The Psychology of your 20s - 186. The psychology of sleep

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Sleep is one of our most vital functions but how many of us actually know that much about it, the links to our physical functioning, mental health, relationships and overall wellbeing. What about some of the strange experiments they've conducted to investigate dreams or how long we can go without sleep? In today's episode we take a deep dive into the psychology of sleep, including:  Why we need sleep? What actually is REM sleep? The Russian Sleep Experiment  Sleep debt  Sleep as a form of self sabotage Revenge bedtime procrastination  The impact of blue light and screens in the bedroom  How to improve your sleep hygiene and more  Listen now for when you want to maximise your shut eye!  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg  Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business enquiries: [e-mail]    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn.

the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWA percent on the IHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say

trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast, my lovely listeners, new and old. Wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode.

I hope you've been well. I hope you've been treating yourself nicely, pursuing something positive and exciting in your life. I've been chugging along. I'm in the planning stages for some pretty fun. projects coming out soon that I am super excited to show with you all. I feel like some of you have already figured it out, but a little spoiler if you're a big journaler or note taker, I feel like you'll be pretty pumped for what's coming, which I realize is actually literally a dead giveaway,

but you know what, I can't keep a secret. So there you go. There are so much in the works at the moment and just taking a little moment to say I'm so grateful for all the support you guys have shown me recently. In every capacity, the show is, you know, reaching so many new people. There are so many exciting projects in the works that wouldn't be possible without such amazing loyal listeners. So starting with a quick shout out to you guys who make this possible. But let's get into what we're actually talking about today. Okay. So we're doing a pretty science heavy episode. One I am fascinated by, one I have wanted to do. for ages. And today we're finally getting around to an old-fashioned deep dive, a big deep dive into

sleep. How often do we really think about sleep, to be honest, other than that it's this like eight hour, seven hour black hole in our days that we know we need, that we never feel like we have enough of unless you're one of those insane people who can sleep for five hours. We are told that we should take magnesium if we want to sleep well, that we should have a silk eye mask. a nighttime routine, that melatonin is the key to rest, that we need to listen to the people who say to wake up at 5 a.m. Don't use our phones before bed, lucid dream. You know, the world has a lot to say about sleep because it is really how we spend a third of our lives. And it has become a huge wellness topic for sure. But how much do we actually know? You and I, the average person,

how much trivia would we have in our back pockets to do with sleep? For something so vital and genuinely life-giving, we're going to talk about that in a second. Sleep is seen as rather boring. You know, that's the whole cliche to be like a snooze, to be a bore, to be like falling asleep at your desk, at work. You know, I think that sleep, I don't know, not to say it gets a bad reputation, but I don't think we think about it enough.

why do we really care about the moments we're unconscious? That's the biggest reasons. You know, nothing's really happening in those hours. We literally can't remember anything other than our dreams, sometimes not even those. So it seems rather insignificant. Obviously, I don't believe that at all. I think that sleep is so misunderstood. And really, it is the key to unlocking a lot about our life, about the fatigue that we experience, the motivational deficits we see in other areas of our lives. It's even linked to being a more kind person, a less irritable person, and a myriad of health outcomes. You may not even notice that you are functioning at less than 100% as a direct result of poor sleep, especially in our 20s when there is this whole culture, or I would say expectation around sacrificing sleep

and either overworking, pushing ourselves to burnout, or trying to keep up with a big social schedule or social expectations trying to do all the fun things that can't fit into our daytime hours and pushing off sleep, hitting snooze as many times as possible. I'm not going to come out and say that that is a bad thing to do, that you need to get your eight hours, otherwise your world is going to fall apart. More so, just I want to explore how we can maximize good rest. The hidden world to do with sleep is so fascinating. So we're going to talk about why we need sleep. What happens in your brain as you fall asleep? The myth of the Russian sleep experiment.

I've wanted to talk about this for ages. And then some more kind of nuanced topics. Sleep as a form of self-sabotage. The concept of sleep debt and sleep hygiene. So much to be said about this topic, I think without further ado, let's get into it. Okay. First off, let's cover our basics. what actually happens in our brains and in our bodies when we fall asleep.

I think we all hear about hitting our REM cycle. That's been everywhere recently, and that's only one part of it. Actually, when we fall asleep, when we are actively asleep, we can divide this state of mind into four stages. Three of those stages count as non-rapid eye movement sleep or stages, NRE for short. And then we have REM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement sleep. I don't think a lot of us know that that's what REM actually stands for and it is as it describes. During this stage of sleep, our brain activity, our breathing, our heart rate, our blood pressure, almost

match what they would look like when we are awake, but we're not. And they all increase. We become almost temporarily paralyzed, unable to move our arms. or legs. It is not the most restful kind of sleep, which is another big myth. And it usually occurs about 90 minutes after you fall asleep. So it's almost at the end of a sleep cycle. So a sleep cycle is where you go from being awake through all the non-rapid eye movement stages of sleep. And then you end up in REM sleep. And that's where we often get the most intense dreams because we have the most brain activity going on. And it's during that stage that a lot of scientists and researchers believe that we process our emotions, we form memories.

If you want to learn about why it is that we dream in particular, especially in REM sleep, we actually have a whole episode on that called The Psychology of Dreams. It's one of my favorite episodes ever. But most people assume that dreams are a product of memory formation and processing all of the thoughts, feelings, experiences, flashbacks that we haven't worked through during the day. We still aren't completely sure why some people have more vivid or memorable dreams than others, because it's so hard to measure something that we can't always remember.

But some factors include having a greater imagination, also medications, sleep disruptions, like if you are woken up during REM sleep, you'll probably have a greater recall of your dreams. And then things like stress and trauma, even grief, make us very vivid dreamers. We have a lot going on emotionally and mentally during our waking hours within our lives. And we can't, we don't, always have the brain space to deal with that, to find a place for those memories and those experiences in our brain. So it's when we are asleep that our mind kind of gets to work filtering through all of that and voila.

That is why we dream. Okay, so we're kind of starting back to front here because REM sleep, as I said, is actually the last stage of sleep. And it occurs after we pass through what we now know as N-R-M-E sleep. So we have three stages. We have N-1 sleep. This is the transition between wakefulness and sleeping. It's characterized by slowed eye movement. reduce muscle activity, our heart rate is dropping.

Then we get to N2 sleep. There's a further decline in brain activity, temperature, heart rate, all the things that indicate wakefulness. And then we have N3 sleep. So this is also known as deep sleep. And this is where our body really undergoes a lot of the restorative processes for fixing up everything that's happened within our mind and our bodies during the day. So then three sleep, the one we just spoke about, that is deep sleep.

As we fall asleep, our brain actually remains quite active, even in that final stage. Processing information, consolidating memories, keeping us breathing, areas like our amygdala and our hippocampus, they show the most amount of activity and they are the parts of our brain that help in the creation and storage of episodic memories. but they also tend to help with core functions, like ensuring we are still alive even though we are unconscious. So let's talk about why we need sleep. Wouldn't it be great if we could be operating at all hours of the day? Imagine how productive we would be,

how much more of the world could be explored, how many more stories we would have to tell. It is a nice fantasy, but it is also not how the human body works. because our body and our mind need a break. There is not an endless energy reserve that we can infinitely pull from. Sleep as a biological necessity is still kind of a mystery. And for something that every single creature does, it's interesting because we don't really

have a consensus as to why we need it. There are a few theories floating around. Let's talk about them. The first one is the energy conservation theory. So this theory suggests that the main purpose of a good night's sleep is to reduce our energy use during the times of the day, the nighttime, when it would have been inconvenient and less efficient to hunt for food. We need to shut down at some point in the day to save energy for when we are awake. And because our brain is the biggest use of energy in our body, turning it off for a set period of the day saves us a lot of calories. It doesn't mean that sleeping less burns more calories.

In fact, you're more likely to hold on to calories if you are not sleeping enough because essentially what happens is your metabolism slows down and says, hey, wait, we're used to having this whole shutdown period where the brain is doing nothing and we can just kind of do our thing. Now the brain is staying awake. It's using so much more energy. Let's slow down how we use calories, how we use fat, how we use glucose, whatever energy store it's pulling from because we're going to need more of that because the brain

doesn't want to go anywhere. The brain doesn't want to shut off. So that's the energy restoration theory. Basically, we conserve energy by not using our brain or hours of the day. The other theory is cellular restoration theory, which is the one I believe most in, I would say, although I'm sure it's a combination. The cellular restoration theory says that our body needs sleep in order to repair and regrow cells throughout the body that have been exhausted or stretched during the day. It kind of also relates to brain plasticity as well. And there's a theory around that brain plasticity theory which says that sleep occurs primarily for our brains to reorganize our neurons and our nerve cells.

When you sleep, your brain's waste clearance system is well at work there, clearing out waste from the central nervous system and making sure that everything is like almost doing like a deep clean, like doing like a refresh before we wake up for the next day. It's getting rid of all of the excess glucose, cortisol neurotransmitters that haven't been reabsorbed, which build up throughout the day so we can wake up with a clean slate and do it all over again. So research suggests that sleep contributes to memory function as well by converting short-term memory. into long-term memories. Now this is a process that we call memory consolidation. It's not just about making new memories, but also clearing out, erasing unneeded information that might otherwise take up

space in our minds. So the saying and the feeling is that almost all of our memories are consolidated during sleep. I remember being in high school and people saying that if you read your notes right before bed, you would remember them better in the morning. And this kind of like myth is based off of this theory that sleep is where we form long term memories. So if information is processed closer to when we fall asleep, they'll be processed better. Not exactly correct, but really nice try. It's more so that our brain receives a whole lot of information throughout the day, more than it can process, because whilst we are awake, we're also actively filtering through stimuli in our environment, trying to problem solve. So we use sleep.

is a basically, you know, as a way to say, okay, enough, let's shut down. We need some time. We need some quiet time to do our memory admin. It's why our memory seems to decline or become a lot more difficult, why we become more forgetful if you haven't been sleeping particularly well. Without sleep, our brain health declines significantly, as does our cognitive and mental and even social functioning during the day. sleep also helps us with emotional regulation.

I think we all know that. If you've ever had a really terrible night's sleep and like snapped at somebody, this explains it. It's the same reason why they tell you to sleep on something if you're angry. If you're angry at a partner, at a friend, at a co-worker, whatever it may be, the less sleep you get, the harder it is to control your emotional state. And the more irritable you'll become, the more likely you're going to say things that you don't. main. So let's actually dive into this further. What is going to happen to you and I if we don't get

enough sleep? Well, a whole range of things. Most importantly, what's going to happen is we're going to find ourselves in sleep debt. Sleep debt is when you sleep fewer hours than your body needs. It's basically it. It's like you overdraw your bank account. You're overdrawing the amount of rest that your body needs to function. Sleep debt is cumulative, meaning that if you regularly get less sleep than you should, you're going to have more sleep debt. Here is the scary thing. So there's an article written by Harvard Health about a recent paper that was published in the current biology journal. And it said that we actually can't recover that debt. We cannot make up our sleep debt for, you know, over a weekend or by sleeping in.

because what we have done is disturbed our body's rhythm and given it less than it required. And it's not very forgiving or understanding of that. That's especially hard for people who may suffer from things like insomnia, right? They're constantly in sleep debt. Insomnia is this type of sleep disorder where it's really difficult for people to fall asleep or stay asleep. And obviously it makes sense that people who are experiencing this, not only are they super frustrated because it is a vital human, biological, bodily need to rest. But it means that they are

increasing their emotional sensitivity. They're more likely to experience poorer concentration, irritability. It can even increase our risk factor of things like chronic diseases, like diabetes, like hypertension, like heart disease. I want to go back there and just correct myself. It's not that they're choosing this, right? It's not that they are deliberately increasing their susceptibility. It's just that a failure to sleep has a lot of secondary consequences. It even contributes to hallucinations or an increase in what we call microsleeps. So if you've seen any road safety billboards recently, I think you'll be familiar with this idea whereby our brain can flip very rapidly

between being asleep and being awake in a matter of seconds. but that lapse can kind of be life or death. Our body will start to shut down when we don't sleep and it will force us into a place of unconsciousness because it desperately needs time to build back up those energy stores, to restore cells and neural connections and to just be a functioning organism. So this kind of brings me to the infamous Russian sleep experiment. Now, this sleep experiment is very famous, very well known, I think, but it's also probably not true. It probably didn't happen.

Very sorry to burst the bubble of my fellow dark history lovers. But despite that, I do love talking about this urban myth, because whoever came up with it got some things very right about sleep. So if you don't know the story, the story goes that Soviet-era scientists created this stimulant, which they believed would enable soldiers to not require sleep for up to 30 days a month. Let's just pause. Who thinks that that is possible? That's ridiculous.

But as the urban myth goes, they tried to test this new gas on five political prisoners that they had. And they promised that these prisoners would go free if they survived. They locked these five men in a little chamber and they started pumping in this stimulant in gas form. Within a few days, the men were exhibiting the kind of paranoia and psychosis that is very typical of sleep deprivation. But as time went on, they began to act even more strangely. And once the scientists went in, they found that a couple of them had died and the remaining of them exhibited very violent behavior, had these strange energy bursts, hallucinations, and then as soon as they did fall asleep, they died. Let's just be clear this did not actually happen because it would be

physically impossible to stay awake for more than 10 days. Actually, the world record for how long someone has stayed awake was back in the 60s. It was set by this man named Randy Gardner. And I think he only lasted in like, I think it was 600 hours. I don't know. I think it was like, yeah, maybe, I don't know how many days it was. I'll put it in the notes because I think it was around 600 hours. I think it was like 14 days. Hi, this is future Gemma coming back to say it was actually 264 hours. Let's continue. But whilst he was doing that, he experienced some insane behavior and cognitive changes. Now, I will say he was being like heavily supervised by doctors and scientists from Stanford University.

But as time went on, they started asking him to do these small cognitive tests. And each day they hit they would ask him to do the same one. So one of these tests was to start at 100 and subtract 7 until he got to zero. The first few days he could do it, he started to slow down. By the last day, he couldn't make it past 65 before he stopped. And when they asked him, they were like, hey, why did you stop counting? He was like, what are you asking me? What are you telling me?

I don't even know what I meant to be doing right now. He also forgot his name. He forgot his age. He even forgot his race. Randy was Caucasian by the end of this period. He was claiming that he was African American. And he truly believed it. All of this sounds like insane, but it did happen.

And it's really scary to me to think about how much we can mentally decline because of sleep deprivation. For me, I don't think I can last more than two days. Good job, Brandy. However many days, he did it. It was definitely more than me. When I flew to New York last year, I'm so bad at sleeping on planes, so I was awake for over 24 hours. I couldn't, my eyes couldn't focus.

I got like a terrible blood nose, the first I've ever had in my life. I was so irritable. I couldn't make sense of my surroundings. I was like, didn't know what I needed to do. Eventually I fell asleep on this couch that I found in a shopping center before I could check into my hotel. So I think that that really highlights the dangers here, right? you know, a couple of days where we get six, seven hours, it's not going to kill you, you will be in sleep debt.

But when we consistently pursue sleep deprivation, we are going to see very real physical, emotional, cognitive, and mental consequences. So that's one side of an extreme spectrum, ultimate sleep deprivation from our friend Randy and our Russian friends, maybe, maybe not. But we can also oversleep, which has its own set of health risks. there is a nice sweet spot for how much sleep we should be getting. And like anything, sleep can be used as a form of not self-harm, but self-sabotage. So I want to talk about that after this break as well as kind of getting into the interactions between sleep and mental health. We'll be back in just a second.

2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory.

We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the reasons. result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little? little Kim, well you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jay. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS. on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations

with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it, and we don't know when we've done enough.

Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely.

And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Keer Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free, our heart radio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring. inconsistencies in her story.

This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

Greg, a lesbian, Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news

at Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The interactions between

sleep and mental health are A, endless and B, very well documented. They are also multidirectional, meaning that sleep impacts our mental well-being and our mental well-being impacts our sleep. Sleep plays a crucial role in maintaining mental health. It's not to say that it is a cure, more so that just the quality and duration of sleep directly impacts our emotional regulation as we've spoken about, our cognitive functions and our ability to filter through our thought. So research indicates that consistent, insufficient or poor quality sleep can actually contribute to more intense mental health symptoms. This is particularly when it comes to things like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder. These kinds of conditions seem to really suffer when we have less mental energy, I would say, or less restorative time to a

allow us to function at our best and to manage the ways that our emotions are more complex because of these conditions. Additionally, it's interesting because if you do have one of those mental health conditions, you're also more likely to experience disruptions in sleep patterns. So you're kind of locked into this like terrible cycle. Insomnia was something we spoke about before and insomnia can be a symptom of anxiety. Even depression. Oversleeping can be a sign of the extreme fatigue that we also see with depressive episodes or symptoms. We can also use sleep as a form of self-sabotage. So self-sabotage refers to an intentional action that kind of undermines our ability to

accomplish our goals. Now, these are goals that we want to accomplish. There is just some part of us that maybe doesn't think that we're worthy, that maybe is scared of what would happen if we did, that maybe is procrastinating or getting weighed down by insecurity, perfectionism, self-doubt. When we decide to sleep in, stay in bed, you know, indulge in a dysregulated sleeping habits and sleeping pattern, this might indicate that there are other areas of our life that we are dissatisfied with. And so sleep becomes a way of allowing us to switch off and allowing us to almost get in our own way in a sense.

So basically what I'm trying to say is sleep is a way for us to feel like we're doing something productive, right? We feel like we're resting our body. Sometimes we really do need that if we're burnt out, right? And we have been chasing a goal for a long time. But on the other end of the spectrum, it can also be this way of self-sabotaging, of being almost self-destructive. So if you want a good but non-scientific book about this, there is one that went particularly viral on TikTok recently, and it was called my year of rest and relaxation. I read this

quite recently. It basically tells the story of this woman. I would say she is a very unlike a boar's protagonist, but she believes that if she sleeps for a whole year, she'll somehow fix everything in her life, but she also believes that she'll be able to ignore her problems. This book is great, and it's not obviously about sleep. It's about the things that happen in the moments that she is awake that contribute to her wanting to rest. But I think that things are a lot easier when we are unconscious, right? No wonder we use sleep as a form of avoidance from the problems that we face when we're awake. There is another concept I want to talk about here called revenge, bedtime, procrastination.

This is a Chinese concept whereby when we don't have much control, over our daytime life, we refuse to prioritize sleep in order to regain some sense of freedom during those late night hours. So this is actually quite common amongst high schoolers, for example, who have to go to school for a set period of every day, but also people in their 20s and their 30s who are working really long, exhausting corporate jobs, service jobs, sacrificing their personal lives for their careers and for a service to others. And they kind of quote unquote, get back at the system in the evenings to steal some of that personal time. Now, this idea of procrastination makes it sounds like we are doing things we have perhaps put off and doing them when we should be sleeping.

Not always the case. Sometimes we are just doing things simply for our pleasure and we feel like we need to do them, right? Like rearranging your bookshelf at like 3 a.m. online shopping, cleaning out all your bathroom cabinets spontaneously, doing like an extravagant makeup look before you fall asleep. All of this is taking from our sleep, but it's depositing time back in our leisure bank, which we may be, you know, gravely missing because of how much our waking hours are taken up by work or other responsibilities. It's interesting because this is being reported more and more, especially as studies are showing that around 60% of us are getting less than the recommended 7 to 8 hours. We're averaging about 6 hours at the moment. Averaging means that

there are a lot of us who are getting less than that. And the biggest contributors to this lack of sleep that we are enduring as a society are stress, busy work schedules and school schedules, people are spending more time at work, more time studying more time working than ever before, then also things like pollution, noise pollution, sleeping environment and responsibilities that just come with life. You know, our lives are increasingly busy and we are overstretched. We need to juggle work, life, friends, relationships, family, fitness, well-being, eating three meals a day, keeping our houses clean, just keeping up with our. own needs. And I think in a world that is steering more towards the glorification of hustle culture,

sleep is seen as a luxury, even sometimes as a point of laziness. This whole narrative that to rest is to not be self-disciplined, to not be committed to your job or to school or to your life, I think it admits a huge part of the narrative, which is that sleep gives life. and rest is truly, truly important for us to restore connections, restore our energy levels, restore ourselves, and actually function optimally. So that brings me to this concept of sleep hygiene and how we can get more from our sleep, how we can avoid those nights when you desperately want some shut-eye like you crave it and you just won't stop tossing and turning.

our quality of sleep does have a lot to do without choices and behaviours, from consuming caffeine to close to our bedtime, even exercising in the evenings, or reaching a point of exhaustion that is so extreme that our body actually starts to go in the opposite direction. It starts to pump us with adrenaline and cortisol to keep us awake so that when it's time to sleep, we actually like physically can't. But the biggest devil of all of them in the discussion at the moment is our phones. and using our phones before bed.

Our phones, social media, websites, whatever you are on, literally floods our brains with information and bright lights, sounds, activity, and of course, as a result, it floods our brains with neurotransmitters which keep our mind active when we want them to be winding down. The reason this happens is because screens emit blue light, which can interfere with our body's natural production, and release of melatonin. Melatonin, of course, is the hormone responsible for regulating our sleep wake cycle. Blue light is particularly bad in this situation because it tricks our brain

into thinking that it's still daytime. So we should be awake, we should be alert, we should be ready to go. Exposure to screens before bed suppresses the release of melatonin, so it makes it more difficult to fall asleep, but then it bumps off our sleep wake cycle so we wake. We wake up later as well. So this really disrupts our body's circadian rhythm. It leads to sleep disturbances. It leads to revenge sleep, sleep debt, and it just impacts our overall ability to sustainably function in our lives, in our relationships, in every facet of what we do. So if you want better sleep, your first step is to create a screen-free bedroom or space for yourself. So according to the Sleep Health Foundation, it's really important to actually train your brain

to link your bed with sleep and sleep only. So if possible, you want to avoid bringing anything into your bedroom that makes you feel like you are not resting. So that doesn't mean that you can't like be on your phone or your laptop in your room. You know, I know a lot of us live in chairhouses or live with our parents and we don't necessarily want to be doing everything that we do on our laptops and our phones and our iPads like in the living room or in the dining room. But try and keep it out of your bed. That is the space you want to associate with rest, not with alertness. So I started doing this recently. Oh my goodness. It's like lights out for me as soon as I'm in my bed because that is a space now that I only use for one activity and that association means

I'm better able to just switch off. My brain is queued to knowing that this is the time to sleep. If you feel like you hate going from like being immediately on in your life to like immediately off and having to go into bed, turn the lights off and just like lie there and pretend to be asleep before you actually fall asleep, you can present yourself with alternatives. I think reading before bed is amazing, obviously, but also sleep podcasts are a great help. There is one show that does this so well called, what's it called? Okay, it's called Quiet Bedtime Stories and Meditations. And they have this episode called King Kajada. I don't know when I found this show, but, or I found this episode, this episode is amazing, but it honestly lulls me into such, like, peaceful rest.

I'm going to be honest, I've never made it pass like the first 10 minutes. And it's a really great thing to add to your routine when you aren't someone who can immediately relax as soon as your head hits the pillow. So let's talk about some other tips. Firstly, I love this one. Create an environment you actually want to be in. One that is cool, one that is dark, one that is quiet, one that is comfortable. I will never understand people who can sleep in like a boiling hot room.

You know, I need it to be like 15 degrees Celsius in order for me to fall asleep. I like to have one too many blankets. I like to cocoon myself into like a little burrito. It also really makes the difference to like get nice bed sheets because you want your brain to be like, this is a comforting, cozy, peaceful space. I enjoy being here. You know, your stained white bed sheets from your first year of uni, which are like weirdly itchy. They might be the economic choice, but I don't think they're conducive to restfulness.

This is such like an adult thing to say. honestly, I think I turned 24 and I immediately had like a sheep preference and a mattress preference. And now, if I'm on a firm mattress, it's not happening. You know, I get it. It's really giving princess in the pee. But honestly, sleep is an investment. And as is your mattress, your memory foam pillow, your cotton sheets. My mom always said like sleep is not about being cheap and I didn't really understand that when I was younger and broke. But now I do.

and it doesn't mean that you need to spend like an insane amount of money that is out of your budget. You can get secondhand really good mattresses. You can find really good sheets that are on sale. I just think it's an important thing. You'll have it for a long time. And it will contribute to you just feeling more alive in your waking life. So also try and be consistent with your sleep schedule. I know this is really hard, especially in our 20s.

but at least doing it during the week is important. Your body's circadian rhythm functions, they're set on a loop. And typically they align with sunrise and sunset or when you tell your body to switch off and then seven, eight hours after that point. Being consistent with when you fall asleep during the week, even on weekends, if you can, helps kind of train your brain into being like, all right, this is the time when we switch off. Same time, every day, no surprises. It's really very valuable. There was a study published in the National Library of Medicine from 2009. It highlights that irregular sleep patterns can alter our levels of melatonin.

It can alter the signals that are telling our brain to sleep. And what that will mean is that no matter how hard you try, you're not going to get to sleep unless your melatonin has been released and is present in your body because you can't physically shut down. you can take a supplement, but you can also produce it naturally. So I think it may just be the case that your melatonin release is being delayed by poor sleep habits and routine, and you can get back onto a normal sleep routine by remaining consistent. So even if you get to bed by nine, I'm nine so early, maybe it's not for some of you, let's say 10, put it in even 10.

You're in bed by 10, but you find yourself like tossing and turning till 12. good. Stay in bed. Don't go on your phone. Sooner or later, your body is going to get trained to be like, no. This is our bedtime now. This is when we're hitting the hay. On that note, try and expose yourself to sunlight or the outdoors immediately after waking, normally within the first hour, because again, this is going to help your body clock switch off production of melatonin and reset you to a regular pattern. You know, humans are meant to be outdoor creatures, not indoor creatures. We used to live our lives and our waking hours by the sun until Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. No, just kidding.

Like, in all seriousness, I think the best way to do anything for your health is to do it the way that has been done for generations and generations, meaning that the best way to get quality sleep is to align your body to how evolutionarily and biologically you were kind of evolving and developed to seek rest. I think it comes a lot easier when we do that. Another tip, exercise more, but try not to do anything intense before bed. I think it's a double-edged sword. Exercise obviously increases exhaustion, but it also, you know, means that our bodies kind of are flooded with a lot of activity, a lot of adrenaline,

norapinephrine, a lot of dopamine that can keep us awake for longer. Now, there has been studies into this, and there was one by Harvard Health published a few years back, and your average evening workout is not going to hurt you too much. But if you're doing a full-on heavy cardio, hit workout, burning hundreds, thousands of calories an hour, like 30 minutes before bed, coming home, showering and expecting yourself to fall asleep, I don't think that you're going to get to that level of deep sleep that we need for restoration any quicker. So it's important to make exercise a component to, you know, actually use the energy stores that your body wants you to use throughout the day. But try not to

do it too close to when you really want to like be asleep, be dreaming, be counting sheep. Final tip, try and avoid alcohol. I know that alcohol helps us fall asleep quicker. So if you are someone who is dealing with insomnia, there is a huge urge to just like have a nightcap. But alcohol is an inhibitor or a downer. That's what causes us to feel sleepy because it increases GABA, which slows down the specific signals in our central nervous system.

But as the alcohol is metabolized and processed, it causes an additional spike in glutamate. Now glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter. So your brain is basically switching back on as the alcohol wears off at like 3, 4 a.m. in the morning. This may be why you might notice like after a heavy night of drinking, all you want to do is have a sleep in and you're waking up at 7 a.m. Kind of like cursing the sun.

Can't get back asleep. It's because your brain is trying to level out the gabber that it received. from processing and metabolizing alcohol by spiking the glutamate to get that balance back to kind of a nice homeo point of homeostase as a point of normalcy. Alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, those are our big sleep. No-noes. I also just want to say, don't get too caught up and worrying about when you'll fall asleep. Just stay kind of focused on being present in your body and relaxing.

I know it can be stressful. And yes, I've spoken a lot about the harms of not getting a good night's sleep. Don't let that become an anxiety for you. Don't let that become a point of fixation. Your body will do what it needs to do naturally unless you do have a sleep disorder. So if you are consistently experiencing terrible sleep, you're waking up in the middle of the night, that is your opportunity to go and see a doctor. But eventually you will fall asleep.

Eventually your eyes will close. eventually your brain will shut down. We spoke about those experiments before, right? Our bodies cannot stay alert and functioning at all hours of the day. So it's going to do what it needs to do biologically and evolutionarily and just like forward survival and it will make you fall asleep. There's no need to stress. There's no need to stress.

You're going to be okay. You cannot stay awake forever. I promise. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. It's a bit different. It was science heavy, but we've never spoken about it before, so I thought it deserved a spot on the podcast feed. If you want to come back and listen. If you want to check out our episode on Dreams, it's literally the psychology of dreams by the psychology of your 20s.

It's a great companion episode to this one. Again, one of my favorite episodes that we've ever done. Make sure that you share this with someone who you think might need it. We all have that friend who's up till 3 a.m. and then is up again at 7 a.m. Don't shame them, but maybe give them a little nudge in the sleepiness direction. If you want to see more behind the scenes, you want to follow along with the podcast, follow along with me, you can follow us at that psychology podcast.

You can also send episode suggestions over there. We read every single one, even if we can't get back to you, and we definitely take on board your suggestions. I love seeing our community grow over there. So get in touch, say hi. we would love to see you. Make sure you're following along on Spotify or Apple Codcast, wherever you are listening right now.

And give us a five-star review if you're feeling it. If you're feeling especially generous. All right. We're going to head off, but until next time, sleep tight and be kind and gentle with yourselves. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games.

This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hope. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alesspian. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental

toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO.% on the IHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast Guaranteed human