Sleep

The period of our life when we are not conscious: we might dream, twitch, might wake up. But in sleep, we are only in relation to things happening within our brain and body. Outside sensory experiences in most cases can’t really impact us.
It is a very important period of our life as it resets our ability to be focused, alert, emotionally stable in the wakeful period. Can’t talk about wakefulness, focus, motivation, mood, well-being without thinking about sleep.
At the same time, we can’t talk about sleep without talking about the period of wakefulness as both of them are tethered to each other. What we do in the walking state determines when we fall asleep, how quickly we fall asleep, whether we stay asleep and how we feel when we wake up.
Most people are now aware that getting a good night’s sleep on a consistent basis is very important (so that one can wake up feeling that they are ready to attack the day without dips in energy and focus) but most don’t know how to do that.

Goal

Tools for how to get better at sleeping (fall asleep, sleep better and emerge from sleep feeling more rested)
A little bit of the biology of sleep: stages of sleep, sleep spindles, melatonin, dreaming
Diagnose absolute sleep you need and recover the sleep that you’ve lost

What makes you get sleepy at a particular time of day?
What determines how well we sleep and the quality of our wakefulness? It’s governed by 2 forces!

molecule in our nervous system that builds up the longer we are awake (thus, after 8-9 hours of really restful sleep, adenosine levels are very low in our brain and body, much higher if awake for 15 hours)
- It creates a sleep hunger.
- It is analogous to nutrition. How well we feel after we eat certain foods, our overall levels of fitness, our cellular and heart health is not governed by any one food item that we might eat, instead by a number of factors like how often we eat, how much, which items, what works best for us.
- Similarly, sleep and wakefulness are average of a number of different behaviours. How long we’ve been awake is important because of adenosine.
- Thus, if one stayed up for 4 extra hours than the usual sleep time, one would feel very sleepy.