Dr. Michael Grandner

That activation makes it just a little bit harder to fall asleep.

You eventually fall asleep, baby.

But the connection between activation and sleep is not weakened, but strengthened.

And so you're a little stressed.

You get into bed, have trouble falling asleep, eventually fall asleep.

Getting into bed is predictably tied with stress and by adding stress to it, you strengthen the prediction and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

So whatever the initial cause of the stress was, it's the stress about not sleeping itself that creates the very activation that makes it harder to fall asleep, which strengthens the connection with stress, which makes it harder to fall asleep and it becomes a cycle.

That's why the best treatments for insomnia aren't about sedating you,

They're about reprogramming that whole cycle.

And that's why some people, they fall asleep just fine because, so...

Something for people to understand is that sleep-wake is not a unidimensional line where you're sleepy on one end and awake on the other end.

There's actually two separate dimensions.

Think of it like there's treble and there's bass.

And it's not just mono.

There's treble and there's bass.

You have a wakefulness signal and you have a sleep signal that are separate from each other.

They're related, but they do function somewhat independently.

And so sedatives boost that sleepiness signal

A lot of times with insomnia, what happens because of the excess activation arousal, your sleep signal could be just fine.

It's your wake signal that might be too high.