Sleep, The Brain and The Mind - Part 1 of 2

A healthy mind sustains a healthy brain.  A healthy brain sustains a healthy mind.  There is a symbiotic relationship between the two.  It is this very relationship that determines the quality of our lives in the present and into the future.

Over the next few posts I want to focus on how to maintain a healthy brain and a healthy mind.  I will dedicate each post to a specific topic where I will explore the science of maintaining the brain and the mind.  After I have explored each issue I will list a series of actions that you can employ to keep your headspace in tip-top shape.

Let me be straight with you right here, right now.  There is no light-switch solution.  What I mean by this is that you can’t simply flip the switch and everything is good.  Like any other improvement in life it requires an investment in time and effort.  If you follow the simple actions outlined in each post and stay dedicated, determined and disciplined you will start to see improvements in two to three weeks.

With that said let’s jump into the first post, which will be presented in two parts.  Let's take a look at Sleep, The Brain and The Mind.


SLEEP
We spend a good third of our lives sleeping.  So if you are fortunate to live to the decent age of 85 years old you will have spent 28.3 years sleeping.   This number may seem quite shocking, but trust me your brain needs your mind to be off line in order for it to do some must-needed house cleaning. 

The activity of sleeping is crucial to our health and well-being as much as nutrition, breathing and exercising.  The reason why we need sleep is still under investigation by various fields in science and the picture is not complete, yet.  What each of us does know is how much more energized we feel and how good our mood is after a solid nights sleep.  The question that still remains: what’s really happening in our brain and body when we are at rest?

Most people are under the assumption that when we fall asleep the brain quiets down.  As counter intuitive as it may seem the brain actually stays active when we sleep.  What quiets down is our mind - the conscious part of our brain.  The chemical signals and the electric firing between the  neurons in our brain are just as active in sleep as during the waking hours. 


SLEEP CYCLES
Sleep happens in cycles of approximately 90 minutes.  There is a general consensus among sleep experts that a good nights sleep ranges between 6 to 8 hours.  This means that on average we need between 4 to 5 sleep cycles of 90 minutes to feel invigorated and refreshed.

Within one sleep cycle our brains move through a range of depths of sleep, which are often referred to as sleep waves.  The waves frequencies and amplitude are measured by an instrument called an electroencephalogram (EEG).  As we sink deeper into a cycle of sleep the amplitude of these waves increases, while their frequency diminishes correspondingly.

There are typically four stages of sleep with their own individual wave frequency ranges.  These are measured by an EEG trace. So if your sleep cycle was being measured this is what would be picked up:

 Fig 1: EEG reading of the different sleep waves.
Courtesy of Sleepdex - Resources for Better Sleep

Fig 2: The stages of sleep waves with frequency and amplitude.
Courtesy of Sleepdex - Resources for Better Sleep


THE BENEFITS OF SLEEP

Cleaning the Brain
In 2013, a number of studies found that sleep gave the brain a chance to  wash out damaging molecules that built up during waking hours.  What was discovered is that the space between neurons (brain cells) increased when asleep aiding in the efficiency to clean out damaging molecules accumulated during waking hours.

The scientists at the University of Rochester found that these ‘toxic’ molecules were associated with speeding up neurodegenerative diseases - a wasting away of neurons indicative of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  Sleep is crucial for literally cleaning and maintaining the brain.

Archiving Experiences & Consolidating Memory
Another major benefit of sleep is that it allows time for the brain to form new memories and to consolidate older memories with more recent ones.  

The hippocampus is the structure in the brain that is involved in memory creation by consolidating the events we have experienced and lessons we have learned.  Sleep also plays a very important role in learning, because it helps us to solidify new information through better recall, while reducing the likelihood of forgetting.

More specifically, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is key to consolidating procedural memory (how to use your iPhone or drive a car) and deep sleep (non-REM sleep) is key to consolidating explicit memory (remembering a phone number or address).  Sleep deprivation can significantly affect the hippocampus’ function to form memories.

Normally, the activating brain-chemicals (neurotransmitters) norepinephrine, epinephrine, and cortisol subside at night as we drift into a more relaxed mind state readying ourselves for sleep.  These brain chemicals are usually more present in awake and stressed states of mind.  The lack of sleep increases the level of these activating chemicals and has a direct affect on the proper functioning of the hippocampus.

Improving Performance
To expand on the previous point sleep is key to consolidating our procedural memory.  This is the type of memory related to motor tasks, like learning to ski, swinging a golf club or putting on your pants so they become automatic behaviours.

During REM sleep there are short bursts of brain waves at strong frequencies that are called sleep spindles.  During this period of sleep the the brain moves short-term memories stored in the motor cortex to the temporal lobe, where they are stored as long-term memories.  Simply put, sleep is essential to improving the performance of any physical skill.

Improving Innovative & Creative Thinking
When the conscious mind is offline and the unconscious brain can let loose the mental sparks can begin to fly.  When we are sleeping the unconscious brain can make some astounding new connections.  Watson and Crick, the discovers of the DNA helix, said the solution came to them in a dream state.  They dreamt of rolling a newspaper and a profound ‘a-ha’ moment exploded.  The shape of double-helix sprang forth that explained how DNA was structured. 

The sleep state can make new associations that may not be possible in a waking state.  In 2007, a study at the University of California at Berkeley found that sleep can help to make completely unassociated connections that can lead to awe-inspiring insights of innovation and creativity.  The study found people were 33 percent more likely to make connections between seemingly distantly related ideas.


THE CONSEQUENCES OF POOR SLEEP

• The lack of sleep can lead to an increased risk of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. In addition to this, the lack of sleep can mimic many of the signs of aging and the seriousness of many medical conditions, while causing changes to metabolism as well as to the endocrine system.  

• The lack of sleep also suppresses the immune system resulting in more body stiffness and aches. Stress increases the release of norepinephrine and epinephrine, and they also decrease the amount of slow-wave sleep.

• The lack of sleep can lead to weight gain even after only 6 to 7 days.  The reason for this is there is an increase in the production of ghrelin.  The hormone responsible for promoting appetite.  At the same time, there is a decline in the production of the leptin.  The hormone responsible for reducing appetite.  To throw more on top of this, your increased munchies due to the lack of sleep increases your need to consume food that is heavily loaded with calories.  This will also include foods that are sweet, starchy and made up of simple carbohydrates.  (I will spend an entire post looking at diet and nutrition as it relates to the brain).

• The lack of sleep lowers glucose tolerance, increases the activity of the reactive mindset (the fight/flight response) and increases activating brain-chemicals associated with stress (cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine)

Our next post is Sleep, The Brain and The Mind - Part 2 of 2

We encourage you to share your questions, opinions and comments.

Thanks again for taking the time to read our blog.
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Curious about sleep?

Thirty-six percent of our lives are spent asleep, which means, if you live to 90, you’ll have slept for 32 years. But we don’t appreciate sleep enough. To make the point here are some quotes:

Thomas Edison — “Sleep is a criminal waste of time, inherited from our cave days” — and Margaret Thatcher — “Sleep is for wimps.” Simply put not only do we not appreciate sleep, but we treat it like an illness and an enemy.

Of course this simply shouldn’t be the case. In fact, some areas of the brain are more active during the sleep stage than while the body is awake. But the essential question that we lose sleep over: Why do we sleep? There is no real consensus, but here are three popular answers:

1. Sleep is for restoration, to replenish and repair metabolic processes. Indeed, a whole host of genes are “turned on” only during sleep — genes associated with restoration and metabolic pathways.

2. Sleep is for energy conservation, to save calories. This may seem an intuitive answer except that the difference between sleeping and quietly resting is about 110 calories a night, the equivalent of a hot dog bun. Not a very good upshot for such a complex process.

3. Finally, sleep is for brain processing and memory consolidation. Studies show that if you prevent people from sleeping after a learning task, their ability to learn is basically smashed. And worse, our abilities to come up with novel solutions after a complex task are reduced after sleep deprivation.

The danger of sleep deprivation can’t be stressed enough. For one thing, sleep-deprived people fall asleep involuntarily, taking “microsleeps” they can’t control. Thirty-one percent of drivers will fall asleep while driving at least once in their lifetime. That is: 100,000 accidents a year happen because of tiredness.

For those who want to take control of their sleep habits here are some tips:

1. Decrease your amount of light exposure at least half an hour before you go to bed.

2. Make your room a bedroom a haven for sleep by making it dark and cool.

3. Turn off your mobile phones, computers and anything that will excite the brain.

4. Don’t drink caffeine after lunch.

5. Increase light exposure when you wake up.

Let's also bust some myths:

1. Teenagers are lazy? Nope. Their biological clocks make them sleep and wake later.

2. You need 8 hours of sleep a day? Nope. That’s just an average.

3. Older people need less sleep? Nope. Sleep demands of the age don’t slow down.

4. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Nope. Just wrong, on many levels. It just makes you more smug.

According to  research, genes that have been shown to be important in the generation of sleep, when muted, predispose individuals to mental-health problems. It's suggested that sleep levels could be used as an early warning signals for illnesses like schizophrenia. Research has found that schizophrenia patients stay awake during the night phase, asleep during day, suggesting that sleep and mental illness aren’t simply associated, they are physically linked. Which opens the door for sleep to be used as a new therapeutic target.