Speaker A
Hey, guys. How'd you sleep last night? Were you out like a light as soon as your head hit the pillow?
Explore the science of sleep, why some struggle to sleep, and expert tips for a better night's rest on BBC's What in the World podcast.
Key Takeaways
- Sleep involves multiple stages, potentially more than the classic four.
- Genetics, safety perception, and mental health significantly influence sleep quality.
- Adenosine buildup creates sleep pressure that is relieved during sleep.
- Good sleep is crucial for memory, immune health, and brain detoxification.
- Practical sleep hygiene tips can help improve sleep quality.
Summary
- The podcast explores different stages of sleep and recent research suggesting more stages than traditionally believed.
- Hosts discuss personal sleep experiences and the genetic, psychological, and environmental factors affecting sleep quality.
- The role of brain cells in the hypothalamus and the chemical adenosine in regulating sleep pressure is explained.
- Sleep's importance for memory consolidation, immune function, and toxin removal from the brain is highlighted.
- A sleep lab experience is shared, describing how brain waves like alpha waves and REM are monitored.
- Traditional four stages of sleep are outlined: light, deeper, deepest, and REM sleep.
- New research suggests there could be up to 19 distinct sleep stages based on MRI studies.
- Practical advice for improving sleep includes managing environment, using eye masks and earplugs, and addressing caffeine intake.
- Experts recommend getting up if unable to sleep and creating a safe, comfortable sleeping environment.
- The podcast emphasizes the complexity of sleep and encourages listeners to adopt personalized strategies for better rest.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and personal sleep experiences
- 00:37Hosts introduce the podcast and themselves
- 01:00Discussion on sleep difficulties and environment
- 02:26Genetic and psychological factors affecting sleep
- 03:07Brain mechanisms regulating sleep
- 04:32Consequences of insufficient sleep
- 05:32Sleep lab experience and brain wave monitoring
- 07:29Overview of sleep stages and new research
- 08:29Advice and tips for better sleep
- 09:50Summary and closing remarks
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Or was it a bit more tossing and turning with those racing thoughts? We've all been there. Well, experts have been looking into the different stages of sleep for a really long time.
Speaker A
And it turns out there actually might be more stages of sleep than we originally thought.
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That's what we're getting into in today's episode. We're finding out what happens to our bodies when we go to sleep, why some people find it harder than others to get to sleep, and some advice on how to get a better night's sleep as well.
Speaker A
I'm Iqra Farooq, and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service.
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I'm here with Caroline Steel, who has been looking into all of the science behind sleep.
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She's the gal who's in the know. First off, Caroline, how did you sleep last night?
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Not very well. It maybe took me, like, an hour and a half to fall asleep.
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And then I woke up hot. So I opened the window. And then I got woken up by birds and then the bins being collected.
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Yeah, so not a disaster, but I'm not feeling my best.
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Oh, no. Sorry to hear that.
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How do you normally sleep? What kind of sleeper are you? I take a long time to fall asleep.
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And then if I wake up, I take a long time to fall back asleep.
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So I'd say, in general, I'm a bad sleeper, and I kind of feel like I'm constantly on a quest to, like, work out how to fall asleep better, but I'm not very good at it.
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I feel like I can pretty much lie my head down anywhere, and I'll get to sleep. Bit of a skill.
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I don't mean to brag.
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I'm so jealous. Can you fall asleep on a train? That's what I'm always really jealous of.
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People who sort of put their head in their hands. Kind of embarrassing sometimes as well.
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Okay, so you're the opposite of me. If I want to fall asleep, I have to have this eye mask.
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I have to have earplugs as well. I take these with me everywhere I go, and I use a lamp to wake me up in the morning.
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That sort of mimics sunrise. And I feel like that maybe helps. Why is there such a difference sometimes?
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Then some people find it much harder than others to get to sleep. So there's lots of different reasons. It's partly a genetic lottery.
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So there are thousands of different genes which influence how easily we do or don't fall asleep.
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So it's partly kind of the hand you're dealt when you're born. It's also down to feeling safe.
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So if you don't feel safe in that moment, it's really hard to fall asleep.
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So if you imagine trying to fall asleep with your front door wide open, that would be hard, right?
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But it's also down to how safe you felt as a child. Some research shows that if you felt unsafe or were neglected as a child, you can become wired to be super alert, which is a really useful adaptation if you're growing up in an unsafe environment.
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But when you're older, you're safe, you're tired, and you just want to sleep well, it's not so helpful.
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And it's also down to our mental health. You know, if you're more anxious, if you've got sort of more racing thoughts, that's also been shown to keep you up at night.
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There are a lot of different factors affecting the quality of sleep. I want to talk a little bit about the science behind all of this, and what actually happens to our bodies when we go to sleep.
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What do we know about that?
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Yeah. So it's quite hard to study sleep. We don't know everything.
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But we do know that there is a collection of brain cells, a collection of neurons in the hypothalamus, which is part of the brain that's sort of responsible for regulating our body function.
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And they're synchronized with the outside world. So they're synchronized with when it's light and dark outside.
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And during the day when it's light, they're more active. And they do things like increasing your heart rate, increasing your body temperature.
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And then at night they calm down a bit. They become less active, your heart rate decreases, your body temperature decreases, all sort of in preparation for you falling asleep.
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And then there's also this really interesting chemical called adenosine, which basically builds up in your brain as you're awake.
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As your brain cells are hard at work, they make adenosine. And adenosine sort of gives you this pressure and need to fall asleep.
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And luckily, once you do fall asleep, your brain sort of clears it and you wake up the next day feeling refreshed.
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But yeah, it's down to the buildup of adenosine and these incredible cells in your brain that are synchronized with the outside world.
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All right, well, we've been finding out what happens to the body when we don't get enough sleep.
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Jonathan Tam is a sleep doctor and expert. He sent us this. Let's have a listen. You don't sleep during the night.
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You can't process the things you've done during the day. You can't lay down the memories of the new things that you've done, and you may be more affected by any traumatic experiences that have happened.
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We know sleep is important for our immune system, so if you don't get it, you may not be able to throw off those pesky colds as easily, and you may not respond to vaccines as well.
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During the day, toxins can build up in our brain. These are removed during sleep, and there's some evidence to suggest that if they're not, we may be more at risk for conditions like Alzheimer's disease later in life.
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Quite apart from all of this, your brain knows just how important sleep is. And if you don't get it one night, then the next day, it will make you feel exhausted. To encourage you to get more.
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I know that you recently went to a sleep lab, right? What happened there? What did you go through?
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So I went to a sleep lab in Cardiff in Wales, which was really, really interesting.
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They sort of have all these rooms which are sort of designed for a perfect night's sleep.
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They've got no windows, so there's no light to wake you up. They're at the perfect temperature.
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So everything's sort of in favor of you falling asleep. Apart from the fact that they put electrodes on your scalp, which isn't super comfortable.
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So I sort of had a cap with electrodes attached to the skin on my scalp to monitor my brain as I was falling asleep.
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And so they're sort of looking for two things in particular. They're looking for alpha waves, which are a sign that you're conscious and aware. So when your alpha waves sort of disappear, it shows that you're falling asleep.
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And they're also looking for signs of rapid eye movement, which is one of the stages of sleep.
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So it can sort of tell you at what stage of sleep you are. Unfortunately, I didn't fall asleep.
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Oh, no. I was going to say you must have fallen asleep. You're in a sleep lab.
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I didn't fall asleep, which was really frustrating. I think the added pressure of being like, I'm in a sleep lab, I want to learn about my brain when I'm asleep. I must fall asleep.
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I just sort of lay there really frustrated. Um, but I got to see my sort of brain graph afterwards, which was really interesting.
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I could see the alpha waves becoming more spaced out and sort of less frequent as I was sort of drifting off.
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But then I'd suddenly jolt back awake and the alpha waves would be back.
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Gosh.
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Yeah, it was a very frustrating, frustrating experience.
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Yeah. Oh my gosh. Um, but we heard about those sleep stages there with the REM stage as well.
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I wondered if you could talk me through that a little bit more, because there could be more sleep stages than we thought, right?
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Yeah. So it's sort of generally accepted that there are four stages of sleep. There's light sleep, deeper sleep, the deepest sleep, and then REM sleep.
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That's the rapid eye movement sleep, which is what happens when you're sort of dreaming and your eyes are darting all over the place, and we sort of cycle through those stages about once every 90 minutes.
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But I interviewed a scientist from the University of Oxford who's looked at people asleep in MRI scanners, and he thinks there could be as many as 19 different stages of sleep.
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W
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Well, you're still if we're talking about the four stages of sleep, you're still sort of progress through the different stages.
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But if you have to wake up at a certain time, it might be that you end up sort of getting yanked out of sleep at, say, a really deep stage of sleep when you weren't really ready to wake up.
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So as well as getting enough sleep, it's great if you can wake up at the right point in your sleep cycle so you don't sort of feel that, you know, when your alarm goes off and it feels really jarring.
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Um, that can be avoided if you can sync up with your sleep cycle. And I know you're not an expert, but you've been through the journeys.
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You're still going through the journey. Do you have any advice for getting a good night's sleep? What's helped you?
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Oh, there's so many different things you can do. I guess it's kind of. It's worth working out what it is that's stopping you from falling asleep.
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So it could be your environment, which is great if you can change it. So you want to be in a dark room.
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So if you're not in a dark room, get an eye mask like me. You want to be in a quiet space. If it's not quiet, I would recommend using earplugs. You want it to be a good temperature, so about 19 degrees, which I know is really hard.
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If you're somewhere where it's hot and it's summer, I'm struggling with that at the moment, so I'm using a fan and leaving my window open.
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But with that comes extra noise, so it's difficult. If you're someone who's kept up by anxiety and racing thoughts, it's a good idea to try and do something before bed that will distract you from those. So the sort of research shows that, you know,
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doing things like reading a book that takes you into another world or chatting to a friend or something like that could really help.
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And then not doing things like drinking caffeine, that can make a huge difference. So caffeine is incredible.
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It blocks the receptors in our brains for adenosine, which is the chemical I mentioned before.
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That sort of builds up and makes us feel tired. So it can really help if you're feeling sort of symptoms of sleepiness, but then it can stop you falling asleep later.
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So avoiding things like caffeine, avoiding alcohol, which also disrupts your duration and quality of sleep as well.
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Okay, well let's bring in the expert on this. We've got some sleep tips for you all.
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You heard from Jonathan Tam, the sleep doctor, a little bit earlier. Let's bring him back and see what his tips are.
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We can help sleep by trying to help our body clock. You can do that by getting up at roughly the same time every day and seeking light when you do, but avoiding it later into the evenings.
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You can also get into trouble if you spend a lot of time in bed awake, at which point you might start to associate your bed, bedroom, even the act of trying to sleep with wakefulness.
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So if you are having trouble with your sleep, it's important only to go to bed when you start feeling sleepy to not have a rigid bedtime.
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And if you do find yourself lying in bed awake for long periods, then simply get up, go somewhere else, and do something else until you feel sleepy.
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If you're choosing to do other things in the bedroom like reading, watching television, even working.
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Try and take those things somewhere else and save the bedroom for sleep and intimacy with partners.
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But through all of this, it's important to recognize that sleep isn't something you can try to do. It's something that comes to you.
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And if it doesn't, well, sometimes you just have to give yourself a bit of slack and let it come to you.
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Now, a couple of bad nights here and there are part of life, but if you find yourself sleeping badly for more than three months, it's definitely time to see a doctor.
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So I know, you know, you went on this personal mission for this documentary. Has your sleep improved since then? Have you discovered more about your sleep?
Speaker A
At least since then. Then. I've definitely discovered more about my sleep, and my sleep has improved, but not for probably the reason you'd think it would.
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So I every morning I wake up, I have a coffee, and then sort of throughout the day I'll have a cup of decaf coffees.
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I normally have a decaf coffee before bed as well. Um, and I went to replace my coffee pods a couple of weeks ago, and I realized that my decaf pod was sat a box of pods, was sat where my caffeinated pod should be,
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and my caffeinated pods were sat where my decaf pods should be. So for the last three months, and while making this program and while going to the sleep lab.
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I'd been waking up having a decaf coffee, wondering why I still felt awful. And then just before bed, drinking caffeine.
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So I'd say really pay attention to, to what coffee you're drinking. So yeah, since I fixed that, I'm sleeping much better.
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But not for any reason other than, you know, realizing I made a really stupid mistake before.
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Oh, well, at least you got there in the end. Got there in the end. But yeah, three months of bad sleep just due to accidentally putting my caffeinated pods in the wrong place.
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Oh my gosh, Caroline, thank you so much for coming on chatting all things sleep.
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I learned a lot and I hope you get some good sleep as well. Thank you. I'll try. I don't know about you guys, but I'm taking notes of all of those sleep tips. It's been so useful.
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What's helped you guys get a better night's sleep in the past? Comment below. We're going to read all of them. Like and subscribe too.
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You've been watching what in the world from the BBC World Service. I'm Iqra Farooq and we'll see you guys next time. Night.
Topics:sleep sciencesleep stagessleep tipsBBC World ServiceWhat in the World podcastadenosineREM sleepsleep labmental health and sleepsleep hygiene
