Sunday 11 June 2017

Why you're still not getting any sleep!

For a third of your life, you're just not there, hovering in a suspended state of matter with everything slowed down and susceptible to the environments influence.

Sleep isn't just a one way process from shut eye to open, boom eight hours gone just like that. Instead, there are different types and stages of sleep.

Stages 1 and 2 our shallow sleeping state, this is when we're easily awaken. Now there soon (hopefully) becomes your deep slow wave sleep, your stages 3 and 4, where your 'less likely' to be woken and disturbed by the flickering of blue light and darken violations outside your window. The next step and stages of sleep are of which i find upmost pleasing; Rapid Eye Movement (REM), where the eyes dart around following dreams and elbows fling towards your partner in crime.

These stages of sleep tend to be repeated, drifting through a shallow, deep and REM like state and back up and through again every 90 minutes, if and when optimal.

So that begs the questions, what maybe promoting a less than optimal sleeping state?

Q. Do you have sufficient Glycogen to get through the night?

If not, then you're more than likely waking up between 2-4am needing to urinate or with a strangely high pulse. When glycogen isn't adequate and blood sugar falls to signal the mobilisation of free fatty acids, cortisol and glucogon (glucocorsoid) rise. Its a perfectly normal response when someone doesn't know how to meet their energy demands and is constantly in a state of stress. Cortisol will wake you up and prep you to fight or flight. If this does happen, then simply sip some orange juice or have half a rice cake and jam to down regulate the stress response. This may sound crazy and kind or weird, but its sugar thats antagonistic to cortisol and salt that counteracts and lowers adrenaline!

“Since glucose and salt are used to treat shock (intravenous 7.5% salt solutions are effective), it seems appropriate to use carbohydrate (preferably sugar, rather than starch) and salty foods during the night, to minimize the stress reaction"-Ray Peat

Q. Blue light interferes with specific regulatory enzymes, when do you switch the phone off?

"Cytochrome Oxidase is one of the enzymes (that complete the krebs cycle) damaged by stress and by blue light, and activated or restored by red light, thyroid, and progesterone. 
It’s a copper enzyme, so it’s likely to be damaged by excess iron. It is most active when it is associated with a mitochondrial lipid, cardiolipin, that contains saturated palmitic acid; the substitution of polyunsaturated fats lowers its activity. 
Mitochonrial function in general is poisoned by the unsaturated fats, especially arachidonic acid and DHA.”- FPS

“By the 1960s, several studies had been published showing the inhibition of the respiratory enzyme (cytochrome oxidase) by blue light, and their activation by red light.”- Ray Peat

Q. CO2 and Oxygen work synergistically to regulate PH and energy, how are you breathing at night?

Modern people breathe about 12 L/min and have less CO2 and O2 in body cells. Their body oxygen level is about 15-25 s and breathing frequency at rest is up to 18-25 breaths per minute. 

Such a person:
- may need more time to fall asleep (up to 5-30 minutes or more);
- can sleep up to 7-9 hours and in different positions;
- can remember dreams and may have nightmares;
- wakes up feeling tired, often with about 10 seconds control pause due to morning hyperventilation. 

Why? During the previous day and night, this individual has had chronically low tissue stores of O2 and CO2 due to an ineffective breathing pattern. The muscles were tense, instead of naturally relaxed, and the brain hypoxic and over-excited, instead of calm. Even during sleep, the brain, due to hyperventilation, remained abnormally excited (remember “spontaneous and asynchronous firing of cortical neurons”?) and hypoxic. Hence, most people will suffer from some degree of insomnia and cannot sleep less than 7-8 hours due to their ineffective breathing pattern (visit normalbreathing.com for some great extended content).

Sleep well, slow down and be wise.

Beatle.