15/20 minutes before you plan to nod off.
The idea is you elevate your body temperature (because with all our newfangled air conditioning and heating and non-tent based living, the temperature doesn’t change much) artificially, so that you can then have a period of time that you body will be getting rid of heat, which convinces your various bits that the sun has gone down and the temperature is dropping. Make sense?... Yeah, I know. It feels like there should be fancier names for this stuff, but there we go.
Now, there are all sorts of other things that can contribute to sleep quality (lions mane mushroom extract for one), but those are considered to be the most effective and readily available to us as sleep needing humans.
So, how much does your healthy sleep matter to you?
Do you want to feel awesome?
Or more like an abused and unwashed dishrag that has been squozen too many times and now is just all threadbare and curry powder stains?
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.” William Penn
Comments