Neuroscience's Top 5 Most Bizzare Facts On Sleep

[00:00:00]Sleep is the strangest thing your brain does, but it's also the most powerful.

[00:00:04]So, I'm going to teach you about the most extraordinary findings I found about sleep, what it does for you, and what potentially can happen on bad nights of sleep, and the benefits of it, and how it actually works and functions, and how it benefits you. So, first is that your brain cleans itself in its sleep. You have these things called glial cells, and glial cells have to shrink up to 60% of its own size in order to let cerebral spinal fluid come up behind the neck into the brain, and then you've got these little jet washers in your brain that clean all the toxins and the proteins out of your brain. And these proteins that mostly get cleared out by this glymphatic fluid system of glymphatic cleaning, which is what it's called, is a clearing the proteins that cause Alzheimer's. And this can also lead to you having brain fog throughout the day, or just generally feeling like your dopamine is lower, is because this glymphatic cleaning did not happen. And you're probably wondering, why wouldn't this happen? Why why wouldn't it happen one night? It's because of scrolling on your phone before bed that is heavily linked to this happening, this not being able to the glial cells aren't able to shrink enough, so the cerebral spinal fluid doesn't come up, and then the toxins don't get flushed out. So, here's the study for that. And the main important things you want to understand about sleep is it's maintenance. It's maintenance for your body and your system to keep working and functioning and progressing by cleaning itself every single day. And if you don't get that good high-quality sleep, you don't get the opportunity to do that. So, two is learning blocks in overnight. So, every single thing you learn, whether it's MMA or new science concept, or anything like that, or or therapy sessions, your brain learns all of that within its sleep.

[00:01:40]Within REM sleep to be specific, that's when it's learning things. So, you might be, you know, rewiring your brain throughout the day in terms of your brain is using acetylcholine, which is a neuromodulator, but that's going to mean that's basically lining out things, going, "Okay, learn this, learn that, learn this, learn that." For your brain so then when it's night-time and it's asleep to then actually lock that new information in.

[00:02:01]So, make sure that you get better while you get better while you sleep and you're basically all that training is happening in your sleep not actually when you're training. So, no sleep and the work that you do and the effort that you gave will barely stick and you won't get the progression and the compounding effect that you're looking for. So, sleep is a number one priority when it comes to that. This is extremely important. And now this third one that I find extremely interesting and I definitely do myself like me personally if I have a dream that I remember very vividly and very well, I do like to kind of understand like what was that really entailing because I feel like if I deeply further consolidated the next day I get to really understand where my brain is going in life because the thing is is that your your dreams are there to emotionally simulate things in order for you to get better. But also in this one to solve problems. REM sleep connects distant ideas, which is why you wake with answers you didn't have before. It's almost like giving you wisdom overnight through simulating things in ways that you couldn't have consciously done yourself.

[00:03:01]So, this is super super interesting because if you're stuck on something, sleep on it. This is this is actually what people have said before but it's just funny how science then backs that up. Oh, I'll sleep on it because your brain is literally going to do that work that your brain is struggling to do when you're awake to help you with that. And this is this is amazing and I like doing dream journaling where I kind of talk about my dreams and and I sort of write them down and and try and pick them apart and understand what what wisdom it's trying to communicate and give to me and that's exactly it. And here's the study if you're interested. And I've also got my mate Arthur who's fixed his sleep and changed his life himself. He's he's over here. Do you want to come up?

[00:03:41]He's going to talk to you guys for a minute or so about how he fixed his sleep.

[00:03:45]>> [clears throat] >> Hi guys, I'm Arthur. I'm Ed's mate. Um sleep is so important and I think it's like quite overlooked a lot of the time especially in today's society which is really fast-paced.

[00:03:58]One of the ways I actually fixed my sleep is through going to bed at the same time every night and it sounds really simple but if there's one thing like neuroscience actually does kind of confirm is that your brain loves consistency and it loves patterns.

[00:04:12]So when you're not giving that like you're not giving your brain that consistency you're obviously going to have a garbage sleep. And the second thing I'd say on top of that is that you know if you're feeling your brain is kind of like a sponge in a way and so if you're filling your your brain with garbage information so are you scrolling on your phone then you're also going to have a garbage sleep. So what I did was I I just replace going on my phone before bed with like just dedicating 30 minutes every night to just reading.

[00:04:42]And I think reading is so important in today like it like reading is just so so important turns you into like it turns you from a child into like an actual like god like It's [clears throat] it's feeding it's nourishing your brain it's giving you your brain that nourishment that it's so like desperately craving for every day when you're just shoveling like actual slop into it. Your brain is looking for something to like actually it's looking for sustenance like some substance and reading fills in the you know that gap and it also calms your brain down before bed. So yeah if you don't want to have a garbage sleep go to bed at the same time and do a bit of reading. That would be my advice. Great stuff brother. Nice stuff. And so following on from what Arthur is saying about how important sleep is one bad night of sleep will spike anxiety ridiculously. So a single night of deprivation ramps up the amygdala and weakens the prefrontal cortex over it. I want you to understand that your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala I say this quite a few times so you might be familiar with this but it's limbic system it works like a seesaw. So your amygdala is your emotional threat detecting fight or flight part of your brain, that's pretty reactive, that gives you very emotional, angry, all of that stuff. And the moment that you lose activity of your prefrontal cortex, your amygdala is going to take over and deactivate the other parts of your brain, and then you're going to be more emotionally reactive, more anxious to things you normally wouldn't be anxious to, and struggle to really rationalize and help your brain, you know, figure things out, and you're going to really talk yourself out through things through wisdom and that sort of thing. So, you know, feeling on edge and reactive is probably caused by possibly a lack of sleep. I know that when I myself have had those, you know, 95 plus sleep score nights, I know I wake up feeling refreshed, I'm feeling good, anxiety is basically hardly even there, and if anything does kind of spike it or make me feel a little bit more anxious than normal, I'm way I'm able to kind of really take control of that cuz my prefrontal cortex battery is is there to be able to deactivate that amygdala side of things. So, this is also the study for that as well. And then, number five is loss of sleep wrecks your judgment.

[00:06:46]So, this is again going back to the prefrontal cortex. The thing to understand about the prefrontal cortex is it's responsible for your decision-making that's more long-term and long-term planning, positive decisions that actually lead to good long-term outcomes, and not choosing that short-term pleasure for long-term displeasure. That is the part of your brain that is making those decisions, and when you wreck your sleep, you decrease the activity of your prefrontal cortex, it doesn't have the battery to be able to do so, and then therefore, it relies on other brain areas to make those decisions, or it's still making those decisions with the not enough power, so your amygdala sort of takes over and makes those more reactive, impulsive, short-term gratification decisions that we end up regretting. So, the lesson here is chronic short sleep degrades you without even warning you.

[00:07:32]So, you think you're going to be fine while you're not actually fine. And here's the study for that. So, this is the thing is that there's going to be a compounding effect when you start to look when you start to look at sleep.

[00:07:43]Sleep is the number one thing for your brain. if It is the number one habit I would recommend anyone doing because anything you learn, any wisdom you get, any habits you start, any new positive things you want to get into, your brain is going to help that speed up way more efficiency efficiently and then that will start to make things compound.

[00:08:00]That's where the positive effects are really going to start to integrate and then stack and stack and stack on top of each other. And I want to teach you about a small concept about how you can actually maximize your sleep. And it's something by Dr. Matthew Walker, which is the number one sleep scientist. It's RQL, so regularity, quality, quantity, light. And it's in that order specifically. The time you get up is the most important part of your sleep. It must be at the same time every single day if you can.

[00:08:26]And that is the number one thing to prioritize. And if it's very hard for you to do that, just try and find a middle ground where you can at least make it within 30 minutes of later or earlier. At least trying to get it in the middle of there in terms of your your wake time. And then it's your your quality of sleep is then the second most important. And then the quantity in terms of how many cycles of sleep you go through in terms of how how that sort of works when you go light and then moderate and then REM sleep and then deep sleep and then the cycle repeats 30 30 30. And you want to make sure you cycle about four or five times in that.

[00:09:00]Around five or six times actually. And And and it's important to understand that when you're when you're really trying to upgrade your sleep, it's all about really down regulating your nervous system, getting into that parasympathetic nervous system state.

[00:09:13]That is the number one goal you kind of want to make for yourself in order to get to sleep. It's just focusing on how can I relax my body, relax my muscles, relax my eyes, relax my face. All of these different parts, just make sure you're trying to pull yourself into relaxation and away from stimulation and you'll find yourself there as well.

[00:09:30]Another little bonus tip is journal your mind before you go to bed. And also what Arthur said, read. These are going to be two really important things because the reason why brain dumping works is because those racing thoughts that keep you up and keep you stimulated get dumped out somewhere else. The book closes, gets over there, and then you can fall asleep. If you're interested in joining my school community, one-to-one coaching, or you just want to follow along and subscribe, you're more than welcome to do so. Thank you very, very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed Arthur's little take on this as well, and I'll see you in the next video.