Dr. Sophie Bostock

We need to change our perceptions of sleep and see it as a gift that we are giving ourselves to have a better day tomorrow.

Yeah, the more hours you've been awake, the more sleepy you feel.

That's mostly because of a chemical called adenosine that builds up in the brain, making you feel drowsy.

But in the morning, you've also got this opposing circadian drive that wants you to be alert and awake and active during daylight hours.

So the morning after an all-nighter is a good time to try and get stuff done.

But on average, our ability to do useful mental work declines by about 25%.

for every 24 hours that we're awake.

What's interesting is that we can accumulate very similar deficits by just having small amounts of sleep loss which build up over time.

There was a study in mothers whose infants didn't sleep well and they tested them in a driving simulation and their levels of performance behind a car were equivalent to someone who was over the drunk drive limit.

in terms of that ability to control the vehicle.

I'm currently preparing to row across the Atlantic in December and the traditional shift pattern for ocean rowers is either two or three hours of rowing at a time and then two or three hours of resting, 24 hours a day.

So my heart goes out to everybody who does shift work.

The quality of your sleep is just not as restorative.

We do sleep in different stages.

Your first 10 minutes is not typically very restorative, but then you'll drift into a deeper stage to sleep for 20 minutes, half an hour.

And that's where your mental faculties are starting to be restored.

And then the deep sleep.

And this is very physically restorative.

And then you'll swing through into REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, particularly helpful for emotional regulation.

And even after one night without sleep, you're going to start to see not only this physical tension, but also this emotional increase in anxiety.