- As old friend recently reminded me, back in the day “pulling an all nighter” meant you had stayed up all night in some Herculean effort like preparing for an exam or finishing a design project. Today, pulling an all nighter is the Herculean effort of sleeping all night!#
- When we are young, deep sleep and dream time come easily. A hard day of play leads to deep sleep and vivid dreams, while growing muscles and neurons. It turns out that as we age, the peaceful sleep of youth is more difficult. And the modern world has brought us additional challenges with artificial light, highly competitive work stressors, driving commutes, flights across time zones, digital screen time, and best of all- high quality caffeine! #
- But we males have one additional and wholly natural curse that impacts our sleep as we age.
After an initial growth spurt in puberty, we have an otherwise wonderful sexual organ that takes a short break, and then it resumes growing again in midlife. I am talking about our Prostrate! Hell, I didn’t even know if was there until the Doctor started poking around to see how large it was!# - The prostate can cause lots of problems for men- Cancer among them. But for most men, myself included, the growing prostate puts pressure on the bladder- which causes frequent urination, especially at night- wrecking blissful sleep and dream time. As a consequence of this malady, I have been researching prostate and bladder health. (See references below.) But what has interested me the most is sleep itself- what is it, why do we do it, and how can I get better at what used to come so naturally?#
- Why We Sleep#
- Why We Sleep is an excellent book by sleep researcher Matthew Walker, PhD. It turns out that Sleep is likely our natural primordial state, and wakefulness is an adventure into daylight from which we retreat on a daily basis to heal ourselves and prepare for the next day. From our lives in the womb until old age, our sleep evolves and changes as we grow older. And the rhythm of sleep itself has changed as homo sapiens evolved into the social animals that currently rule over planet Earth- all made possible by sleep.#
- Broadly speaking, we have two basic types of sleep; REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement) is when we are dreaming, and NREM sleep (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) is when we are “healing.” It is more complicated than this (as I show below) but for simplicity, I will refer to them as Dream Sleep and Healing Sleep.#
- Healing Sleep is made up of a couple of phases we pass through from Light Sleep to Deep Sleep and back again.
Thought of musically, light sleep is chaotic while in deep sleep a brain rhythm can be actually be “heard” that signals the work of healing and growth. It is during deep sleep that we cement our daily experience into long-term memories and grow new neural connections. Healing sleep also “processes” our daily experience with our fellow primates, critically examining social relationships, especially facial and bodily gestures to deepen our survival skills by better perceiving our social space.# - Dream Sleep also serves specific functions. During dream sleep, the voluntary control of our muscles is “turned off” along with the cognitive functions of our “higher” brain. Dream sleep turns a spotlight on our emotional life, with the evolutionary advantage of dampening sour memories of bad emotional experiences.#
- But what was most fascinating to me about Dr. Walker’s book, was the other functions of dream sleep- problem solving and creativity! Thanks to the magic of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) researchers like Dr. Walker have spent the last 20 years creating scientific experiments in sleeping laps and actually observing the specific activities that occur within the brain of sleeping sapiens. We now know that while the dreams we remember upon waking may not make sense to us logically, they are in fact a larger picture of the web of our lives and facilitate solving complex messy problems and creating wholly new works of art.#
- Especially interesting to me, is the fact of lucid dreaming, where the sleeper is conscious, and to some degree, n control of the content of their dreams. Ironically, having read about this last night before sleep, I had the experience of lucid dreaming early this morning. But I will be dammed if my logical brain can figure out what it all means at this point!#
- These are simply some of the take aways from Why We Sleep. There is so much more here; about the problems with sleeping pills and alcohol, the dangers of lack of sleep, and solid advice on how to get better sleep. I recommend this book if any of this has sparked your imagination or curiosity.#
- Links to a few books I found helpful:#
- Why We Sleep | Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Steven Walker, PhD#
- Sleep Interrupted by Steven Y. Park, M.D.#
- Healing the Prostate by Dr. Mark Stengler#
- Wearable Tech#
- In my effort to improve my sleep, I needed better information about how I was actually sleeping, and a method to test our the result of various efforts to improve my sleep. Consequently, since I needed a new wedding ring, I decided to invest in an Oura Ring which I now wear on my ring finger.#
- The Oura Ring is my first foray into Wearable Tech. Every morning when I get up now, the first thing I do is launch the Oura app on my iPhone. My ring and phone talk to each other for a minute and presto, I have a full report on what actually occurred during my sleep along with a wide variety of other data about my health that is monitored throughout the day. Soon, they will even be reporting oxygen levels- which means of course an upgrade from V3 to V4!#
- Much like how we are unable to remember most of our dreams, our knowledge of our sleep is actually much fuzzier than we might think. And of course, alarm clocks, caffeine, sugar and artificial lights actually help to mask our knowledge and understanding of our sleep. I confess to being wary of the impacts of technology, but at the same time I have benefited from this particular technology by measuring and better understanding my sleep, which has been slowly improving over the last several months.#
- As old friend recently reminded me, back in the day “pulling an all nighter” meant you had stayed up all night in some Herculean effort like preparing for an exam or finishing a design project. Today, pulling an all nighter is the Herculean effort of sleeping all night!#
- When we are young, deep sleep and dream time come easily. A hard day of play leads to deep sleep and vivid dreams, while growing muscles and neurons. It turns out that as we age, the peaceful sleep of youth is more difficult. And the modern world has brought us additional challenges with artificial light, highly competitive work stressors, driving commutes, flights across time zones, digital screen time, and best of all- high quality caffeine! #
- But we males have one additional and wholly natural curse that impacts our sleep as we age. After an initial growth spurt in puberty, we have an otherwise wonderful sexual organ that takes a short break, and then it resumes growing again in midlife. I am talking about our Prostrate! Hell, I didn’t even know if was there until the Doctor started poking around to see how large it was!#
- The prostate can cause lots of problems for men- Cancer among them. But for most men, myself included, the growing prostate puts pressure on the bladder- which causes frequent urination, especially at night- wrecking blissful sleep and dream time. As a consequence of this malady, I have been researching prostate and bladder health. (See references below.) But what has interested me the most is sleep itself- what is it, why do we do it, and how can I get better at what used to come so naturally?#
- Why We Sleep#
- Why We Sleep is an excellent book by sleep researcher Matthew Walker, PhD. It turns out that Sleep is likely our natural primordial state, and wakefulness is an adventure into daylight from which we retreat on a daily basis to heal ourselves and prepare for the next day. From our lives in the womb until old age, our sleep evolves and changes as we grow older. And the rhythm of sleep itself has changed as homo sapiens evolved into the social animals that currently rule over planet Earth- all made possible by sleep.#
- Broadly speaking, we have two basic types of sleep; REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement) is when we are dreaming, and NREM sleep (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) is when we are “healing.” It is more complicated than this (as I show below) but for simplicity, I will refer to them as Dream Sleep and Healing Sleep.#
- Healing Sleep is made up of a couple of phases we pass through from Light Sleep to Deep Sleep and back again. Thought of musically, light sleep is chaotic while in deep sleep a brain rhythm can be actually be “heard” that signals the work of healing and growth. It is during deep sleep that we cement our daily experience into long-term memories and grow new neural connections. Healing sleep also “processes” our daily experience with our fellow primates, critically examining social relationships, especially facial and bodily gestures to deepen our survival skills by better perceiving our social space.#
- Dream Sleep also serves specific functions. During dream sleep, the voluntary control of our muscles is “turned off” along with the cognitive functions of our “higher” brain. Dream sleep turns a spotlight on our emotional life, with the evolutionary advantage of dampening sour memories of bad emotional experiences.#
- But what was most fascinating to me about Dr. Walker’s book, was the other functions of dream sleep- problem solving and creativity! Thanks to the magic of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) researchers like Dr. Walker have spent the last 20 years creating scientific experiments in sleeping laps and actually observing the specific activities that occur within the brain of sleeping sapiens. We now know that while the dreams we remember upon waking may not make sense to us logically, they are in fact a larger picture of the web of our lives and facilitate solving complex messy problems and creating wholly new works of art.#
- Especially interesting to me, is the fact of lucid dreaming, where the sleeper is conscious, and to some degree, n control of the content of their dreams. Ironically, having read about this last night before sleep, I had the experience of lucid dreaming early this morning. But I will be dammed if my logical brain can figure out what it all means at this point!#
- These are simply some of the take aways from Why We Sleep. There is so much more here; about the problems with sleeping pills and alcohol, the dangers of lack of sleep, and solid advice on how to get better sleep. I recommend this book if any of this has sparked your imagination or curiosity.#
- Links to a few books I found helpful:#
- Why We Sleep | Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Steven Walker, PhD#
- Sleep Interrupted by Steven Y. Park, M.D.#
- Healing the Prostate by Dr. Mark Stengler#
- Wearable Tech#
- In my effort to improve my sleep, I needed better information about how I was actually sleeping, and a method to test our the result of various efforts to improve my sleep. Consequently, since I needed a new wedding ring, I decided to invest in an Oura Ring which I now wear on my ring finger.#
- The Oura Ring is my first foray into Wearable Tech. Every morning when I get up now, the first thing I do is launch the Oura app on my iPhone. My ring and phone talk to each other for a minute and presto, I have a full report on what actually occurred during my sleep along with a wide variety of other data about my health that is monitored throughout the day. Soon, they will even be reporting oxygen levels- which means of course an upgrade from V3 to V4!#
- Much like how we are unable to remember most of our dreams, our knowledge of our sleep is actually much fuzzier than we might think. And of course, alarm clocks, caffeine, sugar and artificial lights actually help to mask our knowledge and understanding of our sleep. I confess to being wary of the impacts of technology, but at the same time I have benefited from this particular technology by measuring and better understanding my sleep, which has been slowly improving over the last several months.#