The Health Pyramid- Sleep Part 1

The Invisibly Empowered Health Pyramid

PART ONE: SLEEP

What Really Happens After You Close Your Eyes

There was a time in my life when I thought if I could just find the right doctor, the right supplement, the right test, or the right treatment, everything would finally make sense.

Like so many people living with invisible health challenges, I became determined to understand my body.

And when I say determined, I mean determined.

I studied health. I earned my Integrative Health Practitioner certification. I worked with health coaches and life coaches. I listened to countless podcasts, attended conferences, took college courses, read stacks of books and spent more money than I would probably ever want to calculate trying to understand why I felt the way I did.

None of that was wasted.

But after years of collecting information from experts in sleep, nutrition, movement, hormones, gut health, stress, functional medicine, psychology and longevity, I realized something surprisingly simple:

Health isn't usually about finding one magic answer. It's about understanding how all the pieces fit together.

That realization became the Invisibly Empowered Health Pyramid.

And at the bottom of that pyramid, I put something most of us know we need but very few of us truly understand:

Sleep.

That may sound ironic coming from someone who lives with narcolepsy. But maybe that's exactly why I care so much about talking about it.

Because sleep isn't just something we do when the day is over.

Sleep is a necessary biological process.

And sleep is self-care in one of its purest forms.

We Need to Stop Treating Sleep Like Wasted Time

Somewhere along the way, we turned exhaustion into an accomplishment.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."

"I only need five hours."

"I'll catch up this weekend."

We stay up to finish the laundry. Answer another email. Watch one more episode. Scroll for another twenty minutes. Get ahead on tomorrow.

And sleep becomes the thing we sacrifice because it looks like the least productive part of our day.

Except while you are lying there apparently doing "nothing," your body is doing an extraordinary amount of work.

Your brain is processing information. Your body is repairing and restoring itself. Sleep affects immune function, metabolism, cardiovascular health, mood, concentration and your ability to think clearly. Adults are generally advised to get at least seven hours of sleep regularly, yet recent CDC data found that about 30% of American adults reported averaging less than seven hours in a 24-hour period.

So maybe the first thing we need to change isn't our bedtime.

Maybe it's the way we think about sleep.

Rest isn't the absence of productivity. Rest is part of what makes productivity possible.

WAIT... WE HAVE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SLEEP?

Yes.

And this is one of those things I wish everyone learned in school.

You don't close your eyes at night, enter one state called "sleep," stay there for eight hours and wake up.

Your brain moves through different stages of sleep throughout the night. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, we typically complete about four to six sleep cycles a night, with a cycle beginning again roughly every 80 to 100 minutes.

And those stages aren't interchangeable.

Each has different characteristics.

Stage N1: The "Am I Even Asleep?" Stage

This is the transition between being awake and being asleep.

You're drifting.

Your body begins settling down, but you're still relatively easy to wake.

Have you ever started falling asleep on the couch, someone says your name and you immediately insist:

"I wasn't sleeping!"

You probably were.

Welcome to N1.

It's the doorway between your waking day and the rest of your night's sleep.

Stage N2: You're Actually Asleep Now

N2 is still considered lighter sleep, but "light" does not mean unimportant.

At this point you're truly asleep. Your body continues settling into sleep, and distinctive patterns of brain activity appear.

This is where I think our language around sleep gets us into trouble.

We hear "light sleep" and assume it doesn't count.

It counts.

Sleep isn't a competition to see who can achieve the most deep sleep. These stages work together as part of a normal night.

Stage N3: Deep Sleep

Now we're getting into the sleep most people have heard about.

N3 is also called deep sleep or slow-wave sleep, named for the pattern of brain activity seen during this stage.

It's also harder to wake someone from deep sleep, and we generally spend more time in N3 earlier in the night.

Have you ever been awakened and felt like you were dragged back from another planet?

You don't know what day it is.

You don't know where you are.

You aren't entirely sure who you are.

That groggy transition after waking is often referred to as sleep inertia, and it can be particularly noticeable when you're awakened from deeper sleep.

Deep sleep is strongly associated with physical restoration and recovery.

Which makes this a good place to stop and reconsider something:

Going to bed isn't "doing nothing."

Your body has work to do, too.

REM Sleep: When Your Brain Gets Really Interesting

Then we reach REM, or rapid eye movement sleep.

During REM, brain activity becomes much more similar to waking brain activity. This is the stage commonly associated with vivid dreaming. Your eyes move rapidly, while most of your skeletal muscles normally become temporarily inhibited, helping keep you from physically acting out your dreams.

REM sleep is also important to learning, memory and emotional processing.

And here's the part I find fascinating:

You don't get equal amounts of every stage throughout the night.

Deep sleep tends to occur more earlier in the night.

REM tends to become more prominent later in the night.

So when we decide we're going to shave a couple hours off our night because we're busy, we're not necessarily cutting two meaningless, interchangeable hours from the end.

We're interrupting a biological process that changes throughout the night.

Suddenly "I'll just sleep less tonight" sounds a little different, doesn't it?

YOUR BRAIN HAS A NIGHT SHIFT

One of my favorite pieces of sleep science involves something called the glymphatic system.

I like to think of it as your brain's overnight housekeeping crew.

Research has shown that this system participates in clearing metabolic waste from brain tissue and is particularly active during sleep.

Your brain isn't simply turning off.

It's performing maintenance.

Which makes me laugh a little when I think about how many of us say:

"I don't have time to sleep."

Your brain might disagree.

WHY DOES A BAD NIGHT MAKE EVERYTHING FEEL HARDER?

This is where sleep science becomes real life.

You don't need to understand neuroscience to recognize this experience.

After a terrible night's sleep, have you ever noticed that...

You want every carbohydrate within a five-mile radius?

Sleep loss can affect systems involved in appetite, metabolism and food choices.

Something tiny makes you irrationally emotional?

Sleep affects emotional regulation and mental health.

Your brain feels like it has 47 browser tabs open and none of them are loading?

Sleep is intimately connected with attention, learning, memory and clear thinking.

Your workout feels dramatically harder than it normally does?

Sleep is part of physical recovery and performance.

You feel like you're constantly getting sick?

Sleep and immune function are interconnected.

You're technically awake but don't feel fully functional?

Insufficient sleep can impair attention and reaction time, which is one reason sleep deprivation is also a safety issue.

Chronic insufficient sleep has been associated with increased risks of several health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and depression.

This is why I don't want us talking about sleep as a beauty hack.

Or a productivity hack.

Or a weight-loss hack.

Sleep is health.

YOUR BODY ALSO HAS A CLOCK

There's another part of sleep that I think is wildly underappreciated: your circadian rhythm.

Your body contains internal clocks operating on roughly a 24-hour cycle. Light and darkness are powerful environmental signals that help synchronize those clocks.

As evening darkness increases, melatonin normally rises and helps prepare the body for sleep. As morning arrives, other signals, including cortisol, help prepare the body for wakefulness. Bright artificial light late at night can interfere with those normal signals.

Which means your sleep isn't controlled solely by whether you have enough willpower to put down your phone.

Biology is involved.

Environment is involved.

Timing is involved.

And this becomes particularly important for shift workers, teenagers, parents of young children and people living with sleep disorders or other health conditions.

BUT I SLEEP EIGHT HOURS AND I'M STILL EXHAUSTED

And this is where I want to be very careful.

Getting enough time in bed and getting restorative sleep are not always the same thing.

You can spend eight or nine hours in bed and still wake up exhausted.

Sleep can be disrupted or fragmented for many reasons, and conditions such as sleep apnea, insomnia, restless legs syndrome, circadian rhythm disorders and narcolepsy can dramatically change a person's experience of sleep.

Medical conditions, chronic pain, medications, hormonal changes and mental health can affect sleep as well.

I know this personally.

I live with narcolepsy.

So the last thing I want someone reading this series to hear is:

"If you're tired, you're obviously not trying hard enough to sleep."

Absolutely not.

Healthy sleep habits matter.

But sleep hygiene does not cure a sleep disorder.

If you are consistently getting what appears to be enough sleep and you're still profoundly exhausted, falling asleep unintentionally, struggling to function during the day, snoring or gasping during sleep, or repeatedly waking throughout the night, that deserves a conversation with a healthcare professional.

We're going to talk much more about the difference between sleep quantity and sleep quality in Part Two.

Because eight hours on the clock doesn't always mean eight hours of restorative sleep.

SLEEP IS SELF-CARE

I think self-care has gotten a strange reputation.

We picture massages.

Facials.

Vacations.

Candles.

Bubble baths.

And I love all of those things.

But sometimes self-care isn't glamorous.

Sometimes self-care is saying:

I'm going to bed.

Even though the laundry isn't folded.

Even though there are emails unanswered.

Even though somebody on Instagram appears to have reorganized their entire pantry, meal-prepped for the week, exercised, answered every text message and somehow made homemade sourdough before 10 p.m.

Good for her. 😂

I'm tired.

Self-care isn't always adding something wonderful to your life.

Sometimes it's refusing to continually take away something your body requires.

Sleep isn't a reward you earn when everything else is finished.

Because everything else will never be finished.

Sleep is one of the processes that keeps us alive and functioning.

And protecting it is one of the simplest ways we can say:

My body matters, too.

THE ONE SMALL YES

Tonight, I don't want you to overhaul your bedtime routine.

I want you to notice it.

What time do you intend to go to sleep?

What time do you actually go to sleep?

What usually steals those minutes?

Your phone?

Television?

Work?

Laundry?

Anxiety?

Taking care of everyone else?

Just notice.

Then give yourself one small yes:

Maybe you put your phone down twenty minutes earlier.

Maybe you dim the lights.

Maybe you stop answering emails at a certain time.

Maybe you simply go to bed when your body first tells you it's tired.

Not because you're lazy.

Not because everything is finished.

But because sleep is self-care.

FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING

For years, I thought improving my health meant finding more things to do.

Another supplement.

Another specialist.

Another test.

Another protocol.

Another answer.

What I eventually learned was that sometimes supporting our health means respecting the things our bodies have been asking for all along.

Sleep isn't the entire Health Pyramid.

But there is a reason I put it at the bottom.

Before we optimize everything else, we have to respect the foundation.

And tonight, while you are lying there apparently doing absolutely nothing, I hope you remember:

Your body is still taking care of you.

Maybe it's time we start taking care of it, too.