Your brain and the power of sleep.

[Music]

the greatest

gift you can give yourself

so simple so powerful

asleep the closer researchers look

at sleep the more they realize how

important it is

i want you to realize there are no

shortcuts to sleep

we need our seven to nine hours every

night

if we don’t get it we may not have

everything going according to plan

we need both quantity and quality of

sleep

if we don’t get enough sleep and we need

to have it good enough

and when we do our brain is energized

we are cognitively ready for the day

we can do anything our brain is healthy

our body is repaired we’re ready to run

jump and dance

when we have fantastic great sleep

we are undaunted by our challenges

and when we go to sleep

our brain it goes into a different mode

and something remarkable happens

the cleaners move in they’re coming to

get rid of all those

toxins that have built up in our brain

throughout the day

and here they get washed out with the

cerebral spinal

fluid in wave patterns

and as we know with cleaning

if we haven’t got enough time to do all

the cleaning

the little bits of dirt get left behind

and in this case

toxins they hang around the brain

and then they cluster together and they

become

hard and they stay there they found that

with alzheimer’s patients

they had clusters of these toxins not

getting enough sleep

increases the risk of your getting

alzheimer’s

our brain cycles through different

stages

as we go through we go from we start off

with

wakefulness into stage one two three

which is deep

sleep and then we go all the way back up

into rem sleep

which is rapid eye movement sleep when

most of our dreaming takes place

and our eyes flutter behind our lids as

we dream

each cycle lasts about 90 minutes

and we need five cycles you can do the

maths

when we are in deep sleep

our heart rate slows down our blood

pressure drops

we produce a human growth hormone that

helps repair our bones

and our tissues so we don’t wake up with

aches and pains

and this is fantastic when we’ve had a

really hard physical day or a mega gym

workout

and even more than this really exciting

is our immune system gets a boost pure

and that means we don’t catch those

little cold

sniffles sore throats coughs because of

the deep

sleep and the deep sleep

also helps us embed new learning

so if you’re studying for an exam

deep learning should be your deep sleep

sorry should be your

best friend

and then we move into rem sleep the

rapid eye movement sleep where we do

most of our dreaming

and while we dream this is when we have

our mental recovery

our psychological repair

and because of that it means our mental

well-being

is fantastic dream sleep

is important without enough of dream

sleep

we are we may be lacking in our mental

health

so what i want to understand is that we

still cycle as i said

and they last about 90 minutes but the

ratio between deep sleep and rem sleep

varies greatly when we first go to sleep

our deep sleep dominates so we get that

physical repair first up

and as we get closer to the morning for

waking up

we get more of the dream sleep the rem

sleep

so if you cut your sleep short

and you don’t have those full five

cycles what may happen

is when you wake up in the morning

thinking is a little difficult

you may feel a bit blurry and trying to

solve problems could be

pretty difficult so

when we have sleep i think there’s like

is magic in the numbers for sleep

the rule of thumb for calculating sleep

is to divide

it by two every two hours we’re awake

we need one hour of sleep easy

now when we’ve been awake for about 16

hours we step into our fatigue zone

this means we should be going to sleep

so let’s go for this

16 hours awake you divide by two

16 divided by two eight hours of sleep

this is where it’s fantastic in terms of

16 hours away

8 hours of sleep 24 hours you’ve got to

admit that’s magic

it fits so beautifully together

so when we look at sleep we should be

looking at how we

um wake up when we wake up so

we wake up and we’ve been awake for too

long we realize that 16 hours a week we

step into our fatigue zone

the center for sleep research discovered

that if you’ve been awake

for more than 17 hours it’s the

equivalent

of having a blood alcohol content level

of 0.05

if we have a blood alcohol content level

of

0.05 we are over the legal limit for

driving

and yet we would drive over the wake

from this limit

when we drive over the wakefulness limit

we are severely compromised with our

driving skills

i’ve got a question to ask you

let’s say you nominate me as your

designated driver because we’re going to

go party

is it okay if i have one glass of wine

well if i’ve been awake for more than 17

hours i’ve just increased the chance of

having an accident exponentially

next time you nominate somebody to be

the driver

check how long they’ve been awake it

could make all the difference

what’s even more scary is that when we

look at sleep

we have sleep debt

the sleep we owe ourselves

what does that mean let’s say for

example

if you’re a you need to sleep for eight

hours

and instead you sleep for only six

you’re two hours short of sleep

we all agree on the math what that means

is when i wake up as it’s if i’ve been

awake for

for four hours already

so we know that at 16 hours

approximately we step into our fatigue

zone

let’s say we wake up at 6 00 a.m in the

morning

by 6 p.m in the aft the evening we’ve

been awake for 12 hours

plus the four hours of wakefulness we’ve

already got in our tank

makes us 16 hours awake do we go to bed

do we go to sleep and sleep the extra

hours

so we go out and by 8 o’clock at night

you are well over the wakefulness limit

and then perhaps you could have a micro

sleep

a micro sleep is when your brain puts

you to sleep

when you become totally unaware of

what’s going on

why do we micro sleep because we sleep

deprived

and when we’re driving we could be

severely compromised

i want to emphasize this i really do

because when we look at sleep your brain

will decide whether absolutely must

producely you can choose

to not drink and dehydrate yourself to

death

you can choose to not eat and starve

yourself to death

you cannot choose to not sleep

your brain will put you to sleep when

your brain thinks

this is my moment and it’s not going to

say

are you at home watching telly

some research was done by dr evan carter

and she took fit healthy young men

and she allowed them to sleep for four

hours

for six nights a very short space of

time

and in that very short space of time

the response to insulin dropped and the

ability to do

to process sugar decreased

they were well on their way to getting

type 2 diabetes

they needed to sleep their way out of

this problem

what they’ve also found is that when

we’ve got two hormones in our system

one’s ghrelin and one’s leptin

ghrelin tells us when we’re hungry and

leptin tells us when we fall

dr vancourta discovered that when you

are sleep deprived ghrelin increases

and leptin decreases what does that mean

well brellan goes you’re hungry you’re

hungry

you’re hungry and you eat

and leptin

leptin is not there and we’re well on

our way into the fast ride

to obesity

i hope you really understand from all of

this the elixir

that sleep is for good living

and when you think about what can i do

for myself how can i ensure that i have

fantastic

sleep we need good sleep hygiene

what is sleep hygiene basically it’s

sleep routine

it’s around about 30 to 60 minutes

before you need to go to sleep

you need to start going into the relax

mode

now when i say relaxation social media

is not on the list

we can sit quietly and read maybe listen

to music

maybe watch tv but no

binge watching at night

i want you to also think that out your

room your bedroom should be cool and

dark

and if you’re using an air conditioner

realize that air conditioning is

really dehydrating so putting a little

bowl of water

in your room to help rehydrate the

atmosphere

can make a great difference to the

quality

of your sleep

also i know some people use apps they

could be the sound of rain

or fans or waves whatever it is if that

helps you sleep

i’d recommend it totally use them

the most important thing with um sleep

routine and sleep hygiene is this

that it’s the same again and again and

again

your brain loves routine

the more you can make it the same the

more powerful that psychological trigger

is

to taking you off into wonderful sleep

i really do want you to go out and have

a good time

you just need to go home and sleep well

as i said there are no shortcuts to

sleep

you shortcut sleep you shortcut your

health

and when we have the right quantity and

quality of sleep you

are always going to have peak

performance

thank you

[Music]

you