Psychologist, Heal Yourself -Sleep

(Psychologist, Heal Yourself?is a series of reflections shared from my own lived experiences of trauma and happiness from the perspective of a psychologist and human to help others come to terms with their own lived stories and cope better during these challenging times)

I am doing a first this week.

I like doing "firsts" meaning something I have never done before. I always knew the only way to grow is to learn something new so I could change my beliefs and habits. I also like taking diagnostic tests and have experts look at my medical behavior. I want to learn my baselines for health areas so I can take the needed steps.

My first this week?

I am joining the large scale sleep study in Singapore by Professor Michael Chee at National University of Singapore.

How?

On Thursday, I will go earlier than my normal sleep time to get hooked up to machines and wearables to monitor my sleep pattern. I get to sleep as I would normally in a small bedroom and observed on a video by the researchers in case of any changes. Friday morning, I will wake at my normal time (if I can) and be issued a survey to respond to. Off to work I go then and return Friday night. This second night the researchers will give me a few activities to do on my phone before I fall asleep. Once I do get to sleep the researchers will interrupt my sleep around 60-90 minutes after. Then they will ask me to send an email... and then again hopefully I fall back to sleep and wakeup Saturday morning to another survey.

Why participate in such a research?

Because in order for me to sleep better, I need to have a personalized sleep obseravation and this study will use tracking apps as well as a video of me asleep to give me feedback while at the same time gathering more information on Asian demographic sleep patterns. This data set is lacking in healthcare. *another topic on why most of medical research has been done mostly on Cauasian samples and men and how we need to change that.

I know sleep research - now to see if I am doing the best practices in sleeping habits and have they truly transferred to my day to day life.

Why is Sleeping better so Important?

The intersection between for me between psychology, counseling and sleep is due to the significant relationships between sleep disruption and disorders such as depression, anxiety, including PTSD, schizophrenia, and suicide as well. Sleep deprivation affects day to day decisions and affects work performance.

From his MasterClass Prof Mathew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, shared how his team took a group of healthy adults and either gave them a full night of sleep or sleep deprived them. And then they put the participants in a brain scanner. They decided to focus on one particular area of the brain-- a deep emotional center called the amygdala. The amygdala is one of the centerpiece regions for the generation of strong, impulsive, emotional reactions, including negative reactions. When they looked at that deep emotional center, the amygdala, what they found is that in those people who had had a full night of sleep, there was a nice, controlled, modest degree of reactivity. It wasn't as though there was no reactivity at all, but there was an appropriate degree of a response. But in those people who were sleep deprived, the amygdala had become hyperreactive.(bold italics mine) In fact, the amygdala was almost 60% more responsive under conditions of a lack of sleep.

While people who had a full night of sleep, there was a nice, strong communication pathway from the prefrontal cortex down to the amygdala, regulating it. (bold italics mine) But in those people who were sleep deprived, that connection had essentially been severed, as it were. And so now, without sleep, we become all emotional accelerator pedal, and too little regulatory control brake.

More Sleep Research for better sleep here

Dr https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/7-ways-sleep-better-marion-neubronner/?trackingId=wQp7TpwDRBejpllppsu6Nw%3D%3D

https://www.mindsciencecentre.sg/msc_research/improving-sleep-quality-older-adults-community-based-activities/