Wake Up, It’s Time To Learn About Your Sleep
By Aiden Ahn
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
Prologue
Imagine that it’s a Sunday evening, and you’ve checked off the last item on your to-do list for this weekend. As the clock hits 10 pm, you get ready for bed. It’s the earliest you’ve gone to sleep all month. After a nice eight hours, you wake up and…feel like you’ve gotten hit by a truck. Despite all of your attempts to start the Monday off with a boost in energy and productivity, it was all futile.
Fast forward to later in the week, when you barely get three hours because you stayed up working on a project that was due the next day. This time, you wake up and feel like you’ve slept like a baby. Strangely enough, you feel ready for what the day presents to you more than on Monday morning. Even though you’ve had completely opposite approaches in your nighttime routines for both nights, the expected outcomes were flipped. Why is that?
What does sleep do for you?
Before we understand why there are inconsistencies when it comes to your dormancy patterns, you first need to know what the association is between your rest and your wellness. When you were young, you might remember your parents telling you to sleep early because “you’ll get sick” or “you won’t grow taller” if you don’t. But these simple rules you had to unconditionally follow don’t explain the entire complex relationship between sleep and mental health.
When you sleep, your brain isn’t just going into shut-down mode; rather, it spends its time resting to construct memories, associate emotions to the day’s events, and recharge on energy. During the different stages of sleep, your brain organizes information gathered throughout the day, strengthening neural connections that are essential for learning and problem-solving. While the neural aspect of sleep takes its course, though, the physical aspect also takes its time to initiate processes as well. Specifically, your body releases growth hormones, repairs muscle tissue, and restores immune function. In essence, sleep acts as both a reset button and a maintenance system, not just a simple “shut-down” button.
Internal factors
And just as important as actually getting a lot of sleep is when you decide to hit the hay. Your body follows a natural circadian rhythm, which is your body’s internal clock that regulates your cycles of awakeness and tiredness. When you stick to the circadian rhythm, the process of following a schedule allows your body to anticipate the best times for deactivating systems that take up a significant amount of energy and activating parts of your regulatory systems that work to replenish that energy and provide maintenance for the neural and anatomical structure.
External factors
So, with that being said, it’s undeniable that the timing of sleep and your daily schedule are correlated with your alertness the next day. But the only thing that affects your outlook the next morning isn’t just when you sleep; rather, it’s also how you sleep.
Despite the fact that your circadian rhythm is largely dependent on when you sleep, it can still be interrupted or accelerated by simple daily activities like light exposure or athletics. These processes can alter the psychological perception of the subjects’ surroundings as well as increase levels of melatonin to sufficient levels. Though the effects are relatively minor compared to those of other circadian rhythm modifiers, small discrepancies that deviate from an optimal cycle can add up over time. Since these daily activities are mostly unavoidable, they pose a risk for those who have little time to moderate their exposure to them.
One of the most infamous fatigue delayers is caffeine. Drinking caffeine anytime eight hours before bed has been the standard for medical professionals around the world. If caffeine is in the system, it can lead to the blocking of adenosine, a chemical critical to the reason why you feel sleepy. This can severely disrupt or hinder the quality of sleep, leading to restlessness, cold sweats, and, even at times, anxiety episodes.
Another factor that may interfere with a good night’s rest is screen time. Similarly to how sunlight can impact your ability to sleep and stay awake, the same can be said for artificial light. The blue light produced by cell phones and computer monitors can mimic the daylight that you experience when you go outside; as a result, your brain is often tricked into thinking that it is still time to work and/or be productive, delaying your circadian rhythm and perpetuating a constant cycle of being tired during times of productivity and awake during times of energy recovery.
How can you control your sleep to maximize happiness the next morning?
There are myriad ways to counter the dreaded grogginess that befalls you in those first few hours of the day. First and foremost, having some sort of organized plan for the end of the day does you wonders. Whether it’s a nightly jog, some stretches, screen detox, or a combination of these plus more, disciplining yourself and sticking some sort of plan creates a pattern that your body will naturally adapt to over time.
Another way to improve the quality of your sleep is to stay away from influences that may increase your alertness during the night. Chemicals like the aforementioned caffeine, certain medications, and even mundane treats like sugar or carbs may disrupt your body’s natural circadian rhythm by either extracting or providing too much energy for your body to handle. This includes time on the phone or computer, too!
But most importantly, know your own limits. It’s going to take a long time to discover what works for you and what doesn’t. For me, it took me 17 years to understand a tiny sliver of what my body needs for good rest and what it needs to avoid—and I’m still not done learning about that. Every sleepless night and hectic morning will be worth it in the end, as long as you are going through them in the name of learning about yourself.
References
“Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep.” National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/public-education/brain-basics/brain-basics-understanding-sleep.
“Circadian Rhythms.” National Institute of General Medical Sciences, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms.
Conroy, Deirdre. “When to Stop Drinking Alcohol, Water or Caffeine before Bed for Better Sleep | Psychiatry | Michigan Medicine | University of Michigan.” University of Michigan, Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, medicine.umich.edu/dept/psychiatry/news/archive/202012/when-stop-drinking-alcohol-water-or-caffeine-bed-better-sleep.
Stevenson, Shauna, et al. “Higher Levels of Morning and Daytime Light Exposure Associated with Positive Sleep Indices in Professional Team Sport Athletes.” Nature and Science of Sleep, U.S. National Library of Medicine, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39219616/.
