Lessons From Sleep: Part 1

This episode is the first in a series of podcasts on sleep. We'll dive headfirst into the fascinating world of sleep. Together we'll unravel the mysteries of sleep cycles and explore the science behind the restorative power of a good night's sleep.

In this episode, I'll be your sleep guide, shedding light on the importance of understanding sleep cycles and their impact on your overall well-being. We'll demystify the science behind REM and non-REM sleep stages, helping you gain valuable insights into the quality of your sleep.

But that's not all! Stick around until the end for some essential sleep hygiene tips that will empower you to optimize (ugh, I hate that word too, but it just felt right. I'm sorry) your nightly slumber. Learn how to create the ideal sleep environment, establish healthy bedtime routines, and enhance your sleep quality for a more energized and productive life.

If you're ready to unlock the secrets of sleep and take control of your nights, this episode is a must-listen. Join me on the Moore Movement Podcast, to experience the power of movement. Sweet dreams! 🌙💤

Transcript

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Welcome to the More Movement Podcast where we explore the dynamic connections between sports, physical well-being, and personal growth. Hello and welcome in. My name is Drew Moore. I'm a student physical therapist at Oregon State University in my second year, working on getting that doctorates right now. So, with all the free time that I have, I decided to start a podcast. So here we are. And today is going to be our second episode of the podcast. And I want to touch on a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Sleep. Now, now now, before all of you guys out there that know me start laughing. I know. It's a do as I say, not as I do kind of thing. But I have been doing better. And there are people that can vouch for me out there. That being said, I'm not going to show you my my recent sleep history and my you know six-month sleep log that Apple keeps on me because they always track everything, but that's a story for another time. Anyways, um, y'all didn't need to see all that. But at least I am being conscious of the detriment that it can be to my health, or well, not can be, the detriment that it will be to my health down the road, um, for better or for worse. Probably for worse, because sleep itself, um, actually, actually, actually, even better. So I looked up, I looked up the definition of sleep, because I was curious. I was like, what is the actual definition of sleep? Ironically, the first thing that comes up is sleep mode on your Mac or your computer. This is what it says. I think this is actually perfect for um relating it back to the human body. A sleep mode that saves the current state of your Mac, including open apps and open documents, to the hard disk. This prevents information being lost on your Mac, da da da da, all these other things, not important. Moral of the story is even on your MacBook or on your PC or whatever you have, on your alienware or whatever those things are called, even on those, it knows the benefits of sleep is to basically save the information that you learned that day or clear out all of the uh cobwebs and all of the metabolic um stress that was created throughout the day going through your brain, wash it, cleanse it, and have it be refreshed, ready to go the next day. So, on this episode, what we're gonna do is this is gonna be a uh a continuing series of information on sleep. Um, and I'm gonna call it basically each, like I said last time, each series that we go into is gonna be based on lessons. And so it's gonna be lessons that we learned from blank. So for this one, we're gonna start it off this first one, we're gonna see how it goes, see how we like it, we're gonna love it. So it's gonna be things that we learned or lessons that we learned on sleep. So we're gonna start off nice and easy with this episode, just on the basics, and we're not gonna dive in too deep onto uh the all of the the neurophysiology on sleep and um all of the uh pathophysiology that sleep can uh impact and how it impacts it and all the nitty-gritty details and sleepwashing and all that the da da da. No, we are not the Huberman lab. They I love them, don't get me wrong. Sometimes it goes a little deep. We're gonna be more on the surface level of this, okay? Um, but we're still gonna get into the nitty-gritty about sleep and its importance, and we're gonna bring up some nerdy stuff too, don't worry. Shout out to my nerds, and we'll get it done. So, sleep. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Basically, the idea is that we have a few different cycles that we go through, um, and it can be broken down into uh sleep, well, into sleep, into rem sleep, uh, and non-rem sleep, and um there's about four different stages of sleep that we go through, and we cycle through it every 90 minutes roughly. Um, and we're not gonna again we're not gonna go into all the different delta waves. If you want me to go into the different uh uh waves that we go uh that we go through, when we go into sleep, I can do that another episode. But for this one, nah. So, yep. So a thing that initiates us to go to sleep is a thing called the circadian rhythm. And the circadian rhythm is basically our our body's own sleep-wake cycle, kind of like how the sun rises every day um and and sets. It's very similar, and back in the day, way, way back in the day, like prehistoric days, um, when we didn't have clocks or alarms or anything to wake us up, uh, maybe not that far back, but um, anyways, when we didn't have anything to wake us up, we would be woken up by the sun rising because we would sync our our uh our cicadian rhythm with the sun because typically we would do most of the things that we would do during daylight, and then we would sleep at night because it made sense because we couldn't see unless you're using a lantern. Um, and even in the dark, that's when all like the creepy crawlies come out and start, you know, snatching people and stuff like cougars and I don't know, bears, whatever they had back in the saber tooth line or tigers, um, and uh all that stuff. So you had all that going on, and your circadian rhythm was in charge of keeping it intact. Now, with the modernization of the world, we've had lights going on all over the place, throwing off our circadian rhythm, and it has made us more productive as a society, um, because we're able to do work uh outside of those designated times that the sun is up or the sun is down, especially if you're in, I don't know, like uh we'll go Alaska or if you're in um Iceland or Norway or Irel Ireland. I mean maybe Ireland. Uh I meant to say, what's the other one up there? Greenland. There we go. Nobody really lives there, but that's okay. If you're in any of those areas up there, you're not gonna get a uh normal sleep-wake cycle like we would in the nort in the uh lower 48, um, where you have you know your 16 hours of of daylight or eight at least eight hours of daylight if it's in the winter. And with that, that's gonna throw off your cicating rhythm, so you're gonna need light to go out and do whatever it is that you need to do, um, while also not just having the sudden urge to go to sleep. So when it comes to our different stages of sleep, we have our NREM sleep and then we have our REM sleep. These can be broken down even further into NREM 1, 2, and 3, and then REM sleep itself is its own portion, and then if you want to get even more fancy, we can call it uh we can add in a fifth one, and that's when you're awake. So let's start off with our NREM sleep. So when it comes to NREM sleep, we have our NREM 1, NREM2, NREM3, and then we have our REM sleep. Um, it's its own thing because it's just gotta be different. Starting off with NREM sleep, NREM 1 is thought to be where we take that last deep breath. You know, we're maybe a few minutes into uh our sleep at this point, and we're able to uh notice our body temperature is drop well, we're not noticing it, but our body temperature starts to drop, our heartbeat starts to slow, and we start to relax. That's NRAM 1. NRAM two is where we start to have more of the same, so our body temperature is dropping, our heart rate is dropping, and this is also where we're gonna see some of those sleep spindles start to uh pop up. And sleep spindles are important for uh memory consolidation, which is why sometimes, um, or actually not even sometimes, some studies have shown that it can be beneficial right after you learn something, if you take a quick little, you know, 25-30 minute nap, that can help consolidate whatever it is that you just learned more rapidly than it would uh if you were to just, you know, pull all nighter, I'll remember it in the morning because I'm staying awake, so I can't forget it. And then you forget everything and you fail your exam, and then you don't end up going to get into whatever program you want to get into, and then it's just a terrible situation for everyone involved. Don't do that. And then we arrive at NREM stage three. This is going to be known as deep sleep, and this is gonna be where we have the majority of our benefits when we go to sleep, which is why it's thought to be the most important stage, period. Yeah, we all love a good REM sleep, getting those dreams and stuff like that, but like I said before, sometimes we dream outside of REM sleep. So, and dreams aren't even necessarily a marker for good health or marker for you know, oh yeah, I dreamt last night, that means I slept good and I woke up all restorative. Now with uh stage three, uh NREM stage three, that is actually where we have delta waves present, which are I say, I said I wasn't gonna talk about waves and stuff, but here I am. Um just one little quick thing, I promise. It's never quick, but delta waves, that is thought to be where we have some of that restorative uh benefit from our uh from our sleep occur. So that's when all the all the cleaners come through and take out all the metabolic waste and stuff and make sure that our bodies uh rejuvenated, revitalized, and ready to take on the day the next day or in the morning, depending on when you go to sleep. Um and yeah, so the deep state uh deep sleep deep state uh deep sleep um is when uh all of that's going to be beneficial, and that's when you're gonna get that that major benefit of that immune immune oh my goodness, immune boost benefit. We did it. And finally, we arrive at REM sleep. REM sleep is the stage where, as we all know, it's the primary dream stage, uh dream state, I should say, where our body becomes paralyzed, that way we don't act out our dreams, unless you are I wasn't gonna say it, but now I'm gonna say it. Unless you're my girlfriend, she likes to do a little little shoulder action um while I'm sleeping. And it's it's great, I love her. But you know, sometimes when it's like two in the morning and she's doing a little shoulder action, I don't I you know, it's it's less than ideal, let's just say, because then that affects my quality of sleep, which we'll get into in a later episode. And we'll also have another episode on some more sleep hygiene things that you can do to help avoid uh some of these sleepers, some sleep saboteurs we'll call them. Anyways, back to REM sleep. One thing that is, I guess, kind of a common misconception about REM sleep is that a lot of people think it's the deepest sleep that you're gonna be in throughout the night. However, that's actually not true because as we know now, because we're all um just sleep experts, that's deep sleep because it just makes sense. But REM sleep is actually the stage that mimics the awake cycle most closely. Um so they found that the brain waves that that occur throughout the day during uh a person that's awake actually is similar to uh brain waves that occur during REM sleep. Now, why that exactly happens, your guess is as good as mine, and your guess is as good as the scientists, because there's a lot of conflict between that, and not a lot of people know the true reason why that occurs. Obviously, there's hypotheses, you know, it's you're sleeping and you're you're dreaming, so it just makes sense that if I'm dreaming about moving and I'm moving in the daytime, well, then it just goes hand in hand. But at the same time, it's like, why do some people have dreams about dragons if they've never seen a dragon? Or why do people dream about you know something that hasn't happened yet, and then that exact same thing happens the next day. Now I'm not here to you know explain all of that, because I honestly don't know. But if I do ever find out, I will let you guys know. That is all I have for you guys today on the different sleep cycles. However, I want to leave you guys with a you know little little treat. You know, at the end of each one of these episodes that I'm doing um for at least for sleep, I'm gonna give you a couple sleep hygiene tips, and then on the next following episodes, we're gonna give you even more and even more and even more until the series is over, and then you're gonna be full of sleep hygiene success. Um and then you guys can share it with me. Hey Drew, I did this, that, and the other last night, and it actually helped. I was able to run my first marathon because of you. You're welcome. Um but yeah, so the first one, first uh tip that I'm going to give you is gonna be the most essential. Be consistent. I know it's novel. Consistency has actually been shown to be the single one thing that can affect your circadian rhythm and allow you to be able to get into a deeper sleep and allow you to stay asleep longer and feel more restful in the in the daytime, or if you're working night shift in the nighttime, um, which is another thing. But anyways, it'll allow you to feel more restored and as we always say, rejuvenated, revitalized, and ready to conquer the world. Um and that's just because, like we talked about in the beginning, your circadian rhythm is the the main reason why your body feels awake and feels uh tired is that buildup of adenosine, um, which can be held off by caffeine. So, you know, holding off on caffeine after 12 o'clock, or um, whether that's you know, taking a nap in the middle of the day to lower some of that adenosine that builds up, otherwise known as sleep pressure, that will allow us to um I I didn't want to use the word optimize, I didn't want to do it, but optimize your sleep wake cycle. Lesson number two. Or sleep hygiene tip tip number two. That is going to be exercise. Exercise is an activity that can build up a lot of sleep pressure, unless, of course, you're doing you know a HIIT workout at you know 11 p.m. and you're going to bed at I don't know, eleven thirty. This obviously isn't the most ideal thing to do. Because like you just boosted your your heart rate through the roof, you boosted up your your blood pressure, your your uh circadian rhythm right now is is looking at you like dude, what what is going on? Like, are we being chased by a bear? It's time to go, your sympathetic nervous systems through the roof, freaking out. How are you supposed to just you know drop dead into sleep right after doing something like that? Unless you, of course, you have a uh sleep disorder, which will be an episode down the road. But exercise, uh or I should say regular exercise throughout the day or early in the morning or in the afternoon, even later at night, as long as it's you know not right before bed, can be beneficial for building up some of that sleep pressure throughout the day, allowing you to have uh the feeling of or need to go to sleep when it is time to actually go to sleep, and not have it be at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. in order for you to go to sleep. And we are going to give you one more because I'm feeling oh so generous today. I'm just a nice guy. You guys know what it is, you guys know who I am. So we're gonna do it. We're gonna give you one more sleep hygiene tip slash lesson that we will learn because when we know better, we do better. Shout out to my mom. And what that last lesson is gonna be is working on your mental health. Easier said than done, right? But some things you can do throughout the day or right before bed is getting yourself into a routine to where right before I go to bed, I do you know, five minutes of uh breathing, or five minutes of meditation, or you know, I do 10 minutes of journaling, or I like to um do some yoga, some restorative yoga right before bed, whatever it may be, whatever allows you to get into that mindset of being calm, cool, and collected. That way it'll allow your body to be restored, revitalized, rejuvenated, ready to conquer the day, as we always say. But that is all I got for you guys today. I'll catch you on the next one, don't go, don't you?