Two months ago, my pulmonologist recommended a large wedge/body pillow for my moderate sleep apnea. He said we could try it out for four months, see if it improved my sleep scores before we decided on a CPAP machine. So I’ve been using the ‘sleep apparatus’ religiously and when I started tracking my sleep again last week using my smartwatch, I discovered the number of times I wake up at night has decreased while the amount of time I spend in REM sleep has increased. This is significant because disturbed REM sleep is a characteristic of sleep apnea.
According to the folks over at Sleep Care Online,
Sleep apnea can interrupt and even prevent the REM sleep stage. The frequent closing of the airway causes frequent awakenings throughout the night so that the body never fully slips into the REM stage of sleep.
Here’s a sampling of some of the numbers I clocked in over the past week:
Friday, Dec. 29
Total: 8 hr. 56 min.
Deep: 2 hr. 17 min
Light: 4 hr. 46 min.
REM 1 hr 53 min.
Awake: 9 min.
Sunday, Dec. 31
Total: 8 hr. 50 min.
Deep: 34 min
Light: 5 hr. 39 min
REM: 2 hr. 37 min.
Awake: 4 min.
Monday, Jan. 1
Total: 8:52
Deep: 1 hr 20 min
Light: 4 hr 39 min
REM: 2 hr 53 min
Awake: 0 min.
Tuesday, Jan 2
Total: 8:34
Deep: 1 hr. 56 min
Light: 3 hr. 50 min.
REM: 2 hr. 48 min
Awake: 1 min
When it comes to REM, the magical part of the night, I’m ahead of the game: some nights I spend up to and over 2 hours in REM sleep, and according to Whoop:
On average you’ll go through 3-5 REM cycles per night, with each episode getting longer as the night progresses. The final one may last roughly an hour.
For healthy adults, spending 20-25% of your time asleep in the REM stage is a good goal. If you get 7-8 hours of sleep, around 90 minutes of that should be REM.
So what exactly is going on while we are sleeping in REM? During this period of sleep, we’re not only dreaming we are also “synthesizing” problems and memories: REM sleep impacts our lifespan, our emotional health, and how well our brains function.
“It’s also called paradoxical sleep or active sleep, because REM sleep is actually very close to being awake,” said Dr. Rajkumar Dasgupta, a sleep medicine and pulmonary specialist at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.
It’s paradoxical sleep because as your breathing and heart rate increase and as the parts of your brain associated with processing emotions light up (think amygdala, hippocampus, thalmus, basal forebrain, anterior cingulate, and pontine tegmentum) other parts of your brain shut down (such as dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate gyrus, and precuneus). So brilliantly is the brain engineered that the parts that shut down ensure that you are not able to use your hands and legs to move when you are dreaming.
From the NYT article REM Sleep Is Magical. Here’s What the Experts Know:
“We’re going in and out of this rhythmic, symphonic pattern of the various stages of sleep: non-REM 1, 2, 3 and REM,” said Rebecca Robbins, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate scientist in the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
As you doze off, you enter the first stage of non-REM. This lasts less than 10 minutes and is considered a light sleep. Your breathing and heart rate decelerate and your muscles relax as you slip into the second stage of non-REM sleep, where your body temperature drops and your brain waves get slower. Then you enter the third stage, known as deep sleep, when your body repairs your bones and muscles, strengthens your immune system, releases hormones and restores your energy.
It terms of the importance of REM sleep on lifespan:
A 2020 study of over 4,000 middle-aged and older adults found that each 5 percent decrease in REM sleep was linked with a 13 percent greater risk of dying from any cause over the next two decades. Lack of sleep in general is associated with death, but the research suggests that not getting enough REM sleep “is the single strongest factor of all stages,” Dr. [Matthew] Walker said.
A Note About Deep Sleep
Unfortunately, my sleep numbers also reveal that the amount of deep sleep I’m getting still isn’t sufficient. While deep sleep numbers decrease with age, experts suggest that about 20% of your sleep cycle should be spent in deep sleep. I’m only getting about an hour or so every night.
The Sleep Foundation notes that lack of deep sleep can impact the formation of memories, weaken your immune system, and lead to insulin resistance, heart disease, and neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s. All things on our radar as we age.
Stage 3 sleep is also known as N3 or deep sleep, and it is harder to wake someone up if they are in this phase. Muscle tone, pulse, and breathing rate decrease in N3 sleep as the body relaxes even further.
The brain activity during this period has an identifiable pattern of what are known as delta waves. For this reason, stage 3 may also be called delta sleep or slow-wave sleep (SWS).
Experts believe that this stage is critical to restorative sleep, allowing for bodily recovery and growth. It may also bolster the immune system and other key bodily processes. Even though brain activity is reduced, there is evidence that deep sleep contributes to insightful thinking, creativity, and memory.
To increase deep sleep, the usual principles of good sleep hygiene are suggested: not consuming food before bed, avoiding alcohol and blue light, not exercising late, etc. But another suggestion is listening to binaural beats, a process of listening to two “slightly different tones, one in each ear. The difference between the frequencies of those tones creates a perceived third tone, or binaural beat. Limited research suggests that listening to delta wave binaural beats may help induce delta waves in the brain and therefore stage 3 sleep.”
Apple’s 2024 Watch Detects Sleep Apnea
While there are almost 30 million cases of sleep apnea in the US, almost 80% are not aware that they have it. While I analyze the data available to me from my smartwatch, the news reports that the 2024 Apple Watch has a new feature that reportedly will be able to detect if a person has the condition. The Apple Watch Series 10 can detect snoring and measure heart and breathing rates as well as body movements and sleep patterns.
The new Apple Watch won’t be able to definitively diagnose sleep apnea–only a doctor can do that. Instead, when it detects sleep apnea symptoms, it will alert the Apple Watch wearer to contact their doctor. From there, the sleeper’s doctor can refer them for testing. If diagnosed, the doctor can treat them for sleep apnea.
Sleep Stories and Green Noise
I’ve been in the habit for some years now of wearing noise-canceling headphones and listening to sleep stories on my Calm app when I go to bed. When I wake up during the night, I usually shift to another app Better Sleep, which features stories as well as background noises. I chose to listen to the Green Noise so was interested to come across this article Why TikTok Is Obsessed With Green Noise (Plus, the Best Noise for Every Sleeper)
Green noise is a frequency of white noise. It reminds people of nature more than other frequencies (hence the description “green noise”). White noise, more broadly, contains all frequencies found in the spectrum of sounds that you can possibly hear, with equal parts of each, WebMD reports. White noise typically sounds like an air conditioner, vacuum, fan, or even an airplane engine, while green noise, a type of white noise, might remind you a bit more of soothing nature sounds from wind to water. Green noise is around a frequency of 500 Hz, Huffington Post reports.
I realized that it has been some time since I listened to green noise on my headphones or even woke enough to play a second sleep story. Another indication that this pillow might be working.
Last year, Better Sleep reported on a study of more than 11,000 adults in 12 countries which revealed that we are not getting sufficient sleep. One of the factors involved is our inability to shut off our minds when we get into bed. Listening to bedtime stories is a potential remedy for that.
Bedtime stories are purposefully designed to help you fall asleep and can even be a shortcut to dreaming. This is because we rarely think about the words being read to us; instead, we paint a picture in our minds of what is happening.
In the REM (rapid eye movement part of our sleep cycle), our dreams are at their most intense and are in pictures. Switching on our brain’s imagination before dozing off with bedtime stories can help us prepare for a restful night.
There are several reasons why it is better to listen to a bedtime story as opposed to reading one. Not only can you turn the light off and reconnect with your childhood, but bedtime stories are also designed to ensure passive listening: they don’t build suspense which would have the listener anticipating a climax. Another interesting takeaway is that hearing is the last of our senses to switch off before sleep, so listening to soothing words while lying in the dark encourages the release of melatonin.
Off Topic
Vineyard Wind, country’s first large-scale offshore wind project, is producing clean electricity
Electricity from the country’s first large-scale offshore wind project is officially flowing into Massachusetts and helping to power the New England grid.
The Vineyard Wind project achieved “first power” late Tuesday when one operating turbine near Martha’s Vineyard delivered approximately five megawatts of electricity to the grid. The company said it expects to have five turbines operating at full capacity in early 2024.
I thought most of us were going to die from the climate crisis. I was wrong
In an extract from her book Not the End of the World, data scientist Hannah Ritchie explains how her work taught her that there are more reasons for hope than despair about climate change – and why a truly sustainable world is in reach.
-snip-
What’s most promising is how these pathways have shifted over time. In a world without climate policies, we’d be heading towards 4C or 5C, at least. This is the path that most people still think we’re on. That would be a scary world indeed. Thankfully, over time, countries have stepped up their commitments. As we saw with the example of the ozone layer, incremental increases in ambition can make a huge difference.
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