do you sleep?

[Giaguara]

when i was like 12, i slept normally about 2 hours per night, and was not tired. i was just overactive and insomniac.

now i sleep like a baby .. wake every 2 hours screaming. or wake up at elast 3 times when i sleep .. this night i slept nearly 12 hours, so my sleep is sure not getting less by the time i get older (well, a couple of years ago i was a couple of months again with that 2-4 hours sleep).

[chemistry_geek]

Quality of sleep decreases with age. As you age, the amount of slow wave sleep, or delta sleep (low frequency high amplitude 0.5 to 3 Hz) decreases. This is why your grandma wakes up at 4:00AM and is up for the day, but doesn't feel as well rested. The amount of REM sleep seems to be consistent throught your lifetime, and is very essential for learning and problem solving. Sometimes, the delta sleep diminishes completely and the deepest sleep reached in the night is stage 2, characterized by Sleep Spindles and K-Complexes (EEG waves). A K-Complex is the brain's response to external stimuli (i.e., a sound, a sensation, low oxygen saturation in the blood, sudden bright light, etc...). It basically places the brain in a lighter stage of sleep or to waking, and if not to waking, then a sleep spindle immediately follows that puts the brain into a deeper sleep stage. If a K-Complex happens and you don't wake up, a Sleep Spindle will almost always follow. Getting back to the delta sleep, this is the really deep sleep where all the neurotransmitters are replenished that helps you feel good when you wake up. Getting too much sleep can make you very tired throughout the day, so if you wake in the morning and have slept your normal sleep time, don't go back to bed and catch a few more dreams, and that's exactly what will happen, boo-coo REM sleep. The result: you wake up and feel REALLY tired and groggy, and it doesn't wear-off well.

For the people who don't get the proper sleep during the week and sleep-in on the weekends, i.e. 2 to 6 hours a night during the week, then 12 hours on the weekends, you are making up for the sleep you lost. A good analogy is like borrowing money from a bank, you eventually have to pay it back. Same goes for sleep, you will make it up when given the chance, and the quality of sleep will usually be rather intense, massive delta wave sleep and intense REM dreaming sleep. It's almost equivalent to sleep like a rock, not much in your immediate environment is going to stimulate you to wakefullness.

Since there is much protein synthesis occuring in the brain and body at night, it can help to take vitamins with your latest meal.

The best way to get the healthiest most restful sleep is to live a well-balance life, eat your vegetables (lots of green leafy stuff), get plenty of excercise (stimulates blood flow to the brain), minimize the stresses in your life, and you should do pretty well.

[chemistry_geek]

Originally posted by Darkshadow
Hmm...ok chemistry geek...as the resident sleep tech (), what's your take on my situation here?

I start getting tired at 8 AM. I usually go to sleep at 10 AM. I actuallly have a hard time staying up past that point. I sleep 6 hours everyday. I don't use an alarm clock to wake up, I just wake up right around 4 PM. Every once in a while I'll sleep till 5 PM, but not very often. This is unbroken sleep, lots of dreams.

This has always been my preferred sleeping time. If I have to be awake during the day, and thus have to sleep during the night, I don't feel very rested at all. Even if I keep to that schedule, like I had to when I was going to school, I don't ever get "used" to it, and tend to oversleep massively on the weekends (12+ hours) - compensation for not having had a good sleep during the week, in my opinion. In those cases, I also revert to my "normal" schedule on my days off - up at night, sleep at day.

I do not go out into the sun often. My main reason is because it hurts my eyes (very light sensitive; even with sunglasses, bright light hurts my eyes). I'd say, then, that I have a pretty low meletonin count. But I still sleep soundly!

OK, I know this scenario because when I was a sleep tech, THIS is what happened to me. Humans were never intended to be nocturnal, your entire brain chemistry gets messed up when you work nights, and the brain does the best it can to deal with that stress and environment. If you are dreaming A LOT, then you have fragmented sleep. The brain is also designed NOT to remember most dreams. If you recall dreaming a lot, then your sleep is very likely fragmented. You are not getting the proper delta sleep, and when the brain doesn't get the proper delta sleep, it compensates with REM sleep. I can't remember all the particulars right now, but it's bascially a situation like "If the brain can't get the delta sleep it needs, it'll substitute it for another kind and work with the sleep structure that's available". Keep in mind that this is not healthy, you could be setting yourself up for clinical depression (70% of cases involving clinical depression have disrupted/fragmented sleep structure).

There's more I can tell you, but not in a public forum.

[habilis]

chem, as an experiment I'm going to take a hint from you and see what happens when I get 8 solid hours of sleep every night for a week and see if I feel any different, any more creative. It's been at least 12 years since I was getting that much sleep, so it's worth a shot. The hardest part is going to be forcing myself to go to bed on time and miss out on fun stuff.

[Giaguara]

up till march i used to go to sleep around 6-7am and wake up in hte afternoon. now at least more normal hours ... but sleeping more. and of good sleep. i notice improvements in my dreams an visualization mode when i stay as far of a tv as i can. so if i dream, the equivalent for many people would be nombly watching tv.

[Arden]

Actually, I don't sleep. I am like an android; I don't need sleep.

Chem Geek (CG!): Thank you so much for that information. I know what the stages of sleep are, but your first post was very helpful. I hope you don't mind, but I saved it to a text file.

Would you mind messaging me some of the "private" information hinted at in your second post?

[Arden]

On an unrelated topic, does anyone know what eating too many cherries can do to one's body?

[Darkshadow]

Feel free to email me more if you want to, chemistry.

I'd just like to say that my brain chemistry is already messed up. Umm...I posted about that in the thread about drugs...I know you posted some there, but I dunno if you ever read my post.

I've always dreamed a lot, and I remember most of my dreams. That's nothing new for me. And I really do have trouble keeping to a daylight schedule. That has always been the case for me, too. School was a terrible pain in the ass because of it.