For a Good Night's Sleep

Good morning and good night...

As I journey through this life, I value more and more the opportunity for sleep. Over a decade has passed since I had started to explore all the many reasons why giving ourselves enough sleep is non-negotiable. And I have shared over the years so much of what I have learned. Little bits of intriguing things are everywhere... and here are a couple more of those.

To initiate sleep, we have to drop our core body temperature by one to two degrees Fahrenheit. Throughout years of evolution, this has been a natural occurrence as the ambient temperature lowers with the setting sun. Modern environments with temperature control systems that allow us to maintain constant temperatures all day and night can interfere with this natural process. However, letting our sleep environment cool throughout the evening into night is probably best. For me, with no air conditioning and limited use of heating, this naturally happens in my apartment. Other ways of cooling that many people often do, perhaps without even realizing the sleep benefit they are experiencing, are washing our face with water in the evening as part of a routine before bed or the hand and foot that finds its way out from under our blankets as we are going to sleep...both ways we can promote the cooling of our body through dissipation of heat. Whatever may be helpful for you, remembering that our core body temperature fluctuates as part of our circadian rhythm and giving the opportunity for cooling at night to be able to induce sleep is helpful.

Something works alongside the temperature sensing to help us initiate sleep...light and dark cycles. It must get dark and remain dark to naturally bring our brains toward sleep. For years, we humans used to go to sleep when it got dark. The use of fire allowed us to extend some activities into the night, but probably not for too long. Evolutionally, we could not have caught up yet with the sudden ability to have light mimicking daylight long into the night. It is the darkness that signals through our suprachiasmatic nucleus to release the brakes on the pineal gland so that melatonin can begin to flow. With this chemical signal comes appropriately timed tiredness and sleep that follows. Oh, but what we do in modern society with our artificially lit environments and technology that emits light mimicking daylight, preventing the signal of darkness for sleepiness. How many of us suffer from what we believe to be unavoidable insomnia resulting from the delay in melatonin release (yes, studies demonstrate objectively a delay in melatonin release and, thus, delay in sleep onset) because we bathe our eyes with light into the night? For most healthy people, onset of sleep is not a sudden certainty; we require the signal of a darkening environment to prepare for sleep. Anything we can do to be in a more natural environment like this, with limited artificial lightning from technology, can be helpful.

And, further consider what we do with forced awakening with alarm clocks, when what would help us most is to allow our brains and bodies to wake up when ready after the completion of a sleep cycle. I talk more about sleep cycles in an article I wrote on LinkedIn at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/sleep-fascinating-imagining-eight-hours-ernie-brooks/?trackingId=yEPBEJK7SLGdB7TIhnpDiQ%3D%3D Starting our day of wakefulness by entering the stress response with alarm...‘no other species demonstrates this unnatural act of prematurely and artificially terminating sleep,' writes Matthew Walker in the book I mention below.

Much of what I share today comes from my reading of ‘Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams’ by Matthew Walker, a book I began over a year ago, put aside for a while, and recently continued learning from. As I read about cycles of temperature and light/dark, I kept thinking of how many people don't realize the impact their habits are having in their lives. I share all this with hopes that we may be well through our sleep and wakefulness.

Walker, M. (2017). Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. New York. Scribner