Dr. Micaela

So every body, every brain actually needs a different constellation of wellness behaviors.

Your brain might not need eight hours of sleep.

your brain might need nine hours of sleep or it might need seven hours of sleep.

Your brain might do best with, I don't know, five, six hours of sleep at night, but then two naps during the day.

I personally feel like I'm gonna vomit if I take a nap and I wake up from it, right?

And so my body does not do well with naps.

Now that doesn't mean I go around town being like naps are the devil, because for some people,

I have a sister who can literally just curl up in a chair, put a blanket over her head, nap for five minutes, take the blanket off and be fully refreshed and ready to go.

That seems like a superpower to me, but also very dangerous.

I don't know.

And that works for her.

And so one of the things that's incredibly challenging about thinking about sleep in specific, but also knowing that sleep exists in a constellation of all sorts of other things in my body and in my life, is that no one can tell me what is best for me other than me.

And so the only way to figure out what's best for me is to find it.

which means we kind of are constantly on this journey of figuring out what does my brain and body need.

And it's not even a permanent thing.

So on average, our brains mature between the ages of 23 and 25.

That can be slightly delayed for a variety of reasons, and that can happen earlier for a variety of reasons.

So what you needed before your brain fully matured versus after your brain fully matured can be different.

Also, our phases of life create changes in our body.

The circadian rhythms that respond to the amount of sunlight our brains are exposed to can change the amount of sleep that we need, our physical activity level, our stress levels, all these sorts of things, right?