Wake Up Call: 4 Surprising Facts I Learned about Sleep

With many phrases in popular lexicon such as “I'll sleep when I'm dead,” “sleep is the cousin of death,” and “sleep is for the weak,” it is easy to see that we live in a culture that views sleep in a somewhat negative light. While you are lazily sleeping, other people are getting up and getting after it, making the most out of life. But perhaps this anti-sleep culture is missing some perspective. Perhaps sleeping plenty is in-fact getting the most out of life.

I have recently been diving deeper into sleep and the role it plays on human health. And while the role sleep plays in our lives is far and wide, I’ve taken time to highlight a few interesting points here. Please know that there are many, many more aspects of sleep than the four mentioned here.

1. Some researchers believe sleep to be the original state of life

All life forms sleep in one way or another. Single-cell organisms, microbes, plants, animals, fungi, etc. If it is alive, it sleeps. Some researchers hypothesize that the earliest life on earth started out in a sleep-like state, with wakefulness becoming an evolved ability as a reaction to environmental stimuli. Even brainless lifeforms that are lacking central nervous systems display sleep-like behavior. To put it simply, sleeping is quite possibly the default state of life

Sleep could possibly be more fundamental to life than sunlight and water. Yet we do not seem to treat it as such. I’d suggest that rather than tailoring our sleep around the activities that take place during our hours of wakefulness, the healthier option would be to tailor our daily activities around our sleep schedule. This is a particularly interesting point because, it is quite normal in western cultures to deprioritize sleep in the name of “more important things” like work, socializing, studying, travel, etc.

2. Sleep is the brain’s natural memory processing system

There are two main phases of sleep. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM). When we sleep, we cycle between REM and NREM sleep phases, with NREM sleep accounting for about 75% of total sleep time, while the remaining 25% consists of REM sleep.

To understand how sleep impacts memory, let’s look at a computer for comparison. Your typical computer uses a short-term memory storage solution in which data is lost once the computer is powered down. In order to prevent that data from being lost we hit the “save” button and transfer the data to some form of a longer-term storage solution (hard drive, etc.).

In the human brain, the hippocampus is the short-term storage solution while the neocortex is the longer-term solution. When we sleep, memories are moved from the hippocampus to the neocortex, effectively serving as the brain’s save button through a process called “memory consolidation.”

During NREM sleep we process declarative memories such as dates, facts, and other information that needs to be consciously remembered, while during REM sleep we process non-declarative memories such as behaviors, habits, and skills that are remembered subconsciously (ex. walking, playing an instrument, riding a bicycle).

3. Early work and school start times contribute to poor health among large portions of the population

Roughly 1 out of 3 people’s circadian clocks are biologically set to raise later in the morning and go to bed later at night. These people are shown to perform more poorly in school and work due to early morning start times that artificially shift a person’s waking hours to be out of synch with their circadian clocks. To make things worse, those with later circadian clocks are more prone to develop the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation.

Particularly interesting is the idea that teenagers naturally adopt a later circadian clock resulting in them staying up much later at night than their parents. This is believed to be a mechanism for teenagers to develop greater independence from their parents. However, this natural shift in sleep schedule is misaligned with the early start times for many high schoolers. Knowing that poor sleep is associated with anxiety and depression, I wonder how much the mismatch between school start times, and teenagers’ natural sleep schedules contribute to the rising rates of mental health problems that we see in teens today.

4. Sleep can prevent the onset of dementia and neurodegeneration

As mentioned before, it appears that the state of sleeping was the original state of life, with wakefulness being a later-evolved response to external stimuli. Early life forms may have adopted wakefulness because of the survival or reproductive benefits that came along with it.

However, for humans and other creatures with brains, harmful toxins accumulate in the brain during hours of wakefulness. The buildup of these toxins are believed to cause neurodegeneration. However, during sleep, they are flushed out of the brain through the glymphatic system.

Not sleeping enough could lead to an excessive buildup of these toxins causing erosion of brain matter, and ultimately leading to dementia, which, aside from cancer, is among the most feared diseases among humans.

What can we do to improve or sleep?

If you have read my Savage Manifesto, you will know that Unleashing Savage is all about understanding the different effects of modernity on our mental, physical, and spiritual health, and exploring ways to restore our quality of life by tapping into our primitive nature to achieve optimal health and well-being. Sleep is one of those things that I have inherently known to contribute to overall health. However, I’m realizing that I have underestimated exactly how important it is.

What are the steps one can take to improve sleep hygiene? This is a conversation for another day, but in short, I can share a few of the habits that have helped me to sleep better. I have not consistently followed these tips, but when I do, my sleep is greatly elevated. Consider the following for better sleep:

• Consume no caffein after 12 pm

• Give your mind time to disconnect. No electronics at least one hour before bed time

• Eliminate distractions by leaving handheld media devices outside of the bedroom

• Get rid of televisions in the bedroom

• Align with the circadian cycle by dimming interior lights after the sun sets

• Activate your body’s cooling mechanism by taking a 20 minute hot bath before bed

• Keep your body temperature lower by setting the thermostat to 65 deg F

• Take your mind off of the day’s stressful events by reading a book

• Keep the room very dark or use blindfolds

• Keep the room very quiet or use white noise

My closing thoughts on sleep

I’ll close out by saying that it seems like all doctors should be asking about sleeping habits before immediately turning to allopathic medication when treating any chronic illness. Like many other chronic health issues along with weight gain, and poor mental health, they are all tied to behavioral factors. Changing our behaviors is often the best first step one can take in improving the many factors influencing well-being. In this case, with sleep potentially being the foundation of life before wakefulness was even a thing, we may want to consider taking a serious look at our own sleeping habits and making changes where there are necessary.