Hi there. It's Matt Walker here and welcome to the podcast two quick disclaimers to begin with first, I apologize for my personality second, I think it's safe to say that when most podcasters think about Their audience, perhaps, falling asleep or nodding off. While listening, it can be profoundly disheartening. However,
based on the topic of this podcast, I'm going to actively encourage that kind of behavior from you. In fact, knowing what I know particularly about the relationship between sleep and memory. It's the greatest form of flattery for me to think about people like you not being able to resist the urge to strengthen and consolidate, what I'm telling you by falling asleep. So please feel free just to Evan flow in and out of
Consciousness throughout all of these episodes, I will take absolutely no offense. And I should also mention by the way, that the podcast is going to be very wide-ranging. Will speak about topics such
as sleep and diet, sleep and weight control will speak about sleep and exercise sleep and mental health will speak about sleep and sex and
relationships even address the idea of a sleep divorce. So lots of stuff to
come. And of course, we'll have a whole
series on dreaming, lucid dreaming, but in these first couple of episodes, I want to just go over the basics of sleep. So let's
address the First Fundamental question, then,
what is going to
happen when you go to
bed tonight? Well, it turns out that your brain is going to go on a remarkable roller coaster ride in and out of these different stages of sleep and sleep, at least in human beings. And in fact,
All mammalian species has been broadly separated into two main types.
On one hand, we have non-rapid eye movement, sleep or non-rem sleep for short
and non-rem. Sleep has been further subdivided into four
different stages unimaginatively called stages. One through four increasing in their depth of sleep. I say unimaginative because I always wished for something more.
And in terms of the naming, you know, I remember as a child hearing about a car called a
Maserati Quattroporte and I thought it sounded like the most sophisticated
thing in the world. I subsequently learned that translated from Italian. It simply means Maserati for door, but in Italian, it sounds so wonderfully elegant. So I just wish that we could have done something similar for
The stages of non-rem sleep for one through four, but I'm going off base here on day Focus. Matthew, this is supposed to be a short form podcast. Anyway, back to the stages of non-rem, sleep. One through four,
so stages, one and two, that's the lighter
form of non-rem sleep. Whereas stages,
three, and four. That's the deeper
form of non-rem sleep.
Now, on the other hand, we
have rapid eye movement, sleep or REM
sleep named.
Not after the popular, Michael Stipe pop, band of the 1990s
but because of these bizarre horizontal, shuttling eye movements that occur underneath your eyelids during rapid eye movement, sleep and REM sleep, is the principal stage within which we dream. Now that depends on your definition. If you have a loose definition of what dreaming is, well, it turns out that we dream in almost all stages of sleep and we'll learn
Much more about that in the future episodes, dedicated to this thing called Dreaming but it's really during REM
sleep when we have what most of us
think of as dreams. There's ready, hallucinogenic. The long narratives. That's bizarre. It's emotionally filled those other dream experiences of REM sleep. Those two types of sleep, by the way, non-rem and RAM are going to play out in a battle for brain.
Domination throughout the night and that's cerebral war is going to be won and lost every 90 minutes and then it's going to be replayed every 90 minutes and what that will produce is a standard cycling architecture of sleep. I mentioned that it's 90 minutes for the average human
adult, but some people will have a shorter non-rem to REM
cycle while other people will have a longer duration of non-rem.
REM sleep cycle, but on average, it's about 90 minutes for most of us. It's also very different for different species by the way. For example, birds will have a
very short non-rem to REM
cycle lasting maybe just four or five minutes. Whereas giraffes will have a cycle length of about 24 minutes, but we have a cycle length of 90 minutes. It's quite the spread across phylogeny, but let's get back to your
Night of sleep upon first falling asleep. You'll go into the light stages of non-rem stages, one and two and then you'll gradually descend down into the deeper stages of non-rem stages. Three, and four and remarkably. It's during deep non-rem sleep. When your brain will erupt with these incredibly powerful, large brain waves and those deep powerful brain, waves will flow over your cortex almost like this car.
I mean bathing bath that moves from the front to the back of your brain from the front, to the back over and over again. And we also see another fascinating electrical brain wave burst during non-rem, sleep called a sleep spindle and these are short synchronous bursts of electrical brain wave activity. They last for around,
about a second to a second and a half,
and these sleep. Spindles, they're almost like these champagne cork pops.
Pop's of electrical activity that will ride on top of those big powerful. Slow deep brain waves. Now, after about 60 or 70 minutes into your first sleep cycle, your brain is going to start to rise back up again, and it will go back up into the lighter stages of non-rem sleep. And then it will pop up and it will have a short REM, sleep, period. And then back down, it goes again down into non-rem sleep.
And up into REM sleep. And as I said, your brain will cycle that way every 90 minutes. However, what changes is the ratio of non-rem to REM within those 90-minute Cycles As you move across the night? And what I mean by that is in the first half of the night, the majority of your 90-minute sleep cycles is going to be comprised of lots of deep non-rem sleep and very little REM sleep. But as you push through to the
And half of the night. Now, that seesaw balance will actually change. And instead the majority of those 90-minute Cycles are going to be comprised of much more rapid eye movement, sleep or dream sleep, as well as that lighter form of non-rem, sleep, that we call stage to non-rem sleep. I, of course, hope that you
find. This information is fascinating and sort of enchanting and
wonderful as I do, but beyond its intellectual,
Merit. It turns out that there are real practical implications to understanding how your sleep is structured.
The folks supporting today's episode our athletic greens. Now I know this is an ad but before you hit the fast-forward button, can I at least tell you why I selected them. As a sponsor, athletic greens is a nutrition
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Over to athletic greens.com forward slash Matt Walker. And now let's get back to the podcast.
The reason it's so important to understand
how sleep is structured. Is the following. Let's take an example of someone who typically goes to bed around 10:00 p.m. and wakes up around 6 a.m.
now. By the way, I'm not suggesting that the ideal sweet spot for perfect
sleep, it's just the sleep schedule of this particular individual in the example, but this night that person wants to wake up and get a jump start on the day. Perhaps they've
God and early morning flight or they just want to get to the gym early. So instead of waking up at
6 a.m., which is their normal time,
they decide to wake up at 4 a.m. how much sleep have been lost. Well, they've lost two hours from an 8 hour sleep window. So they've lost 25% of all of the sleep. Well, yes, and no. They may have lost 25% of their entire sleep, but because REM sleep typically comes in the
second half of the night and especially those last few hours, they may have lost 50, 60, even 70 percent of all of their REM sleep. That's why it is important for us to understand. Not just simply that there are different types of sleep but to understand exactly how sleep is structured across the night. And by knowing that information, you can then design the very best personalized schedule for you, the individual so that
You can optimize your sleep and obtain. All of those different stages of sleep because as we will learn in future episodes, all stages of sleep, or critical different types of sleep, perform different functions for the brain and the body at different times of night. But we need all of those stages of sleep. There is no one stage of sleep. That's more
important. So,
that is a world,
wind tour of exactly what.
Will happen when your
head hits the pillow tonight. Oh, and they
keep telling me at the end of these episodes to tell you to subscribe and leave a review. And as I said before, I'm just not going to do that. I think it's pretty simple. If you like these podcasts and you enjoy them, then you're naturally going to keep
listening. Honestly, I just want you to have fun listening to the episodes and I really just hope that you find them valuable. I want to make clear, I am not
Medical doctor. None of the
content in this podcast should be considered as medical advice in any way, shape, or form. Not
prescriptive. In any way.
The podcast does not represent any form of
medicine or any other health care professions and with that I will simply say thanks so very much for listening and tuning in actually who says tuning in these days for downloading these episodes and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Take care.
Sir and goodbye for now.
