Your brain has a program to run every night. There are consequences of cutting it short. You need enough of the five different kinds of sleep every night. Just like you need food, water, exercise, relationships, etc. every day.
Each part of sleep has its function and each one dominates a certain portion of the night. Missing 30-60 minutes of sleep impacts the program. Like pulling a cake out of the oven before it’s done.
When you fall asleep your brain moves into a beautiful, rhythmic program. It looks like the chart below from Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep.
Let me walk you through it.
Notice in this chart how nREM Stages 3 and 4 have longer stretches in the beginning of the night and REM and nREM Stage 2 have longer stretches at the end of the night.
nREM Stage 1 appears when falling asleep, once in the middle of the night and again in the early morning, before rising for the day.
Notice how there are short periods of wakefulness between sleep cycles in this chart. You may notice a brief waking in the middle of your night or in the early morning. Sleep scientists say this is normal. Unless you don’t feel rested in the morning, or are awake for more than a moment or more than a quick bathroom trip. That’s when stress hormone like cortisol or sleep disorders might be an interfering factor.
If your nightly sleep program gets interrupted part way through cycle 4 or 5 you can imagine how jarring that is to the brain. It is one reason why a buzzing alarm clock is so, well, alarming in the morning.
Halting the sleep program before it's finished is like:
getting cut-off mid conversation
turning off a gripping movie before the end
a picnic being interrupted by a sudden rainstorm
hot shower water running out before you've rinsed
In The Sleep Revolution, Ariana Huffington says when sleep cycles don't get finished it is like a washing machine and we wake up feeling like wet and dirty laundry.
Matthew Walker, PhD says every stage of sleep is important. Studies haven’t been able to determine a positive outcome no matter which sleep is sacrificed. When you deprive yourself of sleep and do allow enough time to catch up during the nights after sleep loss, your brain works to get extra nREM sleep on some nights and extra REM on others to make up for lost time.
Although, unfortunately, like your grandmother may have told you - you can’t make up for lost sleep. Not completely. In his book Why We Sleep, Walker says a lifetime of lost sleep might contribute to issues like early onset of Alzheimers. When asleep, your brain cleanses itself of amylase proteins when allowed enough time to do so. This process is something we can just now see in imaging studies.
Without adequate cleaning regularly, these proteins build up and effect the brain.
To me, watching a movie before bed or scrolling social media just isn't as important as having my brain cells cleaned every night. I can’t make up for it the next day. Not with caffeine. Now with willpower. However, if you've lost a lot of sleep up until this point in your life (like me) it's okay.
Time to move forward and remember:
You've gotta clean your teeth every day. And your brain.
Not getting enough sleep is like cleaning your bathroom but skipping the toilet.
Or like not including fruits and veggies in your diet.
The master program the brain was designed to run each night is massively important. Especially for brain health. “I don’t want to have a healthy brain” - said no one ever.
If you need help making sleep a priority, check out this sleep program to help you with your sleep program. :)
Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash.
