All Your Brain Wants Is Sleep!

Yesterday, I fumbled over my words, missed important conversational cues, and felt slow in all my reaction times. Memories were foggier and I had to stall while I tried to sift through my thoughts. I sat down to try to write this post, and words wouldn’t flow. I felt like I was moving through water all day. You might think I had started drinking by 7:00am. Frustratingly, this was actually the result of not getting a full night of sleep.

If you’re nodding along thinking, “Been there…,” I’m not surprised! And if you’ve ever had an “off” day and hadn’t stopped to think about why, consider the high likelihood that it was due to the sleep (or lack thereof) you had the night before.

More Than Just “Rest”

Sleep doesn’t just affect your general energy. When you go to sleep, you’re not just turning off the tv for the night and turning it back on when you wake up. Sleep influences just about every element of your brain, and subsequently, your day to day functioning. While your body is inactive, your brain is buzzing with activity.

Sleep is broken into stages. Stages 1-4 are classified as non-rapid eye movement sleep, or slow wave sleep (SWS). These stages are followed by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Depending on the stage of sleep you’re in, your brain is doing everything from sending a relay of signals to get you to sleep, producing or halting various neurotransmitters, replaying and processing memories and emotions, or choreographing the “washing” of the fluid surrounding your brain.

Zzz’s For Memories

While you sleep, the hippocampus (brain region crucial for memory) interacts with the cortex and the visual area of the brain. In fact, studies have found that memories from the day are replayed during sleep, resulting in significantly more effective memory consolidation compared with daytime learning. When subjects of one study were deprived of certain types of sleep, they demonstrated significantly worsened learning of a novel task from the previous day compared with those who were allowed a full night’s rest.

Less Slow Waves = More Slow Days

So, you may not remember so well after a poor night of sleep, but wait there’s more! Sleep-deprived brains actually show slowed activity and sleep-like waves in some parts of the brain during wakefulness. This results in slower processing of information and subsequently slower reactions in everyday activities. Just take a second to think about all the tasks you do in a day that require speedy reaction times. I’m cringing thinking about driving under the influence (of a slowed brain). This slowing also interferes with in the moment encoding and memory. We now know that memory is impacted by your sleep the night before and the night after an event!

Brain Washing… But In a Good Way

Your brain is bathed in a fluid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). As it turns out, the CSF moves in waves while you sleep in order to rid the brain of toxic proteins and waste. Once the brain’s neuronal actions start to change in response to sleep, blood flow in the brain is altered, and it is thought that this change causes the wave of CSF to come in and clean things up. Less sleep means less waste management!

Prioritize Shut Eyes

When your brain is missing out on a full night’s sleep, the consequences are significant. New memories may not be successfully stored. Your reaction time slows. Your brain may be holding on to waste and losing out on daily refreshment.

I promise we’ll talk about how to improve your sleep (trust me, I’m nerding out on it!). For now though, I just want to yell from the mountain tops that SLEEP IS SO IMPORTANT. Take a look at your priorities. If sleep is anything below 1st, we’ve got some work to do.

Let’s be honest, sleep tends to take the back seat a lot. For social events, study sessions/work projects, just because (are you a bedtime procrastinator?)… A good place to start with all of this information is to figure out how to set boundaries around and prioritize your sleep. Let’s try to rationalize picking sleep over our usual priorities:

1. I have to get this paper/report done!

THE BAD NEWS: Based on what we’ve explored of your circadian rhythm, and your attention, you now know that when you push your brain past its attention limit and its normal cycle, you’re fighting an uphill battle. If you’re on day 2 of sleep deprivation, your brain is also less primed for new learning, so you’ll be working on overdrive to try to encode new information while you work

THE COMPROMISE: Make a plan for finishing your task based on what you’ve learned about your own attentional abilities. Utilize times in your day when you’re more productive and avoid letting productive time leak into bed time.

2. I have to keep studying for this test tomorrow!

THE BAD NEWS: See above. Then also consider that sleep actually does a huge part of the work of memory consolidation. While you’re trying to cram information into your memory, you’re hurting your chances of it effectively staying there by sacrificing your sleep.

THE COMPROMISE: Prioritize getting enough deep sleep (usually more highly concentrated in the beginning hours of sleep) to allow yourself the chance to encode what you’ve already studied, then set an earlier alarm to continue your studying.

3. I want to stay out late with my friends.

THE BAD NEWS: Staying out late means you’re going to lose out on the washing of toxins from your brain. And, socializing late at night tends to come with other decisions that introduce more toxins and sleep-depriving elements including alcohol, sugary foods, and other stimulants.

THE COMPROMISE: Try planning ahead to give yourself a later wake up on the days you know you’ll be out later. Or, suggest an earlier alternative: appetizers, happy hour, a walk in the park, exercise class, early movie…

4. I’m a bedtime procrastinator.

THE BAD NEWS: You’re not only hurting your memory, attention, processing speed, and washing of brain toxins, but you’re probably also doing this many days in a row, or habitually. This doesn’t allow your brain a chance to catch up and continues to compound the effects.

THE COMPROMISE: Set concrete goals. Tell someone close to you about your goals to keep yourself accountable. Create an enjoyable bedtime routine that you look forward to.