Sleep: So Many Things We Need to Better Understand: Dr. Andrew Huberman’s Podcast Does Just That!
Today I am going to speak about an amazing podcast which I view on Youtube from Dr. Andrew Huberman who is a tenured Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Though he goes into much depth in each of the subjects that he explores in the podcasts, he makes the information easily understandable in terms of the science involved. He always has examples to make the points more concrete.
It so happened that I was listening to the one on dreams today and learned some interesting things that I thought you may find super helpful though to get all the content you will have to listen to it yourself.
First, if you are a student, it will be helpful for you to do resistance exercise before going to sleep — not right before going to sleep but sometime during your day as it will help you to better retain the information that you learned as your brain is able to process it more easily.
For many years we have been told that we ought to get 7–8 hours of sleep a night. I am getting older and never sleep that many hours any longer. So, I was very happy to hear Dr. Huberman state that we have now found that it is much better to have the same amount of sleep every night than to have 10 hours one night and 8 hours the next and 6 the next and then 10 hours the next night. Being able to function well has much more to do with the consistency of the amount of sleep we get over the evenings that we sleep than anything else. He stated that he gets by with 5–6 hours of sleep a night (at least that is what I recall). I only need 5–6 hours of sleep at this time in my life which is a good thing given the weird hours I am on given that so much of my real work gets done sometimes in the wee hours of the morning given the time differential between me and the folks that I want and need to interact with back in the United States.
He spoke of various chemicals that are being used therapeutically to get rid of trauma. All I can say on that one being the hypnotist that I am that one needn’t take anything to deal with trauma — we can handle them in a matter of minutes using NLP techniques alone. If you are interested in learning how the brain operates on such things, by all means, listen to his podcast as it is fascinating but has many intricacies of understanding best left to the expert.
Alcohol and marijuana may allow you to get to sleep easily but it will screw up your sleep cycles which is a very bad thing because it is while we are in REM sleep that we are clearing out all the garbage — dealing with the more traumatic events in our lives which one will miss with the use of alcohol.
Learning: Sleep is your ally in being able to function, be able to learn better, and helping you to deal with hurtful situations. It is important for us to all get the correct amount of sleep we each require which varies according to age and really each person. If you are a student, do a bit of resistance exercise every day to help your brain recall the information easier. If you are using anything chemical to get to sleep, you are harming the natural cycles of your sleep so best to learn how to meditate or do self-hypnosis to help you get to sleep easier (or how about taking care of the stuff that you are procrastinating on that is keeping you awake in the first place — just a thought…)
If you are a person who is dealing with trauma from any point in your life, this is my expertise so please contact me for a free 45-minute Chaos to Clarity Conversation to see what we can do to clear it right out of your life. You may contact me here: dawningvisions.com/contact_suzanne/
