This is Mike.
Like a lot of people out there, his sleepschedule has gone a little out of hand.
Instead of going to bed at 10pm like he should, heinstead plays video games until 3am on daily basis.
However he wants to change that, so he asksothers what he should do.
He finds out that a common approach to resetting your sleep, is to pull an all-nighter.
Basically you don't sleep for one day, andyou go to bed at the desired time the next day.
This means he needs to stay awake for 37 hours, as he usually wakes up at 9am and his desired bed time is 10pm.
This makes sense to Mike, and he plans todo it the next day.
He wakes up around 9am, after getting his 6 hours of sleep and goesthrough his daily routine.
He always wakes up tired, but he uses coffeeto get him up and running.
When his usual bed time rolls around, whichis 3am, he doesn't go to sleep, but instead pushes forward and stays awake.
Mike has loaded himself with coffee and energydrinks, just to make sure he can keep on going and is using video games to distract himself.
Hefeels tired, but he's also confident in his ability to make it sleepless.
However at 11am, when Mike has been awakefor 26 hours, he feels a sudden drop in his energy.
He decides to take a quick 30 minute nap andeven sets up his alarm just in case.
But when he wakes up, it's already 7pm.
Without even realizing it, he turned off thatalarm and instead of napping for 30 minutes, he slept for 8 hours.
Now he's just 3 hoursaway from his desired bed time.
But Mike is fully awake and is not tired at all.
He messedup his sleep schedule even more and now he's set to be awake during the night.
Not good.
Wheredid Mike go wrong? Well, Mike was set up for failure the moment he decided to pull an all-nighter.
Even if he hadn't fallen asleep and had madeit through those 37 hours, in a few weeks he would most likely be going to bed at 3amagain.
All-nighters are like buying a fat loss pill.
Sure it could help you suppress your appetite, and you could even lose a few pounds because you're not as hungry.
But if you don't fix your eating habits, thosepills won't do much.
It's like putting a band-aid on a bigger problem.
Rather than pulling anall-nighter, Mike should focus on fixing his sleep habits.
A much better approach for Mike, would be to go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier.
If he just moved his sleep schedule 15 minutesbackwards, every day, it would be a much better choice.
It's not an immediate fix, but slowly he wouldget to his desired bedtime.
However a common problem with this strategy is that even ifyou go to sleep 15 minutes earlier, you will just toss and turn in bed for 15 extra minutes.
And waking up in the morning will also feellike a chore.
So it's good to to understand how your body knows when it's time to wakeup or go to sleep.
There are two factors that regulate this.
Thefirst factor that determines when you feel sleepy and awake is your circadian rhythm.
Basicallythis is our internal 24 hour clock and this rhythm controls our bodies.
This is not justsome airy-fairy thing.
There are certain times of day when your bodyis designed to adjust its temperature and release specific hormones.
And the timing of it all, comes down to thisinternal clock.
One of the hormones, that is controlled by this body rhythm, is calledmelatonin.
We start to produce it in the evening, and this hormone is the reason we feel sleepyat night.
However in the early morning melatonin levelsdrop and we start to produce a different hormone, called cortisol.
Cortisol is what makes usfeel awake and energetic in the morning.
So circadian rhythm controls those two hormones, but what controls our circadian rhythm? In 1938, two researchers where curious whatwould happen if humans lived in complete darkness.
Would our wakefulness and sleeping patternbecome completely erratic or would it still follow a 24 hour schedule? The researchersdecided to be their own guinea pigs and they took a trip into Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
A cave so deep that no detectable sunlightcan penetrate in.
In total they lasted 32 days in complete darkness and two discoveries havebeen made.
The first is that humans generate their own circadian rhythm in the absenceof external light from the sun.
Neither of the researchers had random spurtsof wake and sleep, but instead expressed a predictable and repeating pattern.
About 15 hours of wakefulness, along withconsolidated 9 hours of sleep.
The second finding was that their reliably repeating cycle ofwake and sleep, was not precisely 24 hours.
Instead it was consistently and slightly longer.
Inthe 80+ years since their experiment, we have now determined that the average duration ofadult human's circadian clock is about 24h and 15min.
This is why it's much easier to stay awakelonger and move your sleep schedule forward.
But because we routinely experience the lightfrom the sun, we reset our circadian rhythm daily.
The sunlight overruns our impreciseinternal clock and winds it back to precisely 24 hours.
Daylight is the most reliable signalthat we have in our environment, but it's not the only signal the brain can use forthe internal clock resetting.
As long as they are reliably repeating, thebrain can also use other external cues, such as food, temperature fluctuations, exerciseand even regularly timed social interaction.
All these events have the ability to resetour internal clock.
It's the reason why individuals with certainforms of blindness do not entirely lose their circadian rhythm.
Despite not receiving light cues due to theirblindness, other factors act as their resetting triggers.
So Mike shouldn't just move his sleepschedule 15 minutes backwards every day.
He should move his entire daily routine.
He should be exercising 15 minutes sooner, eating his breakfast, lunch and dinner 15 minutes earlier and most importantly, gettingsunlight as soon as he woke up.
Almost everything in your daily routine can act as a checkpointfor you circadian rhythm and by manipulating the timings, you can trick your body intorecognizing what time it is.
But as I mentioned, sunlight is the primary signal for your internalclock.
However, there's one big problem we face nowadays.
Artificial light.
Our indoor lights are bright enough to disruptour circadian rhythms, because they mimic the sun.
This artificial light confuses yourbody about what time it is, because it can't tell the difference between a light bulb andsunlight.
It doesn't mimic it to the full extent, butjust enough to disrupt your rhythm.
The problem is not the exposure to artificial light itself, but the timing.
Thus, the goal is to control the timing ina way that mimics the natural cycle of the day and night.
That means Mike should dim out the lights, use weaker light bulbs or use candles in the evening.
But it's even more important to avoid lookingat screens at night.
The TV, computers and smartphones all emitblue light, which triggers your body into producing more daytime hormones, such as cortisol.
And production of melatonin, the sleepinesshormone, gets interrupted as well.
I've recommended using two apps before, twilightand f.
lux.
They block out most of the blue light, howeverthey are not enough.
If Mike is serious about his sleep, he shouldavoid any kind of screen time, at least 1 hour before bed.
Optimally 2 hours.
So the 24 hour circadianrhythm is the first factor determining our wake and sleep pattern.
The second factor is sleep pressure.
At this very moment, a chemical called adenosineis building up in your brain and will continue to do so with every waking minute.
The longeryou're awake, the more adenosine will accumulate and along with it, so will your desire tosleep.
High concentrations of adenosine turn down the volume of wake-promoting regionsin the brain, while simultaneously turning up the dial on sleep-inducing regions.
As aresult of that, when adenosine concentrations peak, an irresistable urge for sleep willtake hold.
That's assuming you have a stable circadian rhythm and you're not experiencingjet lag.
The peak, for most people, comes after being awake for about 12 to 16 hours.
However, you can artificially mute the sleep pressure of adenosine by using a chemical that makesyou feel more alert and awake: caffeine.
Caffeine works by successfully latching onto adenosinereceptors in the brain.
By hijacking these receptors, caffeine blocksthe sleepiness signal.
So it actually tricks you into feeling alert and awake, despitethe high levels of adenosine that would otherwise seduce you to sleep.
If you try to stay awakeby drinking coffee, you should be prepared for nasty consequence when your body finallyremoves caffeine from your system.
That phenomenon is known as a caffeine crash.
Wenow understand why this happens.
For the entire time that caffeine is in yoursystem, adenosine, the very sleepiness chemical caffeine blocks, continues to build up regardless.
Onceyour liver dismantles that barricade of caffeine, you're hit with the sleepiness you shouldhave experienced hours ago.
But you also get hit by all the extra adenosinethat was building in the hours in between, impatiently waiting for caffeine to leave.
Whenthis happens you are hit by a forceful sleep pressure.
Unless you consume even more caffeine to pushback against the weight of adenosine you are going to find it very, very difficult to stayawake.
This is what happened to Mike when he attempted his all-nighter.
When his body metabolized all the caffeinehe had consumed, he was hit by that infamous caffeine crash.
That's why he fell asleep after being awakefor 26 hours.
So much sleep pressure had accumulated andhe was hit by it all at once.
By now you probably understand that if you consume caffeine beforebed, it will negatively impact your ability to fall asleep.
You want that sleep pressure to make you feelsleepy in the evening after all.
What's problematic though is caffeine's persistence in your system.
It has a half-life of around 5 to 8 hours, which means that half of the caffeine you consume will still remain in your system after5-8 hours.
Since you want to feel sleepy in the evening and actually be able to fall asleep, it's recommended that you don't consume anything caffeinated 8 hours before bed.
For Mike, thatwould mean no more coffee after 2pm, since he wants to sleep at 10pm.
But Mike is alsousing coffee to function properly.
He's extremely tired during the day and can't think straight, without it.
That's because he doesn't give his body a chance to remove all the adenosinefrom his system.
After approximately 8 hours of quality sleep, the brain degrades and removesthe adenosine load.
But if you're like Mike and you routinely get only 6 hours of sleepper night, some adenosine will remain in your system from the previous day and you'll wakeup already tired.
This means that if you're not getting both the quality and quantityof sleep on a regular basis, the adenosine doesn't get fully cleared out and actuallykeeps building on itself.
Keep this up long enough, and the result ischronic tiredness and fatigue.
This is also why Mike needs to drink more and more coffeeevery single day.
Caffeine masks all the sleep pressure building up, and is used to competewith all the adenosine that's accumulating.
So if you're like Mike and need to use coffeeto even function, it's a clear sign you're not getting enough quality sleep.
If you wakeup in the morning and you could easily fall back asleep, then actually getting more sleepshould be your top priority.
It doesn't mean you're lazy, it means yourbody needs it.
So those two factors determine when you feel tired.
The 24 hour internal clock and sleep pressure.
Since this was quite a long video, here'sa recap about what Mike should do and what you can do as well to manipulate your sleepschedule to your desires.
So the first thing is to avoid an all-nighter.
Sleep depriving yourself by staying up allnight, is one of the worst things you can do for your health, even if the end goal isa healthy sleep schedule.
Second, move not just your sleep schedule, but also your entire daily routine.
Anything that is consistently repeating inyour day, can be used as a cue for your circadian rhythm.
Third, get sunlight first thing in the morning.
Light is the primary signal that lets yourbody know it's time to wake up.
By exposing yourself to sunlight you set yourdaily tempo.
Fourth, avoid artificial light at night.
Lights that are too bright will confuse yourbody about what time it is, plus your melatonin and cortisol production will get messed up.
Especially try to avoid any kind of screentime in the evening.
Fifth, don't consume caffeine at least 8 hoursbefore bed.
Caffeine isn't found just in coffee, it'salso prevalent in different teas, dark chocolate, fat loss pills and even ice cream.
In the evening you want the sleep pressurefrom adenosine to seduce you to sleep.
Sixth, and last.
Get enough sleep.
If you're not getting enough quality and quantityof sleep, your body won't be able to form a normal rhythm.
I highly recommend you sleep without an alarmclock.
This way your body will actually get the sleepit requires and you will allow your brain to clear out all the adenosine that's accumulated.
This is it for this video.
If you found the information in the videouseful, feel free to hit that like button.
I've also set up a buymeacoffee page, whereyou can buy me a coffee, so I can get caffeinated and push through all that adenosine, to makemore free videos for you guys.
As always, thanks for watching and I hopeyour sleep schedule will be better than yesterday.
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