Welcome to the Ralf Behn Podcast where we discover, discuss and expose Mindset, Resilience, Performance, Self-Confidence and Health Wisdom Nuggets as well as Cutting Edge knowledge in those areas.
The sleep-wake cycle is regulated by two separate biological mechanisms which are sleep-wake homeostasis/sleep drive and circadian rhythms.
Is no surprise - Humans are “hard-wired” for sleeping during the night and being active and awake during the day.
Circadian rhythms are controlled by a biological clock located in the brain. One key function of this clock is responding to light cues, ramping up production of the hormone melatonin at night, then switching it off in the morning when it senses light. That's why it is so important to get exposure to bright daylight and possibly sunlight in the first hour of waking up.
Sleep drive also plays a key role. Your body craves sleep, as much as it craves food. Throughout the day, your desire for sleep builds up, and when it reaches a certain point, you get very tired and need to sleep. A major difference between sleep and hunger is that your body can’t force you to eat when you’re hungry, but when you’re very tired, it can put you to sleep, even if you’re in a meeting or behind the wheel of a car. When you’re really exhausted and sleepy, your body is even able to engage in micro-sleep episodes of one or two seconds while your eyes are still open.
Sleep is your Super Power and not an optional lifestyle luxury! And the absolute best about sleep is - it’s Free! Sleep is a nonnegotiable biological necessity. Most humans have to pay a bitter price for sleep deprivation and short nights on a regular basis.
We all know those lines when people brag about how little sleep they need to get by.
And it’s true there are times in our lives where it is hard to avoid and we have to deal with short nights, sleep deprivation and simply not enough sleep. The bad news, my dear friends, is that there is no such thing like catching up on sleep later. A night with only 4 hours sleep or even less has always a nasty price ticket attached to it. The body runs literally amok and a lot of really concerning bad things happen when we are not sleeping enough.
Another good line is – well we can sleep when we are dead. Which is kinda true 😊. But jokes aside! Let's tap into some interesting facts most people simply don’t know when they come up with such funny statements.
First shock for most people will be to learn that Men who sleep just 5 hours a night or even less have significantly smaller testicles than men who sleep 7 hour or more. I know that's a shocking truth for most of us who have tried to get by with 5 hours of sleep or even less over a period of time. I certainly did! And I’m now not proud of it anymore ☹. You know all that bragging I only need 5 hours of sleep or even less! I get by with 4 hours of sleep. Sleeping 8 hours is for losers. Imagine what you can do with those extra 3 hours a day…..Turns out it's all Bullshit and not really good and beneficial for us at all. We get into it a bit deeper, a bit more in depth as we roll on 😊.
In addition to that, men who sleep on a regular basis 4 to 5 hours or even less a night have testosterone levels of men 10 freaking years older than their age. Yep that’s what 2-3 extra hours of good sleep can do for us!
Lack of sleep is aging all those poor baggers by a freaking decade! Can you believe that?!
So I say this again because it is so important and also quite shocking. Lack of sleep will age a man by a decade. But not just men suffer a big deal. There are similar in other words equivalent impairments in female reproductive health caused by permanent lack of sleep.
The functions of learning and memory are highly compromised if you are not getting enough sleep. You need enough sleep after learning something to remember and process it and before you learn something in order to actually prepare your brain and to get it all in in the first place. It’s almost like a dry sponge ready to initially soak up new information. You literally hit the save button on those new memories so that you don’t forget provided you are getting enough sleep.
Without sufficient sleep, the memory circuits of the brain essentially become waterlogged, as it were you can’t absorb new memories.
Sleep deprivation literally shuts down your memory inbox.
Sleeping pills do not produce naturalistic sleep. Sleeping pills are no good at all and do more harm than good for sure. So think twice before you to go down the nasty and sickening road of sleeping pills!
Sleep is just as essential for your body as for your brain. There is something that happens twice a year across 70 countries in the world and that is called daylight saving time. We all know it very well especially if we forget and have to be somewhere on a Sunday morning when daylight saving actually starts. Just that one hour has some shocking effects on a large number of people. In spring when we lose one hour of sleep we see a subsequent increase of 24% of heart attacks the following day. On the other hand we see in autumn when we gain an hour of sleep a subsequent 21 % reduction in heart attacks. This is kinda crazy – I know. Isn’t that truly remarkable?!
And surprisingly enough we see the same numbers in car crashes and accidents. And guess what even in the suicide numbers. And that is just one freaking hour of sleep difference.
So that's it for today. Make sure you check out part two of the sleep secrets exposed podcast episode too.
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