Sleep

There is nothing in the world that can recover the body as fast and effective as Sleep. Not only does it regenerate the cell structure and resources, not only does it create new cells and strengthens tendons, bones, and muscle, it also is singlehandedly responsible for your Learning Process, my dear reader.

A Wunderwaffe indeed…

So why in the hell of all hells do I read and hear so much negativity towards Sleep for my entire life? Stop me if you heard one of those.

“Sleep is overrated.”

“I am a worker. I don’t sleep much.”

“Human beings don’t need much sleep.”

“Sleeping too much gives you a headache.”

“Sleeping is for lazy people.”

“I am young. I don’t need sleep whatsoever.”

My head spins from all the flashbacks I am getting from thousands of these comments on a daily basis on the construction site. Mostly from people who want to be seen as productive (and in truth, most of them were), but very misguided by none other than propaganda.

Yes. Propaganda from the industries that want you to work on maximum capacity, all the time, without rest or sleep or any life whatsoever. For Minimum Pay of course. Propaganda slowly corrupted the minds of the citizens for longer than I have been alive. Unfortunately.

But what is the truth behind all of this?

 

How important is sleep?

Before I get to the specifics, let me tell you a story first to make a point about the dangers of lack of sleep.

As I said previously, I was a construction worker (professional) for some quite some time. I was very productive, working basically like a horse. As everyone else, to some degree, I bought the lies about Sleep being overrated.

Now, as someone from the Fitness industry, I knew that Sleep was important. But the burning desire to achieve my goals was very strong and I gave in. The thirst for success was too much.

It came to a point where I slept 5 to 6 hours max. With 2 to 4 hours in-between. Soon enough, I started to make mistakes and at one point, I couldn’t even remember how I got back from work after a 19-hour shift. I opened my car that night, put in my tools, went to the driver’s seat, started the car and… A hole in memory. Nothing.

Next thing I remember was how I was home, ate something having no idea what and dropped on my bed, a complete free fall into Nothingness.

A few days later, as I was chilling behind my computer, my mind revisited that night and started to ask questions.

“This one was fortunately without accident, but…

What would have happened if something went wrong, and I couldn’t react?

What if a person stood on the driveway searching for help after an accident?

What if a deer jumped out of the bushes?

What if… I simply fell asleep and steered the car into a house or just some random people walking from the bar?”

As I opened my eyes, bewildered as to what I had done, I calmly laid my head into my hands and uttered “What in the world am I doing?”

I made a rule to sleep at least 7 hours a day, no matter what happens and I never had this happen to me again.

This gave me a lesson I will remember for the rest of my life:

Never let your inner thirst for success or any other feeling like rage, fear, envy, and so on, to get control of you. Always abide by the universal laws, always follow the route to success and never try to skip it, no matter how much time and effort it will cost you.

I tried it in many ways, and I suffered the consequences. YOU don’t have to. The information is here, in this blog, to guide you and learn.

 

Stages of Sleep

And that’s where it takes us back to Sleep.

As stated in the beginning of this article, sleep is needed for all the regenerative processes and different brain processes like Learning.

How so?

Sleep is defined in two broad types, which happen in repeating cycles of about 90 minutes throughout the night:

• Non-REM sleep (Stages 1 to 3)
• REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement)

What are the stages on Non-REM sleep?

• Stage 1: Light sleep, drifting between wakefulness and sleep. Heart rate and breathing slow, muscles relax, brain activity starts to decrease.
• Stage 2: Deeper relaxation. Body temperature drops, eye movements stop, brain waves show sleep spindles (linked to memory consolidation).
• Stage 3 (Slow-Wave Sleep): Deepest, most restorative phase. Blood pressure drops, breathing slows even more, growth hormone is released, tissues are repaired, and the immune system is strengthened.

 

What is REM sleep?

Here is where it gets very interesting. The REM sleep. In this phase, the resources are rerouted to the brain and the activity ramps up, becoming almost as active as in the day.

Why?

During REM sleep, the brain takes the information that it gathered during the day from short term memory, such as body movement during a Squat exercise or from reading a book and repeats these sequences.

This time, however, the repeating sequence is 20 times FASTER! The brain literally repeats it hundreds of times, creates cells in the long-term memory and transfers the information there… Amazing!

This process that I explained above is how human beings “learn”, aka. the Learning Process.

Among other things, the REM Sleep is responsible for emotional processing and Creativity. Yes, you read it right, Creativity.

To put it simply, in REM Sleep, your brain turns into an overnight idea blender. The brain temporarily removes the safety barriers to run wildly across the information and ideas plane to mold new ones, test them without any real-world risk. It’s a task that cannot be done when awake, which is why it’s so important.

And exactly that explains why you have such vivid and non-logical, almost chaotic dreams.

Some of you might find this very familiar. Removing barriers from the consciousness, to wander around the universe without constraints, and such. And you, my friend who likes to experiment with dubious substances, are absolutely right. Its Psychedelics!

Psychedelics have about the same effect as REM sleep. They remove the barriers of logic and reason, and your mind becomes fluid, running through the street like a madman without pants, holding a bottle of whisky in one hand and a torch in the other, without any idea what it is doing.

 

What is the recommended amount of sleep?

Anyway, we arrive at the crux of the issue. What is a good amount of sleep for a productive individual, who is either working physically or mentally or even both?

The issue lies in the resources of the body. The body has only that much to spend, which is why, during sleep, it allocates the resources back and forth, which create the cycles I mentioned above.

That also explains why the body has to take priorities in allocation of resources. After all, its main focus is not one single function, joy or whatever. Its sole task is to Survive. That alone changes the entire thought process when it comes to improving.

Hence, the body focuses early in the night on heavy-duty repairs, immune boosts, and waste removal. Without it, the body will quickly fall apart and die. You along with it.

In the later stage of the night, REM sleep takes priority. Memory, Emotions, Learning.

Again, I want to stress this because its very important.

Early stage in the night = heavy-duty repairs

Later stages in the night = memory, emotions, and learning

According to American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society Joint Consensus Statement, a healthy individual generally needs 7 – 9 hours of sleep. Going even further, Matt Walker (brain scientist) in his TED talk states that losing 1–2 hours below the recommended 8 hours can lead to a 10–30% reduction in cognitive performance.

Now, remember all these phrases about Sleep again. After all you have read, do they make any sense whatsoever? Is it a surprise that people who don’t sleep much look like Zombies, barely have any coordination in body movement or memory whatsoever? That they barely absorb any new information, have difficulty recalling and process it?

Is it really a surprise that, in my case, I couldn’t remember how I got home?

The answer is no. Its wrong. And I find it deeply disturbing that so many hard working individuals have these disbeliefs, ruin their health and potentially of others.

 

Sleep and Productivity

To conclude this very long article about one of the most important factors in your life, Sleep is essential, no matter how you look at it. Especially if you want to adapt to your surroundings, want to learn and make sound decisions, 8 hours of Sleep is a MUST!

And I would even argue, you would come much further sleeping for 8 hours and have few highly concentrated productive hours a day rather than sleep for 4 hours, try to study one page for 30 minutes and barely understand what it says, which in turn wastes time, sinks the quality of life dramatically and in the end, just suffering all day. Not a great way to live, that’s for sure.

 

Thank you for being here up to this point. I hope I prodded you into reevaluating your Sleep schedule. I will continue to throw in more gold nuggets about Sleep because there is so much to tell about it but cant be thrown into one article.

 

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See you in the next article.

 

PEACE!