Post No.: 1003
Furrywisepuppy says:
To minimise jet lag when traversing time zones, you want your circadian rhythm to match that of your destination. One tip is ‘fly east, fly early; fly west, fly late’. This concerns the way our circadian rhythms are slightly longer than 24 hours each day thus it’s almost like we’re always losing time and never gaining it. Travelling west ultimately feels easier because that day goes longer.
If you’re staying abroad for long, try gradually shifting your body clock to the time of your destination before getting there. (If flying east, get up slightly earlier, and if flying west, get up slightly later, each day.) Set your watch to your destination’s time the moment you get on the plane instead of waiting until you land – that way you’ll start to psychologically adapt to the new time zone as soon as possible.
For long-haul flights, you could work out which side the sunlight will be entering into the plane – if you want to stay awake, you’ll want the sun to hit you where you’re seated; whereas if you need to sleep, try booking on the shadowy side of the plane.
Try to fit into the new time zone as soon as you can e.g. if it’s dinner time then eat, if it’s bedtime then go to bed. If you’ve travelled east, avoid the morning sun and seek out natural light in the afternoon. If you’ve travelled west, seek out light throughout the entire day. If you really cannot stay awake then take a short nap but set an alarm and ensure it’s not longer than for 2 hours. We also tend to take longer to settle to sleep and not stay asleep for as long when in a new and unfamiliar place – our survival instincts are more alert when trying to sleep in an unfamiliar environment. This effect quickly fades after a night or two of safe sleeps though.
No feeding after midnight, no bright lights, and don’t get wet… or is this only if you’re a fluffy Mogwai?! Post No.: 0739 explored different chronotypes.
In general, if you find yourself sleeping later and getting up later but want to get up earlier, then only go to bed when you’re tired or will only get 8 hours in bed until you must get up (whichever is shorter) – and then strictly get up at that set time. You’ll feel grrroggy for getting up before you’ve had enough sleep but over time you’ll feel sleepier earlier and earlier until you get the full 8 hours of sleep.
Regularly sleeping <7 or >9 hours per day correlates with poor health – albeit this doesn’t tell us the causal direction, whether there’s a third contributing factor or whether the causality is bi-directional e.g. depression can cause a disruption in sleep patterns, and not getting enough or too much sleep can cause depression too. You don’t need to be sleep deprived for many consecutive days to experience the negative effects of insufficient sleep e.g. a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, colds (lower immune response), bad judgements and decisions (lower cognitive functioning and mood), and dementia. Some vaccinations become less effective too. Shift work (especially non-manual labour) increases the likelihood of taking sick days.
Sleep deprivation causes us to react more wretchedly to bad events, react less enthusiastically to good events, find it harder to find the positives in things, and we’re overall less tolerant of stress. Our concentration suffers and we can essentially lose several IQ points, which makes us slower to answer questions, less able to think more critically, more forgetful, more prone to making mistakes, and more prone to making mistakes.
It’s therefore probably best not to decide, do or say important things when we’re tired for we might regret it; nor really during the immediate moments just after waking up when we’re still feeling drowsy, due to ‘sleep inertia’.
Our own judgement of how tired we are will also become impaired when we’re tired (similar to how our judgement of how drunk we are becomes impaired when we’re under the influence)! So we’re poor judges of our own sleepiness, and many of us are so used to feeling sleepy sometime during the daytime that we think this is ‘normal’. Even the early afternoon dip, although normal, shouldn’t really require a nap if we’ve slept enough during the night before, hence needing a nap in the afternoon isn’t strictly necessary – albeit, since sleep deprivation is so harmful, a short (<30 minutes) nap during the day can be beneficial if one needs one.
You might end up having a few ‘microsleeps’ that last for a few or several seconds if you’re severely sleep deprived. This can even happen during the middle of tasks you’re trying extremely hard to concentrate on doing, hence how dangerous sleep deprivation is when operating heavy machinery.
Get enough sleep the night before though and you’ll feel more positive, resilient, energised and able to make better decisions!
The more our brains are engaged in neuroplastic activities – i.e. growing as a baby, puberty, after major stressful events (unless rumination or worry keeps us awake) or after learning new knowledge or skills – the more sleeping will become paramount. So someone mightn’t be lazy for needing to definitely sleep – they could actually be working like a dog during the day, they’re growing and/or a lot of changes are physically happening inside their brain; or they could have a sleep disorder. Although people can lay awake in bed and not wish to rise – people cannot easily sleep unless their body needs to and allows them to. Thus if someone is actually sleeping, they highly likely simply need to sleep.
So always first query if someone is getting enough sleep, food or is experiencing other hidden stresses or life problems, etc. before accusing them of laziness, truculence or a lack of motivation, attention or concentration. They mightn’t wish to admit to any problems though so it might take time for them to open up.
Poor performances can be explained by a myriad of reasons, including a lack of sleep. And a lack of sleep can itself be explained by a myriad of reasons, including depression; not just purposely playing all night.
Even if they’re awake but staying in bed, it mightn’t be indolence but anxious or depressive ruminations. People who have trouble falling asleep in bed have a tendency to think about plans, solving problems, worries and unpleasant or important things. They might also stress about not being able to sleep itself, so they latch onto environmental noises and irritations – creating a vicious cycle. The stress mightn’t always be about anxious things like starting a new job but exciting things like going on holiday tomorrow, and it could be just a moderate stressor. If we’ve been watching television just before going to bed, then deep thoughts about the narrative and characters can also keep us awake (cognitive arousal).
Meanwhile, those who sleep easily have a tendency to think about less ordered, more random, visual-sensory, dreamlike experiences of people, objects and events as they drift to sleep. Therefore, while you lay in bed, try to refocus your pre-sleep thoughts onto similar distracting, pleasant or neutral thoughts. Think of an imaginary scenario that’s interesting enough to maintain your attention but not too interesting that it’s emotionally or physically over-stimulating. Decide on what you’ll focus on before tucking into bed e.g. mentally imagine a snooker player making a big break, yourself painting miniatures or redecorating a room, or mentally recite lines from a play you enjoy – whatever’s personally interesting and pleasant without being over-stimulating.
If that doesn’t work, try mindfulness meditation like focusing on your breath. Ensure your overall sleep hygiene is sound, such as gradually winding down your physical activity levels and electronic screen usage during the evenings and not drinking caffeine too late. Good sleep starts as soon as you wake up – rise at the same time each day regardless of how much sleep you had the previous night, and get some morning sun exposure as soon as you do. Have a consistent bedtime routine. The aim is to go to bed at a consistent time. Be kind to yourself if you ruminate about not being good enough. Write down any worries you may have on paper during the day, plus a day and time you’ll deal with them, so that you don’t think about those things in bed.
Boredom doesn’t create sleepiness per se, it just unmasks it i.e. if you’re merely bored but not sleep-deprived, it won’t send you to sleep – you’ll get restless, fidgety or look for something more interesting to do instead of catch up on sleep.
A bit of daydreaming or mind-wandering could be okay, even possibly beneficial, if we’re waiting in a queue or taking a break. We don’t have to fill every minute of our day trying to be productive. Creativity can bubble whenever we daydream.
But it becomes maladaptive if we compulsively engage in vivid escapist fantasies so much that it interferes with our real-life relationships, goals and ability to function in everyday life. In class, it’ll mean missing moments of education. We’re naturally less engaged whenever a particular lesson doesn’t interest us much – but in life we must be able to listen to and try to learn the things that don’t interest us too because we need to be well-informed, well-rounded democratic citizens.
Sleepiness, fatigue and depression are all different things. Being under anaesthesia or hibernation are also different to sleep. After waking up from sleeping, we tend to roughly know how much time has elapsed whilst we were sleeping – but after waking up from a general anaesthetic, it feels like no time has passed whether it was for 5 minutes or 5 hours whilst you’ve been under. Hibernation is an extended form of torpor rather than sleep, where one’s metabolism is lowered to a fraction of what it was. In fact, according to research, hibernators need to undergo periodic arousals in order to catch some proper sleep! This suggests that the state of sleep is special and critical for almost all animals. Sleep isn’t just about rest hence why we sleep for about the same duration whether we’ve been highly active or idle all day, according to our circadian rhythm. Dreams might serve to help us to survive by reflecting upon and simulating the challenges and threats of our own waking and social life, and offering insights into how we’ll emotionally process them, thus preparing us for those challenges in reality?
People who’ve experienced a natural coma but later wake up (a temporary state of unconsciousness) describe the experience as being like sleeping – so perhaps death (a permanent state of unconsciousness) feels just like staying in a non-dream sleep state forever? (Well the state of being dead will probably feel like the time before we were conceived? So it’s not frightening or painful – just nothing.)
I’ve never been in any kind of coma before but it’s apparently different for those who experience a medically-induced coma. They typically experience highly vivid dreams/nightmares or hallucinations, possibly in relation to how deeply they’ve been put under. General anaesthesia is in essence a reversible drug-induced coma hence these produce varying levels of ‘minimised’ brain activity. Indeed cases exist where patients have been quite aware of their surroundings and so will have formed true memories of the events that happened to them because they weren’t put under enough! But most induced-coma or general-anaesthesia patients will remember things that never actually happened i.e. they just had dreams/nightmares or hallucinations. In a natural, non-induced, coma, there’s no evidence of fluctuating circadian rhythms or brain activities so the person isn’t likely to be dreaming or remembering anything; although during the transition into waking from such a coma, if they ever do, they might begin to dream or experience some true awareness of their surroundings.
Woof!
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