The older I get the more I notice how lack of sleep can turn me into a completely different person – easily irritated, more emotional, tired, insecure and oversensitive to external stimuli. It causes lots of incoherent noise in the head and obstructs logical reasoning. I know that in some yoga styles you are expected to start your yoga practice with or even before the sunrise. My biological needs have never allowed me to accommodate this to my practice. I do not function well if my sleep is disrupted and this goes in fact for all of us regardless of age and sex.
Based on what contemporary researchers have discovered about how the lack of sleep affects us, there should be nothing more important than to let the brain and body get those 7-9 hours of rest. But often we choose to downplay the healing effects of a good night sleep. I will not focus on the reasons why because they are individual, but rather share the latest insights into the effects of a good sleep and sleep deprivation.
Women need more sleep and are susceptible to depression when in short of sleeping hours
One important thing for women to be aware of is that we need more sleep than men. This is a biological requirement found out in the studies where women and men have been able to create their own sleeping patterns. As a result, women choose a pattern where they prefer to sleep ca 1 hour longer (up to 9 hours) than men (up to 8 hours). Another finding is that when women’s sleep is disrupted, they are much more prone to depression. This makes me wonder how Mother Nature developed the mother and baby relationship after giving birth when the majority women loose out on a good night sleep. It obviously suggested using the time during the day for power naps when the baby is asleep. But young mothers rarely use the daytime for sleep. So perhaps this is the reason why more than a third of all new mothers nowadays will develop PPD (Postpartum Depression) – they simply get extremely sleep deprived which in turn affects their mental state.
Moving on to the topic of power naps – there seems to be a good reason to have a siesta. In 2007 a study on 24 000 people in different ages conducted during 6 years’ period found out that those who regularly took power naps where less likely to die from heart disease. People who took 3 naps per week lasting ca 30 minutes had 37% reduced risk of heart disease. Power naps seemed to keep the stress hormones in check and blocked the deterioration of performance. I interpret this as additional advice for mothers with small children to take power naps during the day. If their lifestyle allows it.
Tired people make stupid decisions
Investigations on how sleep affects our behavior when we have a sleepless night have shown that first if affects our emotional behavior. Then it impairs our judgement and neutral is not neutral any longer (in the brain there is a region called amygdala which starts having problems with control of emotions after a sleepless night). Additionally, problems to distinguish between fact and fiction occur and should sleepless nights persist, it finally starts to affect our memory. Should a sleep deprived person testify in court, they can give a false testimony (judges usually do not ask how many hours the witness slept though).
The brain is moving short-term items to the long-term memory during the sleep, especially during the first half of the night. When our rest is disrupted, our brain is crammed with yesterday’s news. Even provocative images are easier to handle with good sleep as it dampens emotional response.
For REM sleep those last hours in the morning are vital
REM or rapid eye movement sleep is when we dream. As sleep occurs in ca 90 min cycles, REM sleep increases with every cycle through the night. By the morning we spend most of the 90 minutes in REM sleep. It has been discovered that REM supports creativity and response to emotional reactions so if we wake up to the alarm clock thinking that we do not really want to wake up yet, we get dream deprived. Note that there is a difference in being sleep deprived and dream deprived. But both can have consequences, especially to our emotional well-being and in case of REM sleep, even to creativity. The effects of dream deprivation are subtler, though.
There’s more to the gut feeling than just the gut
The brain and the gut are connected as a large number or neurons control the messaging of different stimuli between the brain and the gut.
You know from personal experience that thinking about food when hungry can make your stomach growl and mouth water. This is a mutual relationship. A troubled intestine can also send signals to the brain. People with stomach problems may have also difficulties with emotions. Intestinal distress can cause mental anxiety. It is worthwhile to check out this relationship and sometimes one may realize the cause of distress may not sit in the head but in the stomach.
Biological clock changes over time and yes, teenagers need to wake up later and go to bed later
Our biological clock changes over time and even though this topic has been raised, there is still too little done to help the teenagers to cope with the fact that their bedtimes and waking times get later in puberty. Waking up 7 o’clock in the morning feels for them line 5 o’clock. This rhythm changes after we get about 20 years old (different in men and women, for women the reversing starts ca 1 year earlier than for men). What has also been discovered is that teenagers need 9 hours of sleep or they get moody, grumpy, angry or stressed. To cope with the modern lifestyle, teenagers have started to increasingly use stimulants to compensate for the lack of sleep. I see with growing concern more and more youngsters with energy drinks, some of them containing substances like taurine which is a neurotransmitter and which has been found to have a bad effect on a developing brain especially if used together with caffeine and alcohol.
Yoga and sleep are interconnected
Yoga and sleep are very much connected. There are techniques in yoga which support the equivalents of power naps in a yogic way. But even some yoga styles may disrupt sleep. Especially if you are expected to do your sun salutations at 5 a.m. As described above, regardless of the reason why we are encouraged to wake up before our biological clock, this should be avoided by all of us who lead a modern lifestyle out of sync with our biological rhythm.
And then there are the brain waves. I have blogged about the importance of running on lower frequencies, so I will not repeat this story. Just good to know that the lowest frequency brainwave (which even slows down the metabolism and induces healing and growth of tissues) – delta brain wave – is active in deep sleep and even in deep meditation. There is a connection with delta brainwave activity and sleep – if delta activity is disrupted so is the sleep. And our memory will deteriorate should this disruption be of a long-term kind.
And just as I was writing this, one more article on sleep research caught my eye. A recent research in the US showed that people who get less than 7 hours at night are more likely to have mood and mental health problems. So. Whatever you do, think twice before you stay up late and wake up too early. As a parent – ensure that your child or children get a good night sleep. Tired brain = tired life, well-rested brain = happy life…
Special thanks to Jaak T Arendi for helping me to illustrate this post with his amazing photos!
*This blog post has among other things been inspired by multiple articles which have previously been published in New Scientist.
More reading:
Harvard Health Publishing – the brain and gut connection
Is taurine in energy drinks dangerous?