Sleep is incredibly complex and interesting, and has surprisingly close ties to health. Sleep has many functions and provides countless nighttime benefits to our brains and bodies. It seems that all the vital organs in our body or the inner workings of the brain are optimized and improved through sleep. Likewise, they suffer when they don't get enough sleep

Sleeping in the brain enriches various functions. Including the ability to learn and remember, make logical decisions and choices

Sleep also generously serves our mental health, recalibrating the emotional circuits in the brain so that we can deal with various interpersonal and psychological challenges with composure the next day.

We are even beginning to understand the most mysterious and controversial part of all conscious experience—dreams. Dreams provide a unique set of benefits to all species lucky enough to dream, including humans, including the neurochemical Sapphire, which soothes painful memories and soothes the brain. and providing a virtual reality space where the brain can blend past and present knowledge to inspire creativity

In the body below the brain, sleep replenishes our immune system's armamentarium, helping to fight malignant tumors, protect against infection, and ward off a variety of diseases.

Sleep can reset the body's metabolic state by regulating insulin balance and glucose circulation.

Sleep also further regulates our diet, helping to control weight through healthy food choices rather than reckless urges to overeat.

Adequate sleep maintains a thriving microbial community in the gut, from which our nutritional health originates

Not only can it lower blood pressure, but it can also keep the heart in good condition. A full night's sleep has beneficial therapeutic effects on the cardiovascular system. During deep NREM sleep, the brain sends shock signals to the sympathetic branch of the body's nervous system responsible for the fight-or-flight response, which continues long into the night. Therefore, deep sleep prevents increases in physiological stress, which can lead to increased blood pressure, heart attacks, heart failure, and strokes

Natural deep sleep helps consolidate new memory imprints in the brain, part of which is strengthening the connections between synapses that make up memory circuits

The surprising impact of sleep on the personal improvement of professionals. Our physical health, mental health, emotional intelligence, memory, athletic ability, learning ability, productivity, creativity, attractiveness, and even appetite, the abilities that make our daytime life rich and colorful, are all inseparable from the sleep we get at night. relation

Signals from the 24-hour biological clock deep in the brain

A chemical that builds up in your brain creates sleep pressure

Approximately 40% of the total population

Approximately 30% of the total population

The remaining 30% are between morning and evening types, tending to be night people

It is to make your body and behavioral activities, whether it is internal activities, such as temperature, or external activities, such as eating, consistent with the daily rotation of the earth on its axis, that is, to form a regular pattern. The orbital mechanics of the sun's appearance during the day and its hiding during the night are synchronized.

While daylight isn't the only signal your brain uses to reset your biological clock, it does so long as it's present. He remains the main and priority signal. The brain also uses food, exercise, temperature fluctuations, and even regular interactions. These signals have the ability to reset the biological clock, which can accurately maintain the 24-hour rhythm

Video 1-Pineal Gland.mp4

The pineal gland of modern creatures has degenerated to a certain extent, among which humans are the most degenerated. Animals in nature can respond to natural disasters in advance, but humans are usually unaware of it. Therefore, some people speculate that the pineal gland controls Premonition ability, this ability of humans has deteriorated a lot; some people speculate that the pineal gland can also respond to certain rays based on the fact that the pineal gland can respond to light waves.

precursor nutrition

The synergistic effect of various nutrients

Melatonin's role is to provide formal instructions to initiate sleep, but is not involved in sleep itself

Melatonin itself cannot effectively assist sleep, but has a significant sleep placebo effect.

Your SCN relays its day-and-night signals to your brain and body through a circulating messenger called melatonin (the dark or vampire hormone). Under the direction of the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Melatonin begins to rise shortly after dusk and is released into the bloodstream from the pineal gland, located deep in the back of the brain. Melatonin provides a signal to the brain and body that we receive a notification that it is time to go into the night. That is, a biological command that sets the time for sleep.

In this way, melatonin helps regulate the timing of sleep by systematically signaling the entire collective. But melatonin has little effect on the formation of sleep itself

Principle of action

Your circadian rhythm controls wakefulness and sleep

The longer you are awake, the more adenosine accumulates and the more you crave sleep.

During non-rapid eye movement sleep: Between sleep stages, there will be periods when your eyeballs are stationary. Your eyeballs are stationary in their own sockets.

REM sleep: Corresponding rapid eye movement. During certain stages of sleep, the eyeballs will quickly move back and forth from side to side under the eyelids.

During REM sleep, all muscles are paralyzed, preventing the dreamer from performing the actions of the ongoing dream. However, the muscles that control the eyes are not affected by this paralysis. It is through this eye movement phenomenon that this stage of sleep gets its name.

Cycle every 90 minutes

Switches back and forth between NREM and REM every 90 minutes

In the first half of the night, most of the time is occupied by NREM

REM sleep dominates in the second half of the night, with almost no NREM

effect

Trying to get a long sleep at night, the average sleep duration is now less than seven hours

refers to sleeping longer at night and then taking a nap in the afternoon

Biphasic sleep can be observed in some napping cultures around the world. The researchers focused on cardiovascular changes, which showed a 37 percent increased risk of heart disease compared with those who took naps during the day. Not taking a nap increases mortality by more than 60%

When we break away from our innate habits of biphasic sleep, our lifespan is shortened

Naturally occurring two-way sleep and healthy eating habits appear to be the keys to longevity. This is a prescription written long ago in the genetic code of our ancestors

1. Before a human baby is born, he spends almost all of his time in a state similar to sleep, and most of the time is similar to REM sleep. The brain of an immature fetus in the womb has not yet developed the muscle-inhibiting system of an adult. However, other deep centers of the fetal brain are already taking shape, including those that produce sleep

2. During the second stage of development (approximately 23 weeks of gestation), most of the neural regulatory devices and switches required to produce non-rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement sleep have been developed and wired.

3. When the fetus enters the end of pregnancy, there will be some real awakening state. They are only awake for 2-3 hours a day in the womb

1. Produce circadian rhythm

2. Establish and increase neural pathways for the newborn brain

3. The emergence of daily rhythms

4. Two-way sleep mode

5. Increased intensity of deep non-rapid eye movement sleep

1. Remodeling of brain connections

2. Neural channels are more stable

3. Go to bed late and get up late

4. Change to a sober rhythm after adulthood

Why do schizophrenia, manic depression, major depressive disorder, and ADHD typically appear in childhood and adolescence?

1. Changes in deep non-rapid eye movement sleep always occur weeks or months before cognitive and developmental markers in the brain appear.

2. Deep sleep may be the driving force for brain maturation, not the other way around.

3. The wave pattern of maturation always begins in the back of the brain, where vision and spatial perception are driven, and progresses steadily forward as adolescence progresses.

4. The last stop on the journey of maturity is the frontal lobe, which is where rational thinking and key decisions are made.

1. Decrease in sleep quantity and sleep quality

2. Decreased sleep efficiency

3. The sleep time is wrong

Core sleep issues that occur with age

1. The stability of deep non-rapid eye movement sleep in the prime of life in the early 20s does not last long.

2. Fragmentation

3. Changes in Circadian Rhythm

1. As we age, the area of ​​the brain that ages most severely is the area that produces deep sleep—the central area of ​​the frontal lobe located above the bridge of the nose. The powerful brain waves of deep NREM sleep are generated in the central area of ​​the brain's frontal lobe, just a few inches above the bridge of the nose.

2. Compared with young people, the deep sleep of the elderly is reduced by 70%.

3. We found that these changes are not independent, but are related to each other. The more this particular central area of ​​the brain's frontal lobe degenerates in an older person, the more deep NREM sleep is reduced.

The hippocampus is a long, finger-shaped structure hidden deep in both sides of the brain. The hippocampus has two branches, extending into the center of the left and right brain respectively.

The hippocampus provides a short-term storage bank, or temporary information bank, for accumulating new memories. The hippocampus has a limited storage capacity, and if you exceed its capacity, you run the risk of not being able to add more information, or, equally worse, overwriting one memory with another, a condition known as "interfering amnesia" ACCIDENT

Sleep before learning can refresh our ability to initially form new memories

Experiments have shown that sleep restores the brain's learning ability and makes room for new memories. The process is—the more sleep spindles you acquire during a nap, the more your learning ability is restored when you wake up.

Analysis of brainwaves from the nap group in the study found that memory recovery was associated with lighter stages of non-rapid eye movement sleep, stage 2, specifically the brief, powerful surges in electrical activity called sleep spindles. Analyzing the surges in sleep spindles revealed a striking pattern of electrical pulse cycles that spread throughout the brain, repeating every 100-200 milliseconds.

Impulses are constantly moving back and forth between the short-term, limited storage space of the hippocampus and the long-term, larger storage location of the cerebral cortex. At this point we learn that a sleep electrical transaction is taking place in the background - moving fact-based memories from the temporary storage warehouse (hippocampus) to the long-term safe vault (cortex). In the process, sleep happily cleans out the hippocampus, freeing up a lot of free space for this short-term information store. When the participants woke up, there was a new space in the hippocampus to absorb new information, and the experiences remembered yesterday were moved to a longer-term safe place. Learning of new information can begin again the next day

The devastating effects on the brain are associated with many neuropsychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, suicide, stroke or chronic pain.

Inadequate sleep during childhood significantly predicted a child's earlier drug and alcohol intake in late adolescence. Between sleep and mental illness, any kind of serious mental illness is associated with abnormal sleep, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (once known as manic depressive disorder). ) are all so

Causes countless diseases and conditions such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, infertility, weight gain, obesity and immune deficiencies

Reaction times slow down. Performance is impaired, alertness and energy levels are reduced, and recovery from sleep deprivation is difficult. Degeneration of brain and body functions can also be clearly observed

In addition to the professional, mental and social impact, emotions affect the brain at a neurological level

Lack of sleep can go from irritable and anxious to unresponsive and sluggish in an instant, and back to an intensely negative state

Study in adolescents finds link between sleep disturbance and suicidal thoughts, attempts, and subsequent suicidal behavior

Teen suicide is the second leading cause of death after car accidents. Teenage sleep problems should be taken seriously by society and parents rather than suppressed, especially among young adults in developed countries who commit suicide.

Lack of sleep has also been linked to problems with aggressive bullying in children of all ages

Sleep deprivation also determines relapse rates in many addictions, as does the immeasurable lack of desire for reward controlled by the rational headquarters of the brain's prefrontal cortex.

That is "intensive amnesia". The damaged part of the brain is the hippocampus. This is the very structure that sleep deprivation attacks, preventing your brain from learning new things

Memories formed when sleep is deprived are weaker memories that dissipate quickly

Lack of sleep is a penetrating, corrosive force that weakens the memory-making apparatus in your brain, preventing you from building lasting imprints.

Dementia and cancer are both linked to sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation in brain-centered dementia is quickly becoming a key lifestyle factor in determining whether you develop Alzheimer's disease, and sleeping too little in adulthood significantly increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease

Sleep disorders and Alzheimer's disease interact in a self-fulfilling paraspiral that can trigger and worsen the disease

Alzheimer's disease is linked to the buildup of a protein called beta-amyloid, which clumps together into sticky clumps or plaques in the brain. Amyloid plaques are toxic to neurons and kill surrounding brain cells

Affect location

lymphoid system

Cardiovascular diseases

Metabolic disease: diabetes and weight

Reproductive system degeneration

immune system disorders

DNA damage

When you neglect sleep, you decide to genetically engineer yourself every night

Because sleep deprivation forces the sympathetic nervous system into overdrive, increased levels of sympathetic nerve activity in the body will cause an unnecessary and sustained inflammatory response in the immune system.

For example, some cancer cells attract inflammatory factors into tumors to help blood vessels proliferate and provide more nutrients and oxygen to the tumors.

Inflammatory factors associated with sleep deprivation can also be used to carve out a section from where the tumor is, anchoring the cancer. Begins to spread to other areas of the body, a state called metastasis, which is the process by which cancer destroys the initial boundaries of the original tissue and these tumors spread and expand. It is precisely caused by lack of sleep. But when cancer metastasizes (strongly triggered by a state of sleep deprivation) medical intervention is often ineffective and mortality rates gradually increase.

Immune cells called tumor-associated macrophages are a fundamental cause of the cancerous effects of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation reduces the number of a type of macrophage called M1 cells. M1 cells help fight cancer. However, sleep deprivation actually increases the number of another type of macrophage that promotes cancer growth, called M2 cells, and also provides lethal fertilizer for its proliferation.

1. The visuospatial area in the back of the brain dominates complex visual perception

2. Motor cortex that initiates movement

3. The hippocampus and its surrounding areas we talked about before, they support your autobiographical memory

4. The brain’s deep emotional center, the amygdala, and the cingulate cortex, a band-like tissue that sits above it and lines the brain’s inner surface, both of which help generate and process emotions.

①When we dream, key structures in the brain related to emotion and memory are reactivated during REM sleep, including the amygdala, emotion-related areas in the cortex, and the key memory center—the hippocampus.

②During REM sleep, the brain’s chemicals undergo surprising changes. When you enter dreaming sleep, the release of a key stress-related chemical called norepinephrine stops completely in your brain. REM sleep is the only time in a 24-hour day when this anxiety-inducing molecule is completely absent from your brain.

③During REM sleep, the brain reprocesses distressing memory experiences and themes under this neurochemically stable (low norepinephrine concentration) and "safe" dream condition.

④The dreaming state of REM sleep is a perfectly designed nighttime repair balm that can smooth the sharp edges of emotions in our daily lives. Dreams in REM sleep can gently remove emotions from our experiences.

1. The patient’s sleep, especially rapid eye movement sleep, is disrupted

2. The nervous system of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder releases higher than normal levels of norepinephrine.

3. One mechanism that causes post-traumatic stress disorder is that the level of norepinephrine in the brain is too high, which hinders the ability of these patients to enter and maintain normal REM sleep dreams. As a result, the brain is exposed to high levels of stress chemicals, preventing it from stripping away the emotions from traumatic memories at night.

It can reduce the level of norepinephrine in the brain of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder during sleep, thereby restoring the correct chemical conditions during sleep, allowing the brain to perform trauma treatment work, and then it should be able to improve the quality of REM sleep. Return to a healthier state

Some people can take greater advantage of their powers when it comes to problem solving and creativity by controlling their dreams.

Sleep stimulates understanding; dreaming sleep helps solve problems

REM sleep dreams not only take things a step further by merging information together in creative ways

Rapid eye movement sleep, the ability to create abstract general knowledge and high-level concepts from information sets

REM sleep provides superb, complementary benefits, mixing elements of memory with each other in abstract and very novel ways. During the dreaming sleep state, your brain mulls over the vast amount of acquired knowledge and extracts overarching rules and commonalities—the key points. We wake up with a modified "thinking network" that can find solutions to problems that were previously unsolvable.

①Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements

②Paul McCartney’s songs

③Writer Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel “Frankenstein”

REM sleep and dreaming attempt to apply what we learned during an experience to other stored memories in our memory.

①Sleepwalking

②Talk in sleep

③Eating during sleep

④Sending text messages while sleeping

⑤Sexual behavior during sleep

⑥Very rare murder in sleep

1. Lack of ability to produce sleep

2. Even though you have enough time to sleep

Therefore, even if patients with insomnia give themselves enough time, they still cannot produce enough sleep quantity and sleep quality.

In patients with insomnia, their emotion-generating areas and memory centers remain active, and the basic alertness certificate in the brainstem also stubbornly persists in the awake state. From beginning to end, the thalamus remains active and works as usual in the patient's brain during insomnia. Sleeping pills simply use primitive methods to calm the higher areas of your brain, or cortex.

1. On the one hand, genetic factors

2. Most insomnia is related to non-genetic factors or gene-environment (nature-nurture) interaction

1. Drug treatment

2. Non-drug treatment methods

In people with insomnia, common fight-or-flight nervous system activity triggers an increase in metabolic rate, leading to a higher core body temperature, but the reality is that core body temperature must be lowered several degrees before sleep can begin. Chapter 2 also mentions sleep related to temperature

are the hormones that increase alertness levels, cortisol, and the homologous neurochemical adrenaline. Elevation of norepinephrine. All three chemicals can increase heart rate. As we progress into light to deep sleep, our cardiovascular system gradually calms down. But active heart activity can make this transition more difficult. All three chemicals increase metabolic rate, which further increases core body temperature, again exacerbating the first problem

Also related to these chemicals are changes in brain activity patterns linked to the body's sympathetic nervous system. Activity levels in the parts of the brain associated with emotional stimulation (the amygdala) and those associated with recall (hippocampus) decrease rapidly during sleep, as do basic resolution areas in the brainstem. This is not the case for patients with insomnia. Their emotion-generating areas and memory centers remain active, as does the basic alert center in the brain stem, which stubbornly continues to be awake and alert. From head to tail, the thalamus (the brain's sensory gate that needs to shut down to allow sleep to occur) remains active and working as usual in the insomniac's brain.

More sleep does not mean a lower risk of death

1. Artificial light will hinder the release of melatonin, causing the body to pause in time. There's a good chance you won't be able to fall asleep within a reasonable amount of time

2. Another new invention in 1997 is the blue light-emitting diode, referred to as blue LED. Although in terms of reducing energy demand. It has much greater advantages than incandescent lamps. And it lasts longer. But it inadvertently shortens our own lifespans. The photoreceptors in the glasses that cross each other and transmit daytime information are most sensitive to short-wavelength light in the blue spectrum, and this is the most powerful range of blue LEDs.

3. Laptop screens, smartphones and tablets use LEDs, which changes the amount and quality of sleep, and delays the release of neutralizing hormones. And it has had a devastating impact on the lives and education of young people. Because LED devices flood their eyes and brains with powerful blue light

It binds to receptors in the brain, preventing neurons from firing electrical impulses. In the early stages of alcohol's frightening effects, parts of your brain and your prefrontal cortex are sedated

The prefrontal area of ​​the human brain helps us restrain our impulses and control our behavior. It is this part of our brain that alcohol shuts down in the first place. As a result we relax and become less inhibited and outgoing

Alcohol will begin to calm down other parts of the brain, and the numbness of drunkenness will begin to spread, making you feel sluggish and more likely to lose consciousness. Sleep under this anesthesia is not sleep. The anesthetic effect of alcohol makes you unconscious, but it does not Induces natural sleep

Use brief situations to disrupt your sleep. Sleep after drinking is discontinuous and lacks restorative effects

Alcohol is one of the most powerful substances we know of that suppresses REM sleep. When the body metabolizes alcohol, it produces chemical byproducts called aldehydes and ketones. Aldehydes in particular block the brain's ability to produce REM sleep.

ambient temperature

core body temperature

An experiment on body-heating pajamas

A hot bath will get your blood flowing to the surface of your skin

Sleeping pills simply use primitive methods to calm the higher areas of your brain - the cortex.

As alcohol acts on the same system in the brain - receptors that prevent brain cells from rejuvenating - sleeping pills effectively knock out higher-order areas of the cerebral cortex.

1. Inducing defective sleep brainwave quality

2. Side effects

3. Impact on athletic ability

4. Rebound from insomnia

5. Affect the basic night storage function

6. More susceptible to death and cancer

7. The infection rate has greatly increased

side effect

1. Higher than normal infection rate

2. Increased risk of fatal car accidents

3. Higher risk of falls at night

4. Other adverse effects among users of prescription sleeping pills include higher rates of heart disease and stroke.

Built on basic sleep hygiene principles, plus personalized treatments based on the patient's individual issues and lifestyle

Methods include

Another cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia

Lack of sleep reduces many key abilities required for most jobs

You can change someone's attitude, behavior, and even strong beliefs by depriving them of sleep

Adolescence is the most vulnerable period for chronic mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and suicidality.

Chronic sleep deprivation caused by starting school too early is particularly concerning. Unnecessarily disrupting a teen's sleep can tip a dangerous tipping point between mental health and lifelong mental illness

School starts continue to start earlier, which is in direct conflict with children's evolutionarily pre-designed sleep needs, preventing them from sleeping soundly in the morning when they are rich in precious REM sleep.

Nurses and doctors work long hours, especially during residency training

passive change

Take the initiative to change

Sleep has absolutely no place in our children’s education

1. Sleep investment will be returned in various forms, including productivity, creativity, work enthusiasm, energy, efficiency, and happiness.

2. Medical related

public information campaign

Physicians, nurses, and hospital administrators must be educated on the science and art of healthy sleep to help them realize the importance we pay to our patients’ sleep

We can also ask the patient about their normal sleep schedule on the standard admission form and then schedule assessments and testing based on their habitual sleep and wake rhythms whenever possible.

Provide patients with earplugs and eye masks when they first enter the ward

Using dim, non-LED lighting at night and bright lighting during the day will help patients maintain a strong circadian rhythm, resulting in a clear sleep-wake pattern