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May 23 - September 7, 2024
The more amyloid deposits there were in the middle regions of the frontal lobe, the more impaired the deep-sleep quality was in that older individual.
The glial cells of the brain were shrinking in size by up to 60 percent during NREM sleep, enlarging the space around the neurons and allowing the cerebrospinal fluid to proficiently clean out the metabolic refuse
If you were one of the individuals who were obtaining just five to six hours each night or less, you were 200 to 300 percent more likely to suffer calcification of your coronary arteries over the next five years, relative to those individuals sleeping seven to eight hours.
insufficient sleep lasts, and for some time thereafter, the body remains stuck in some degree of a fight-or-flight state.
As your sleep-deprived heart beats faster, the volumetric rate of blood pumped through your vasculature increases, and with that comes the hypertensive state of your blood pressure. Occurring at the same time is a chronic increase in a stress hormone
called cortisol, which is triggered by the overactive sympathetic nervous system. One undesirable consequence of the sustained deluge of cortisol is the constriction of those blood vessels, triggering an even greater increase in blood pressure.
growth hormone—a great healer of the body—which normally surges at night, is shut off by the state of sleep deprivation. Without growth hormone to replenish the lining of your blood vessels, called the endothelium, ...
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As you are falling asleep or exiting sleep, the dream-like experiences you have tend to be visually or movement based.
which enable complex visual perception; (2) the motor cortex, which instigates movement; (3) the hippocampus and surrounding regions that we have spoken about before, which support your autobiographical memory; and (4) the deep emotional centers of the brain—the amygdala and the cingulate cortex, a ribbon of tissue that sits above the amygdala and lines the inner surface of your brain—both of which help generate and process emotions. Indeed, these emotional regions of the brain are up to 30 percent more active in REM sleep compared to when we are awake!
Indeed, journaling your waking thoughts, feelings, and concerns has a proven mental health benefit, and the same appears true of your dreams. A meaningful, psychologically healthy life is an examined one, as Socrates so often declared.
Concentrations of a key stress-related chemical called noradrenaline are completely shut off within your brain when you enter this dreaming sleep state. In fact, REM sleep is the only time during the twenty-four-hour period when your brain is completely devoid of this anxiety-triggering molecule. Noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine, is the brain equivalent to a body chemical you already know and have felt the effects of: adrenaline (epinephrine).
If the brain cannot divorce the emotion from memory across the first night following a trauma experience, the theory suggests that a repeat attempt of emotional memory stripping will occur on the second night, as the strength of the “emotional tag” associated with the memory remains too high. If the process fails a second time, the same attempt will continue to repeat the next night, and the next night, like a broken record. This was precisely what appeared to be happening with the recurring nightmares of the trauma experience in PTSD patients.
when you wake up the next morning, you can discern overt and subtly covert micro-expressions with exactitude.
better REM-sleep quality at night provided superior comprehension of the social world the next day.
the sleep-deprived participants slipped into a default of fear bias, believing even gentle- or somewhat friendly looking faces were menacing.
Avoid powerful overhead lights. Mood lighting is the order of the night. Some committed individuals will even wear yellow-tinted glasses indoors in the afternoon and evening to help filter out the most harmful blue light that suppresses melatonin.
The electrical brainwave state you enter via alcohol is not that of natural sleep; rather, it is akin to a light form of anesthesia.
To successfully initiate and maintain sleep into the night, as described in chapter 2, your core temperature needs to decrease by 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 1 degree Celsius.
Warm hands and feet help your body’s core cool, inducing inviting sleep quickly and efficiently.
gently warmed the feet or the body of rats to encourage blood to rise to the surface of the skin and emit heat, thereby decreasing core body temperature. The rats drifted off to sleep far faster than was otherwise normal.
because you are toasty and warm to the core. Instead, the hot bath invites blood to the surface of your skin, giving you that flushed appearance. When you get out of the bath, those dilated blood vessels on the surface quickly help radiate out inner heat, and your core body temperature plummets.
Participants artificially awakened from sleep can experience a spike in blood pressure and an acceleration in heart rate caused by a burst of activity from the fight-or-flight branch of the nervous system.VI
try to do away with the snooze function, and get in the habit of waking up only once to spare your heart the repeated shock.
An added reason for making sleep a top priority in the education and lives of our children concerns the link between sleep deficiency and the epidemic of ADHD
