We all adore our sleep time. It is quiet, peaceful, restorative and comes with a long list of physical benefits. After all, you spend about 1/3 of your life time sleeping so it is paramount to make sure you are getting the best sleep quality possible. Everyone’s sleep experience and quality differs but there are common components to a replenishing nights rest that we can learn from this. Some of us work late or have to wake up early for our jobs and that can affect the quality of our sleep yet there seems nothing we can do about it. False. Allow us to help! We may be able to improve your sleep quality, recognize the need for a better sleep environment or help you truly understand how Melatonin and Caffeine impacts your sleep experience.
We should start with a goal. A goal of how many hours of sleep we desire to wake up feeling refreshed. See how many hours of sleep you should aiming for at your age:
- School age 6-12 years: 9-12 hours
- Teens 13-19 years: 8-10 hours
- Adults 18-60 years: 7+ hours
Let’s get two things out of the way now that we have this information. Less than 6 hours of sleep can impair psychological and physiological functioning! You won’t feel completely you nor will you perform at your best or optimal level. Second, there is no such thing as “catching up on sleep”. Sorry folks, that is a myth. Once you sleep less than the 7-8 hours, you have lost already. It does not matter if you sleep 4 hours one night and 12 hours the next night.
You understand how many hours of sleep you need but now you may wonder, what are the steps to getting that amount of sleep along with top sleep quality? We should review common components of good sleep hygiene:
- Create an appropriate sleep environment: dark, cool, little to no noise. (Some people enjoy white noise, sound of rain or waves are soothing)
- Stay away and avoid alcohol and caffeine hours before bedtime.
- Establish a rule. Stay off electronics (TV, Phone, Video games) an hour before bedtime. These blue light devices can affect your circadian rhythm.
- Have a wind down routine: reading, hot shower, meditate, journaling, face washing etc.
- Try not to nap after 3pm and no longer than an hour. “Power naps” should only be 20-30 minutes.
- Avoid overtraining and try to avoid training too early or too late.
- Reduce any stressors.
Fantastic! You now have an understanding of how many hours you should strive to get along with how to set yourself up for a good sleep experience. You may be thinking, “that is cool and all but what exactly will this do for me physically?” Let’s go over the benefits of making these changes for the good of your sleep quality.
Physical Benefits:
- The 2 biggest benefits of sleep are cellular restoration and memory consolidation. (If you are curious about these and want more information please reach out, it is quite fascinating.)
- Allows our heart to slow down and rest.
- Our cells and tissue repair during the sleep process.
- Prevents illness or encourages recovery from sickness.
- Reduces the risk of injury.
- Increases attention span.
- Promotes growth.
- Resets our immune system, metabolism and emotional control.
It is time! We have to discuss our understanding of Melatonin and Caffeine.
Melatonin:
What is it and how does it work?
It begins when your suprachiasmatic nucleas communicates its repeating signal of night and day to your brain using a circulating messenger called Melatonin. The rise of Melatonin begins after dusk where it is being released into your bloodstream from the pineal gland (area in the back of your brain). Think of Melatonin like a loud bullhorn shouting a message to the brain and body: “It is now dark! It is now dark!” Melatonin helps regulate the timing of when sleep occurs but it has little influence on the generation of sleep itself.
What does Melatonin actually do?
Matthew Walker explains it best in his book, Why We Sleep: Think of sleep like a 100 meter race at the Olympics. Melatonin is the voice of the timing official that says, “Runners, on your mark,” and then fires the starting pistol that initiates the race. The timing official (Melatonin) governs when the race (sleep) begins, but does not participate in the race.
Melatonin corrals those sleep generating regions of the brain to the starting line of our bedtime. Melatonin provides the instruction to commence the event of sleep, but does not participate in the sleep race itself.
Once sleep is under way, Melatonin slowly decreases in concentration across the night and into the morning. When sunlight enters the brain by going through our eyes, a brake pedal is applied to the pineal gland, therefore shuts off the release of Melatonin. The absence of Melatonin lets the brain and body know that the finish line of sleep has been reached.
Caffeine:
Learn about Adenosine first.
Right when you wake up, a chemical called Adenosine is building up in your brain. It will continue to increase in concentration with every waking minute that passes. High concentrations of Adenosine turn down the “volume” of wake promoting regions in the brain while turning up the sleep inducing regions. You can artificially mute the sleep signal of Adenosine by using a chemical that makes you feel more alert and awake and that is Caffeine.
What happens in the brain when Caffeine enters?
Caffeine battles with Adenosine for the ability to latch on to receptors in the brain. Once latched on, caffeine blocks and effectively inactivates the receptors, acting as a masking agent. Caffeine blocks the sleepiness signal that is normally communicated to the brain by Adenosine.
“Half life” is used when discussing a drugs efficacy. Caffeine has a half life of 5-7 hours.
Why do you crash on caffeine? The entire time that caffeine is in your system, Adenosine continues to build up. Your brain isn’t aware of the continuing build up of sleep-encouraging Adenosine because the giant wall of caffeine you’ve created is holding it back from your perception. Once your liver dismantles that wall of caffeine, you are smacked with the sleepiness you had experienced hours ago before the coffee PLUS all the extra Adenosine that has accumulated in the hours in between, impatiently waiting for the caffeine to leave. That means once caffeine is decomposed, Adenosine comes rushing back in and levels the receptors. When that happens, you are hit by a forceful Adenosine- trigger urge to sleep- the caffeine crash.
At InSight, we believe we can aid in the process of improving your sleep quality and reaping the benefits physically, emotionally and mentally. Remember that you spend 1/3 of your life sleeping so it won’t hurt to give your sleep some attention and help yourself feel better. If you are curious about anything in the reading, please feel free to reach out with any questions.
Resources:
Walker, Matthew P. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2018.
