Sleep Science

It seems like the more we learn about the gut, the more crucial it is to our overall health. Turns out our gut even impacts our sleep with lower gut microbiome diversity being correlated with more fragmented sleep and more time spent awake during the night.

On the other hand, poor quality, disturbed or mistimed sleep (sleeping out of sync with your body’s natural rhythms and the light-dark cycle) seem to result in poorer gut health with less diversity and an over abundance of certain bacterial strains.

So looking after your gut is key if you want to optimise your sleep, and your life.

Just like humans, every living creature (from insects to blue whales) have to have a period of rest or sleep every 24h 🐜🐟🦭

We are quite surprised by the elephant and giraffe? 🐘🦒 are you?

Sleep is a universal phenomenon, yet its expression in the animal kingdom is remarkably diverse.

From bees taking short breaks to dolphins engaging in unihemispheric sleep and bears undergoing long bouts of hibernation, each species has adapted its sleep behavior to suit its unique lifestyle and survival needs. 🦁🐸🐥🐍🐬🦍🐄🦮

It's the last week of August, which is women's month, so this week let's focus on the sleep of the lovely women in our lives.

Hormones have a substantial impact on sleep. 😣

Women undergo hormonal fluctuations throughout their lives, all of which can influence sleep patterns and are the primary reason why sleep might differ significantly between men and women. 👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏾

It is important to note that while sleep quality may differ between sexes, men and women still have the same nightly sleep duration needs!

An immune response, like that initiated by a viral infection or illness, can affect sleep. At the same time, consistent sleep strengthens the immune system, allowing for balanced and effective immune function. 🦠💤

Image adapted from: Zager, Adriano & Palermo-Neto, João. (2016). Chapter 3
Neuroimmune Aspects of Sleep and Wakefulness. Doi: 10.1201/9781315366340-4.

🌝 During the daytime, your immune system is busy protecting you against inhaled, ingested or absorbed pathogens or germs (what we call innate immunity)

🌚 When we sleep, the immune system changes function to adaptive immunity and it removes damaged and mutated cells as well as makes the antibodies to the viruses and germs to which you were exposed to during the day.

The American Heart Association (AHA) just added an important new metric to measure heart health—and it changes how we consider cardiovascular health. 🫀

The update adds healthy sleep to the association’s heart health checklist, Life’s Simple 7—making it Life’s Simple 8.

Life’s Essential 8 now includes:
1. Diet
2. Physical activity
3. Ni****ne exposure
4. Body mass index
5. Blood lipids
6. Blood glucose
7. Blood pressure
8. Sleep 💤

Sleep is an essential aspect of our lives, playing a vital role in maintaining overall health and well-being. ✨

While the importance of sleep has long been recognized, recent research has shed light on its significant impact on cardiovascular health. 🫀

We briefly dive into some of the connections between sleep and cardiovascular disease risk, exploring the underlying mechanisms and highlighting the importance of prioritizing healthy sleep habits. 🙌🏼

Full blog is linked in our bio! 📄

This is a very summarized history of sleep research 👩🏼‍🔬🧑🏽‍🔬

New blog post! 📃

This is a good one, you don’t want to miss it! 💤

Read below:
https://thesleepscienceblog.wordpress.com/

Looking for an easy way to improve your sleep?

Get in some regular exercise! 🏋🏼‍♀️🤸🏼⛹🏿🏄🏽‍♂️🏊🏿‍♂️

There’s a substantial body of evidence showing that exercise helps improve sleep. Making exercise part of your regular routine can contribute to healthier, more restful sleep—and may help improve sleep issues such as insomnia. 🏃🏼‍♀️🏃🏾‍♂️
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The damaging effects of not getting enough sleep can creep up on you, eventually taking a serious toll on your mental and physical health. 🧠😁

Here’s how to spot the signs of sleep deprivation:

With all of this in mind, it seems clear that even after a few days of short sleep we are no longer as cognitively sharp or emotionally stable as when we are fully rested. 🥱

Chronobiology: the study of the body’s circadian rhythms 🌚🌝

Circadian rhythms are part of the body’s internal clock, where one cycle has a duration of about 24 hours. ⏰

One of the most important and well-known circadian rhythms is the sleep-wake cycle. But other biological processes such a hormone production and body temperature also have circadian rhythms 🌞

Sleep plays a critical role in good health and well-being throughout your life. ❤️

The way you feel during the day depends, in part, on what happens while you are sleeping, the quality of your sleep and the duration of your sleep. 😴

This is because during sleep your body and brain are actually fairly active - working to support and maintain your physical and mental health! 🧠🦵🏼

“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep.”

In case you didn’t know, sleep and mental health are extremely closely connected ⛈🌪

We’ve all experienced that feeling of waking up on the wrong side of the bed after a bad night’s sleep and walking through the day tired, moody and volatile. 😠

This is because sleep is extremely important both for your mood and emotional regulation as well as your overall mental health. 🧠

Sleep and mental health have what we call a bidirectional relationship – which means that changes in sleep can affect your mental health and vice versa. 😴

➖ Research shows that poor sleep increases your risk of developing mood-/anxiety-related disorders while almost all mood-/anxiety-related disorders are associated with some form of sleep disturbance.

Myth: "It doesn't matter when you sleep as long as you get enough sleep".

Fact: While sleep duration is obviously important, so is the timing of your sleep. More and more research is emerging to show that we see better health outcomes when our natural rhythms are in sync with the environment e.g. sleeping when it is dark and eating/being active during the day.

Myth: "How long you sleep is all that matters"

Fact: Sleep quality is also an important factor. If you want more information on what sleep quality is or how to tell if your sleep is of good quality, then scroll back to our previous posts on sleep quality. Otherwise, leave your questions in the comments.

What is sleep?

Sleep is a state made up of various stages with distinct brain activity. Each of these stages are important and appear to have their own unique benefits.

What is sleep? Sleep comes about as the result of loads of chemicals in our brain interacting with one another.

Sleep is actually a very complicated process as you can see here. This means that when things go wrong with your sleep there are many possible reasons. This is why we always have an individual consult with clients before creating their personalised sleep plan to try and address their specific issues.

We're back! After a short break, we are here and ready to share some more of the science behind sleep. We know a lot of you have been following us for a while but we thought we'd start with the basics for anyone new here.

Let us know in the comments what else you would like to see.

It's Sleep Fact Friday!

In our post yesterday, we spoke about how we start to get concerned if you are regularly falling asleep in less than 5min or taking longer than 30min to fall asleep.

But why? Well, here's your answer 💭