Lessons From Sleep: Part 2

This episode is the second in a series of podcasts on sleep. Are you ready to journey into the realm of the unseen, into the nocturnal world that unfolds once our heads hit the pillow? This episode of the More Movement Podcast promises to illuminate the mysteries of sleep, its stages, and its profound impact on our mental and physical health. 

Have you ever fallen asleep instantly when your head hits the pillow and woke up thinking it's a sign of excellent sleep hygiene?  I'll reveal how this might be a potential indicator of sleep deprivation. Additionally, I'll briefly explore the role of cortisol and its relationship to sleep because not all cortisol is made the same.

Did you know that we have more in common with frogs than you might think, especially when it comes to sleep and light detection? We discuss an intriguing frog study and how it relates to our skin, melanosomes, and photoreceptors in regulating our circadian rhythm. Finally, I'll share practical tips on how to reset your circadian rhythm effectively using light stimuli, relaxation techniques and a camping trip. So, join me, sit back, and let's explore the fascinating world of sleep together!

Want me to cover a certain topic? Send me a message on your favorite social media account!

Looking for sustainable fitness gains? Come train with me!
For 20% off any program use code: PODCAST
Website: https://bio.site/moore_movement


Instagram: @Mooremovement_
Youtube: @MooreofDrew
Facebook: 1MooreMovement

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome to the More Movement Podcast, where we explore the dynamic connections between sports, physical well-being, and personal growth. What is going on everybody? Welcome into episode three of the More Movement Podcast. But who's counting? Technically it's two, but technically it's three. We'll we'll see how it breaks down. Anyways, for this episode, we're gonna be recapping a little bit of what we talked about last time, and then moving forward with some more sleep topics, or I should say, some more lessons that we've learned from the research on sleep hygiene and sleep quality. But for today, we're gonna be uh, like I said before, doing a quick little recap, and then we'll cover some of the impacts that sleep can have on our mental health as well as our physical health in terms of longevity, and then we'll maybe even throw in a little bit of info on camping. Is it beneficial to do it or is it not? I don't know. Stay tuned. Last but not least, um we'll talk about most of all, we'll talk about light and its impact on our sleep and how to uh utilize it and how to avoid it to uh improve our sleep quality overall. Also, something to look forward to down the road, couple episodes, is going to be topics uh uh covering sleep debt as well as uh sleep nutrition in terms of uh taking supplements for um for your sleep quality, whether that's uh alcohol, caffeine, counterintuitive, um, or uh you know, marijuana, magnesium, so on so forth. List goes on and on. We'll cover them um to my best of my abil to the best of my ability, and then we will make sure to wrap it all up in a nice little bow, final episode, and then conclude it and send you guys off into your dreams. Super corny. I know, I'm sorry, can't help it. So let's get into the episode. First, what we're gonna do, like I said, is

Sleep's Impact on Health

SPEAKER_00 2:28

a quick little recap. So from last time we talked about the different stages of our sleep. So we have four stages, technically five you count being awake. The first stage that we have, um or the first two subsets that we have of sleep are non-REM and REM sleep. So in non-REM sleep, there are three different uh subsets or categories of non-REM sleep. Um there's the first stage where your you know first 15 minutes or so when you when your head hits the pillow, you're trying to go to sleep and stuff, your body starts to relax, your heart rate starts to slow. And then in the second stage, what we have is uh a continuation of the first where our heart rate continues to slow down and our body begins to relax more and more, blood pressure starts to go down, and then we go into our third stage of sleep, which is known as our deep sleep stage. Um, and this stage is going to be responsible for having our deepest amount of sleep, and we'll also have the most restore uh restoration during this period as well. This is where we'll see a lot of our um a lot of our our tissue healing occur is during this this period. Uh interesting interestingly enough, I should say, is uh growth hormone, which is uh which helps with a lot of um tissue healing and uh muscle recovery, actually seems to be occurring um in both stage three and stage four, which is REM sleep as well. Um stage three has more uh more to do with cortisol regulation as well as blood sugar regulation, which kind of go hand in hand, um, because as cortisol increases, so does um uh blood glucose, which is why, uh or I guess I should say, which is how um you can increase your risk of developing diabetes uh if you're not getting into that deep restorative sleep. And then I kind of already teased it already, but the fourth stage is our REM sleep, everybody's favorite to research and study. Um it's our dream state, and this is gonna be the stage that, like I said before, testosterone is released or is I guess should say is is highest in uh in circulation during this period. And this is also the uh stage that mimics our our waking uh life uh brain waves, so that kind of weird, but you know what I mean. And so uh and even in some studies it's shown that some people, when they're in REM sleep, actually have more brain activity than they do while they're awake, which is kind of interesting, kind of wild to think about. But yep, so that's our quick little review of those topics from last time. So, as we know, you don't have to be a doctor to realize that getting enough sleep is going to be beneficial for you in terms of longevity and overall health and wellness. Like I'm not gonna, you know, not breaking news right here telling you that you know, if you don't get enough sleep tonight for an extended period of time, you'll increase your risk for diabetes, increase your risk for uh depression, anxiety. Um, you'll also increase maybe even your risk for uh losing your job because your attentiveness isn't where it needs to be, or your alertness isn't high enough, um, and your cognitive uh capacity, your cognitive load is going to be uh decreased because you're not able to clear out all the metabolic waste from the previous day, and you might end up losing your job because of it. I don't need to tell you all that to get you to go to sleep. Like that's everybody knows that, right? But there's some interesting research out there that shows 75% of people that have depression also have insomnia, and it kind of makes you think, like, what is going on here? Like, why is it that um those people that are depressed or people with depression, um, they are tending to have more insomnia when a lot of people think, oh, like they're probably depressed because they're always sleeping, you know, like 12 hours a day, like they're always in bed 12 hours a day or whatever. But then the research shows that they actually have insomnia, they're not able to get enough sleep, and they're always uh maybe tired and uh maybe a little bit more lethargic. Um, obviously it's not gonna be one-to-one uh correlation, correlation isn't causation either. But this is some research that kind of gives us an idea that just because you're in the bed does not mean that you're getting enough sleep and you're gonna have all that restorative, that was an interesting way to say that, restorative sleep that you might need to help propel you into the next day and help increase your mood uh towards your overall outlook on life. And that kind of leads me into another thing that I wanted to talk about, which is how do you know if you're a good sleeper? Like what does that even what does that even mean? Because if you're you know somebody, oh yeah, like I'm a really good sleeper, uh like I am able to like when my head hits the pillow, I'm able to go to sleep like instantly, you know what I mean? Or like, oh yeah, like when I go to sleep, I don't wake up until I I uh I get up in the morning ready for the next day, and I'm you know rejuvenated, revitalized, and ready to conquer the day. But then there's other people that are like, yeah, I get eight hours of sleep, nine hours of sleep, you know, whatever, and then I wake up and I'm still like I almost, you know, I I wouldn't I'm not gonna cuss. I was gonna cuss. Dragging their behinds in the morning, you know, um, or like I'm still tired and I still need, you know, my fix of coffee in the morning because whatever kind of sleep I had last night wasn't wasn't good. And that's kind of a topic that I'll talk about today, but I'm gonna more so focus on it in a couple episodes um where we talk about uh quality versus quantity. But for today's purpose,

What Kind of Sleeper are You?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

when it comes to learning what kind of sleeper you are, um there are hundreds and hundreds of apps out there that you can use that are okay in terms of tracking your sleep. Some of them have gotten pretty sophisticated out there. I know some of the the wearables are are okay now. Uh I haven't really seen much research on the you know validity of the the research that they're doing on the on the wearables, like Apple Watch or stuff like that. But the some of the apps um on the iTunes Store or iTunes, Apple, I I guess that's still the iTunes store. I don't know, dating myself here. Um, and then or the Android store, you can just have your have on your phone, place under your pillow. Now, obviously, that's not going to give you any uh temperature fluctuations on your body because it's underneath your pillow, but it can give you an idea of okay, when you uh like throughout the night, you tend to shift your body um, you know, X, Y, and Z amount of time, and we also can hear that you're snoring um or you're you're talking in your sleep, um, or maybe even you got up during your sleep, and so the uh the phone's able to kind of sense the uh amount of um uh noise uh or like the sound of the bed that's moving when you wake up or get out of the bed. Um, or maybe it's pressure. Not really sure. I had to double check on that, but somehow, some way it's able to detect that, and then that kind of gives you a sense of um what you're doing while you're sleeping, or you can go and search online for a sleep study uh uh in an area near you, um, and obviously depending on the kind of study that they're doing, might be able to get some free information doing that, might even get compensated for your uh time or for your troubles if it's like a sleep deprivation kind of thing. On the contrary, if you are not one of those technologically savvy people, or if you just don't like having your phone in the same room, which is amazing hygiene, um, I am at fault. I have it right next to my head. So, you know, it is what it is. The 5G waves might get my head, whatever. But if you're one of those people that don't like to have technology near the bed, in the bed, in the room, or anything like that, then uh you can kind of self-gauge it in the sense of um using a uh a sleep journal. So writing down either what you uh had before you went to bed, or if you didn't have anything before you bet went to bed, um, and then uh the amount of time that you uh that you spent asleep in terms of like obviously you can't like, oh yeah, I went to sleep after 12 minutes. Like, no, that's you can't do that. But you can kind of uh see, okay, I went to bed at around you know 10 p.m. I woke

Still Tired When You Wake Up?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

up at uh 5 a.m. Okay, I got X, Y, and Z amount of sleep. Um I only woke up maybe once or twice writing that down in a notebook, and then tracking that over time, kind of seeing, okay, even though I'm getting eight hours of sleep, nine hours of sleep, I'm still waking up uh kind of tired and lethargic. Then that might be a sign that uh you should talk to a sleep professional or even your PCP because there could be something going on there, especially if you are waking up more than uh uh twice in a night, um or throughout the night, I should say, then that can be either something to do with um uh like a pelvic floor dysfunction, or it could be um a sleep disturbance um uh or a sleep disorder, I should say. So those kind of things are some things to look for. And obviously, if you do um if your if your partner, because you're not gonna know, but if your partner tells you that you're snoring, um now obviously it's not you know one-to-one, but that can be a sign that you're headed in the direction of a sleeping disorder, sleep apnea. That's essentially what's happening, is like you're not able to get enough air through your esophagus, because I'm assuming that you don't sound like you're snoring when you're awake and breathing. So something to check out, food for thought, as my mom would say, if she's listening to this. Now going over to you people that think that they are the end-all be-all when it comes to sleep, those people whose head hits the pillow and they immediately knock out, like they're basically in a coma when they go to bed and they don't wake up till the sun rises the next day or their alarm wakes them up because they're late for work. So those people now studies have shown that you want to be able to go to bed quickly,

Sleep Hygiene Tips

SPEAKER_00 14:00

uh, because if you're in bed and you're not able to go to sleep, say within 20 minutes or so, um, the best thing to do, get up, do something relaxing, calming, either, you know, journal or uh do some meditation. Um, maybe don't do dishes if that's a stressful thing for you, but you know, do something in dim lighting, read a book, um or what have you, and something that you can help relax your mind and try again and go back to bed as soon as possible, ideally. Now that being said, if you are one of those people you, like I said before, your head hits the pillow and you out like a light, then that actually uh research has shown can be a sign that you're not getting enough sleep. Or maybe you haven't gotten enough sleep um throughout the week or throughout the month, year, whatever.

Can You Catch Up on Sleep?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

And you might be showing signs of sleep deprivation. Now, don't get scared, don't get scared. Because you can kind of ish get a little bit of recovery s from sleep debt. Yes-ish, but also no-ish. Um, because I'll cover this on uh uh I think the next episode we'll cover it. If not the next episode, the one after that. Anyways. If if you're one of these people, you can get a little bit of sleep recovery, but it's it's a small amount. What the research shows is that you can get one hour of sleep back over a four-day period of recovery sleep. So is it worth it to miss all that sleep? When you have to take four days to get one day back or one hour back of the sleep that you missed. I'm no mathematician or statistician. But those numbers don't seem very good to me. So I'll cover this again, like I said, down the road in a couple episodes in more detail on what some of that research has shown. Um, but for now we're gonna stick to the path because you guys know I can go on tangents. And I will, given the opportunity. Now, going back to those folks that get eight hours of sleep but don't feel fully uh rested and restored for the next day, those people uh might have an uh increased level of cortisol, um, or maybe they live a very stressful life. Now, easier said than done, obviously, like, oh yeah, just reduce your stress in your life and you'll be good. Like you'll be able to sleep like a baby, which is another story for another time. But, you know,

The Role of Cortisol

SPEAKER_00 17:15

like obviously those who have an increase in stress, they're not going to be able to get a full night of rest because their cortisol levels are going to be elevated, and cortisol is ultimately the the yin and yang when it comes to um sleep, uh, and sleep and wakefulness. So you have two things you have cortisol and you have melatonin. The two are basically, like I said, yin and yang, they're intertwined with each other and they do a little dance every day. So the peak of cortisol that you get is when you wake up in the morning, and that threshold is what allows us to well wake up in the morning. And uh throughout the day, um, we have an increase, slow buildup of uh melatonin, and we have a slow decrease of cortisol. Now, in somebody that's has chronic stress, that level um doesn't really go down all the way, right? So we have that peak that occurs up in the morning, and then we kind of stay up here because we you know have 10 kids or we have you know whatever job that we're working and we're living a super stressful life, and we stay up here, and then it comes time to go to bed, our cortisol levels are supposed to drop when we go uh uh when we're about to go to sleep, and then it drops even more when we get into our sleep. And then, but and somebody that has chronic stress, those levels are still gonna stay here. Even though our melatonin and our adenosine levels are gonna be rising as well, the cortisol levels aren't allowing us to fully get into that deep restorative sleep. And if we're not able to get to that uh to that deep restorative sleep, as we know, we're not gonna get that full restore uh restoration of our muscles and of our uh our brain cells as well. That being said, what happens to one of the hormones tends to happen to the other one too. So then the the uh sleep pressure or the uh adenosine buildup doesn't really become all that boosted up, and our melatonin then doesn't really um have as many peaks and troughs either, like uh just like our cortisol levels. And when we have elevated cortisol levels, like I mentioned before, that also increases our uh blood glucose levels as well. They kind of go hand in hand in that in that manner, increasing your risk for hypertension, increasing your risk for diabetes as well. So when we have these peaks of cortisol and they still stay elevated, this allows the body to kind of shut off in a sense to where it you have this increase of a hormone sending a signal, sending the signal. Hey guys, hey guys, we're still awake, we're still supposed to be awake, and then after a while, the body is like the boy who cried woof, like you know, dude, stop, like we're done. And so the the threshold uh for waking up becomes a lot lower. So, or I guess you can think of it the other way, the you're closer to the threshold for wakefulness. So anything that goes bump in the night, or anything that um you know spikes your anxiety, like uh um some rustling going on in the bushes outside your your neighborhood, or a car driving by super fast. Uh I live right next to the hospital, like got a helicopter landing, or you know, sirens coming on um or turning on or whatever. Any any kind of things like that are gonna spike your cortisol and immediately wake you up. Well, obviously not immediately, but it'll wake you up because of that uh your your body's on high alert, essentially. And as we know with cortisol, increased levels of cortisol also can lead to increased levels of anxiety as well. Now, one thing that you can do to help reduce some of this cortisol before you go to bed, so that way you don't have these moments of uh of alertness when you're trying to go to sleep is doing some journaling before you go to sleep, or also doing some relaxation or relaxing things before you go to bed, whether that's meditation, whether that's going on a walk with your dog. Um, whether that's you know whatever whatever you do to relax your mind and and take your mind off of all the days stresses now now now don't hear what I'm not saying cortisol is not the enemy, all right. Cortisol is essential for our life. We need it, we need stress in our life for adaptation and for tissue healing for pretty much just about every function that we need that we have going on in our body requires cortisol in some way, shape, or form, whether it's in a roundabout way or in a direct way. Stress in the short term is very beneficial as long as it doesn't become chronic. When it becomes chronic is when we start seeing problems, and when we start seeing problems is when we start to see our health decline. If you are somebody that is struggling with a hormone imbalance or uh have fluctuating um uh levels of cortisol or suffer from depression, anxiety, so on and so forth, or what have you, any any kind of uh um disability that might influence your cortisol levels might be something that you bring up with your PCP because they can definitely lead you into the right direction, or even talk to your uh physical therapist about it too. They might have some uh suggestions or recommendations or be able to point you in the right direction to somebody that they can refer you out to, uh whether that's a sleep expert or a uh PCP, like I said before. One of the other things that can wake you up for no apparent reason is also light. And if you get a bright enough stimulus of light onto your well face or uh in the vicinity of of your body, um well, unless you have, you know, uh what are those things called? Sleep pads, sleep uh yeah, sleep pads on your eyes, um you're going to wake up because your body is like, oh, that must be the sun, that's that's so bright. Like let's let's just you know kickstart, kickstart our heart, you know? Um and you know, get the day going. It literally kick starts your heart though. Like that's more than just a joke. But but yeah, so that's another one of the ways that can wake us up out of the middle of the night for no

Role of Light and Frog Study

SPEAKER_00 24:36

apparent reason. I mean I was doing some research on this stuff, and this stuff is like bananas, like this is this stuff is like crazy. I don't know. I thought it was like super interesting and I was like nerding out and stuff, but like I said, I don't want to go down too many rabbit holes, so I'll keep it um digestible for everybody because I know sometimes I can get people to tune out really quickly, because I'll just keep on talking and talking and talking about nothing. So, on to light. When it comes to light, there is this study, and bear with me, because I'm gonna say some things wrong and pronounce words differently than how you pronounce them, but that's okay, because we all know what I'm talking about, and it'll be in the show notes so you'll be able to look it up yourself, and you can try and pronounce it. Anyways, so there's this study that they did way, way back in the day, probably not that far back in the day, but way, way back in the day for me. And they did the study on frogs where they shined a light onto the frogs, and after doing that, they noticed that the the frogs were changing colors. Like, why was that happening? And they were later they would later discover that it was due to this uh uh this this thing called melanosomes that change the pigmentation on the um on the frogs when it's responding to a stimulus, that stimulus being light, and this is how the frogs were able to detect light was literally through their skin. Obviously, also through their eyes, but also through their skin is how they were able to detect light. This same mechanism is present in our own eyes, and this is that frog study was how we first discovered, um, or not probably not how we first discovered, but was kind of when we realized um what mechanisms uh have to occur in order for us to be able to detect light. And so that discovery was able to allow us to realize that okay, on the back of our retina, there's these things called retinoganglias. All right, we'll call them that. Yeah, that makes sense, retina. All right, cool. And then we're like, okay, what else we got back there? We have these things called photoreceptors, and these photoreceptors have these two different organs on them, got rods and cones. All right. So we got rods, they're uh they allow us to see in dim light, um, able to see like the night sky and everything like that. Um, but also they they're super sensitive to light, so that's that's one benefit. But they don't allow us to really see any color at all. That's kind of a bummer. Okay, well, how do we see color then? We have these things called cones. Cones allow us to see obviously the full spectrum of light. Um, in turn, well, an adequate amount of light, um, we're able to see the full spectrum of colors, is what I should say. Uh, or waves, whatever you want to call them. And thou those two in combination are what allow us to uh see everything that we see today, and um basically take in all this information, and our photoreceptors are like, okay, hey, this is what's going on right now. There's this super bright light stimulus. Um, I think we should let the superchismatic nucleus, which is just a super unnecessarily fancy way, to say our um let's activate our circadian rhythm and uh get it going for the day so we can get ready to go to our work. And so that's kind of the quick and dirty breakdown of how those things operate within one another. I hope my neuroprofessor is not listening. That is a gross simplification of what was that, like uh maybe a month, two months that we spent on on that stuff. So I'm sorry. So next time you're living in you know one of those super dark uh areas in the winter, like I said before, Sweden or wherever else that you might live, somewhere up north. Um, or if you're like Harry Potter and you live underneath the stairs, you're gonna need to uh be using those those rods a little bit more than other people. Um that way you're able to see in some dim light. That being said, um our photoreceptors are very sensitive to blue light, and it actually is blue light that allows us to uh give us enough stimulus to wake up in the morning. And research has shown it's about I think it's 10,000. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's 10,000 lumens uh that we need that's enough stimulus to wake us from sleep. Um, and it's also enough to help regulate our circadian rhythm in the morning, which is why um maybe some of you guys have heard on the Huberman Lab podcast, um, he's a big proponent for getting that early morning sunlight and then middle of the day sunlight. Um doing those two things help regulate your circadian rhythm or your superchiasmatic nucleus, whichever one you like saying. And this is what um kind of peaks that uh uh that cortisol and or helps peak that cortisol in the morning and increase that uh wakefulness to where we're like, okay, it's time to go, time to move. And the locus cerelius, um, that's the that's the the uh uh center in your brain that's responsible for alertness, and that also gets that going as well. We'll talk about the good old LCN later on down the road. Probably the last episode. Thankfully, it does take an increasing amount of uh stimulus in order to wake us up from our sleep or to wake us up even more from a previous amount of sleep that we've had. Um that's likely due to this protein called melanopsin. Now, melanopsin is released when we have an increase of stimulus uh from light, typically blue light, um, and like I said before, that has to be at a certain threshold, typically about 10,000 lumens of light, um, seems to be the right threshold to allow us to wake up. But not only that, you also need to have a prolonged period of that light because melanopsin has a uh I don't want to call it a memory because they don't really have neurons inside the protein, but I digress. For simplicity's sake, we'll say melanopsin keeps a log of what kind of stimulus we had in terms of how much um, like how many lumens we had of light, and then how long that that exposure to light was. So when we have a prolonged exposure of light, and then also that increased stimulus of light, the combination of the two are what benefit um or are what allow melanopsin to be uh released and tell the body, hey, it's actually time to wake up because we got all this light coming in and we got to get up and go, um, get ready for the day. Now, that's why it's beneficial to go out in the morning, or if you can't go out in the morning, um, go to your window and get that early morning light. And if you even do like a you can download, like there's so many apps out there now. You can download an app. If you don't want to download an app, you can probably find something that will um uh uh gauge the amount of lumens in a certain area of your house that you are, and you can look at your phone and see that it's gonna be way, way, way super low in terms of lumens. You can even go look at your lights, um, they're gonna be maybe around uh 1,000 to 5,000, um which as we know still isn't enough stimulus um to uh peak that necessary amount of uh uh lumens to reach that threshold to wake you up in the morning. So experiment with that, test it out, try it out, let me know what you think. And last but not least, we have camping. Now, those of you that know me know that I am an avid camper and I love to go out in the woods and no cell service, no phone or anything, nothing but my map, my compass, and my dog. Go out there, nice long week of uh uh backpacking adventure. Now, you guys are probably seeing right through me right now, but I do realize now the allure and the benefit of camping after reading this article. There was a study that was done in Colorado where they took a group of people out for seven days and they had them go camping for um uh out in the in the mountains and

Go Camping This Week

SPEAKER_00 34:02

stuff like that. No cell service, no phones were allowed, no electronics or anything. They were fully immersed in the nature, and what they found was seeing that seven days was uh or during a seven-day period, they were able to fully reset their circadian rhythm. Now that's interesting because even missing you know one day or two days of sleep um can completely throw off your circadian rhythm. But the study has shown that um if you go on a camping excursion for seven days, then that will fully reset your circadian rhythm. Now, some of you guys are probably saying, Drew, seven days, like who am I? Like I'm not Tarzan out here, I can't just, you know, take a trip out there and just hang out for that long a time. And I hear ya. So they did another study. In the second study, they found that as little as two days, just a short weekend trip, was plenty for resetting your circadian rhythm up to 69% of the full capacity of your circadian rhythm. So you really only need to go on a weekend excursion. I'm not saying don't be a weekend warrior out there getting all these injuries, but only two days is what you need to reset your circadian rhythm adequately enough to help reset your circadian rhythm. That being said, I might have to plan my next uh camping trip sometime soon here. But for now, make sure to check out the previous episode and stay tuned for the next episodes that we have on our lessons that we learned from sleep. If you are looking to message me for any kind of personal training or if you're looking to start your own running program, uh you are in the right place, I can help you out with that. So, that is all I got for you guys today. I'll catch you on the next one.