Neuroscience of Sleep
Understand who your body sleeps. Poor sleep creates many emotional and behavioral symptoms that can be misdiagnosed for a mental health disorder. In order to fix your sleep, you must know your sleep.
The restorative metabolic processes that take place during sleep are so powerful. Sleep supports brain health by clearing out toxins that accumulate during the day. This detoxification process helps prevent neurodegenerative diseases, initiates DNA repair, stimulates protein synthesis (muscle growth), growth hormone, and cell regeneration. sciencedirect2024
Most effective when side sleeping, the lymphatic system, a network of vessels that clear waste from the central nervous system (CNS), is very active during sleep. WashingtonUniversityMedicine.
Poor sleep can cause symptoms such as anxiety, depression, irritability, and ADHD-like behaviors. These are often misdiagnosed as mental health disorders when the root cause is actually not getting quality sleep. Understanding how sleep works is very important. Deep sleep allows for cell turn over and muscle protein synthesis to name a few. REM sleep allows for emotional processing and a kind of ‘sorting’. Your dreams might seem crazy to you but it is your clever mind processing things while you sleep so you don’t have to. Light phases of sleep are restful and restorative.
Understand your stages of sleep. A 4 minute listen from leading sleep expert, Dr. Matthew Walker on the stages of sleep.
Your Circadian Rhythm
The human circadian rhythm is the brain’s natural response to natural light; to rise and be active at sunrise and to rest and restore, beginning at sunset. Your body and brain desperately want you to function by your natural circadian rhythms. Dawn light has red and infrared frequencies, light that is soothing and anti-inflammatory. Once the sun comes over the horizon, the sun’s rays contain blue light which signals the brain to be awake and active. Greeting the dawn each day with your eyes is a free and easy first step to a good night’s sleep. Good sleep begins first thing in the morning.
“During sunrise or sunset, when the Sun is close to the horizon, the light must travel through more of the atmosphere than it does when the Sun is overhead. This results in more scattering of light, including longer wavelengths such as yellow, orange, and red, which creates colorful sunrise and sunset skies.” US National Science Foundation
Watch this 12 minute video on the neuroscience of sleep from Dr. Andrew David Huberman, a Stanford University neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology.
Effects of light on circadian rhythms NIH 2019,
Retinal intake of sunrise light NIH 2021
Blue light rays are emitted from the sun (cloudy or not), from most artifical lighting, and the screens of all technological devices. Blue light is essential for signaling the brain to be awake, alert, and produce dopamine for focus, but it needs to go off at night or else it confuses the brain entirely from the natural cycles of waking and sleeping. You might think that by having exposure to blue light into the night will make you a productive machine, but like over charging your phone, dopamine has it’s limits and needs the recharge of 7 to 8 hours of sleep to replenish. All of your metabolic systems do.
If you are interested in reading further research on light and your metabolic health, look into Dr. Alexis Cowan. Dr. Cowan specializes in metabolic physiology out of Princeton University.
Even if there wasn’t any scientific data on how sunrise and sunset light affect the brain and circadian rhymes, the act of just watching these earthly processes brings about a sense of amazement, mindfulness ,and presence. It is no wonder that indigenous cultures all over the world pray at dawn and dusk.
Beyond the Circadian Rhythm
In ‘Neuroscience of Sleep’, we defined the human circadian rhythm as our brain taking red light at sunrise, blue light all day, and red light again at sunset, setting us up for sleep.
However something I recently found in the research is that humans also attune to the moon cycles and the seasons. Sleep patterns adjust to the Earth cycles. Even more reason to be not only in tune with yourself, but with your awareness of the plant you live on.
The synchronization of human sleep to the moon phases is documented and research indicates it can negatively affect your circadian rhythms. Closing curtains during the nights up to and after a full moon can assist your brain to stay on it’s desired sleep track. Enjoying a full moon rise is irresistible to me personally, I just don’t spend a lot of time staring at it and let it make it’s journey across the night sky while we sleep.
In the western hemisphere, we are in the Fall Equinox. The sun is rising a bit later each morning. Many of us are very aware that two months ago in high summer, we were rising at 6am without a problem and now we notice that it is more like 6:30am or 7am that we are awaking naturally.
Sleep Routines (also referred to as ‘sleep hygiene’)
Your brain loves a routine. Once you develop a regular way of preparing for sleep, your brain will recognize the actions and begin to shut down, anticipating sleep. Be curious. Create a routine and follow it for a week. Notice how you start yawning during certain steps of your sleep routine. A good sleep routine doesn’t have too many steps in it or you might be too tired to complete it and then it’s not a routine.
A few pre routines notes. Some people find that eating or drinking too close to bedtime interrupts their sleep, which makes sense because the body is using energy to digest and process instead of resetting other systems. This is not true for all people. Know yourself. Alcoholic drinks before bed can make you sleepy and relaxed, but it will negatively affect the length and depth of your sleep so it’s not worth it. Some of my clients have reported great results sipping an evening non-alcoholic drink containing magnesium which can relax muscles. The Sleep Foundation has some compelling data on the use of magnesium for sleep improvement.
Here is an example of a simple nightly sleep routine.
- 9:30pm, turn off lights in the house
- Use the bathroom
- Brush your teeth
- Wash your face
- Do some skin/hair care
- Get into clothing you sleep in (if you aren’t already)
- Cue up my favorite sleep meditations
- Phone off
- 10pm, lights out
Sweet dreams.
