On:

• Dangers of poor sleep, Alzheimer’s risk, mental health, etc.
• Heart disease, cancer, sexual function, sleep disruption.
• Effects of poor sleep from performance to genetics.

Episode: 48,49,50″

Date: April 2019

Background: Neuroscientist, sleep expert.

Key Subjects:

Part 1

• We need sleep to “clean up”.
  • Being awake causes “low level brain damage”.
  • Sleep cleans out of bad protein aggregations that build up during the day.
• Four pillars of good sleep:
  • Regularity, continuity, quantity and quality.
• Sleep deprivation causes the quickest reduction of health.
  • Foundation on which diet, stress and exercise health pillars sit.
• Sleep window determines what part of sleep cycle you get more of.
  • Sleep early – more deep; sleep later – more REM.
• Both REM and non-REM sleep stages are vital.
• REM is the most recently evolved stage.
  • All animals have non-REM sleep.
  • REM is seen only in birds and mammals.

Part 2

• You can’t build up a buffer for sleep.
  • Meaning, you don’t store sleep like you store fat.
• Naps may be good.
  • 20-90 minutes, don’t wake after 45 minutes (groggy).
• Sympathetic state, insomnia.
  • Sleep is a balancing act of of cortisol, adenosine and melatonin cycles (see “Sleep“).
  • Insomnia driven by sympathetic state “turned up” too far, cortisol spikes. 
  • Fix sympathetic state (behavioral solutions) or fix cortisol (supplements). 

Part 3

• Lack of sleep triggers many negative processes in the body (see “Sleep“).
  • Stress, weight gain, worse diet, less exercise, lower performance, worse decisions, etc.
  • Macro (slowly developing diseases, behavior) and micro (cellular pathways and interaction).
• Not helpful:
  • Alcohol: fragments sleep, no REM.
  • Caffeine: blocks adenosine build-up (see “Sleep“).
• Relevant sleep benchmarks:
  • Resting heart rate, HRV, respiratory rate, body temperature.
• Mental health and sleep quality:
  • Two way street: mental health drives sleep quality and vice versa.