Over past years, sleep was thought to be a bit of an unavoidable inconvenience.
Bon Jovi even wrote a famous song in their 1992 album called “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”.
It pretty much summed up the attitude of the time towards sleep (and maybe the lack of sleep explained my fashion choices in the 90s too!).
However, Mother Nature designed some form of sleep into every living organism, so I’m guessing she might have something different to say about the subject.
So, without further ado, here’s my uninterrupted conversation with Mother Nature.
Chris: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about sleep today.
Mother Nature: You’re welcome:
Chris: So, as always, I wanted to start by defining sleep.
Why did you choose to make us close down once a day, for many hours?
Mother Nature: The challenge I had, when creating organisms, was that you burn energy to live. And burning energy creates both damage and waste.
Sleep is just something I had to develop to deal with repair and waste removal.
Chris: So you’re saying that sleep is a time to clean up after a day’s work and get things back in order. Like cleaning the kitchen after cooking a meal?
Mother Nature: Absolutely.
One of the laws of nature that your scientists discovered, is the law of Entropy – “Everything moves from order into disorder over time”.
Nothing, if left alone, becomes more organised. If we don’t deal with the disorder it only continues to get worse. Never better.
Chris: So I’ll always need to vacuum the floors then!
Mother Nature: That’s Entropy for you.
Chris: So how does this relate specifically to the need for sleep? How do we deal with the metaphorical “Crumbs” we’re leaving on the floor?
Mother Nature: When each of the cells in your body burns energy, it creates some chemical waste products and also damages many of the cells themselves.
These waste chemicals and damaged cells are found throughout your brain and body.
And the longer you are awake, the more the damage and waste builds up.
Chris: We’re conforming to this law of Entropy then? So we’re getting more disordered as the day goes on?
Mother Nature: Exactly.
Importantly though, when you’re active during the day it’s very difficult to also clean up at the same time, especially in the brain.
There needs to be some kind of rest period to allow your repair and removal systems to tidy up.
We could use your kitchen analogy as an example.
Suppose you’re cooking and you know you need to finish with a clean kitchen. There are two ways you can do this.
Option 1: You can do all the cooking in one go and then, at some point after, take time out to thoroughly clean the kitchen.
Option 2: You could stop periodically during the cooking process to tidy as you go. You’ll likely still need to do a deeper clean at the end though. It just won’t be quite as intense a clean up as the first option.
I’ve built both options into the nature of recovery for living organisms like you.
Chris: So you’re saying that when I’m active I’m making a mess of myself. And to tidy myself up (repair and remove waste from my body and brain) I have to choose to either:
- Stop often to do mini clean ups (take “Downtime”) and then finish the job with a good sleep.
- Or, I push through and do it all in one go at bedtime, but there will be more pressure on the quality of my sleep that way.
Mother Nature: You’ve got it.
Chris: What if I refuse both options?
Mother Nature: Then you’ll continue into disorder.
When people deprive themselves of sleep, they start to decay into mental and physical fatigue, then eventually mental dis-order and hallucinations etc.
Eventually, you won’t even be able to avoid sleep. You’ll start taking mini naps (a few seconds to a few minutes at a time) and then just fall asleep wherever you are (even if you’re standing or driving).
That can have some very nasty consequences, so I don’t recommend it.
Chris: Okay, but I could probably get away with at least short cutting my sleep?
Mother Nature: Yes, you can. For a while.
Remember the law of Entropy. If we don’t tidy up, we are descending into disorder.
You either accumulate disorder quickly (refusing to sleep) or slowly (not getting enough sleep). Either way it accumulates.
The latter just shows the effects in less obvious forms than issues like hallucinations.
It’ll be more along the lines of irritability, lack of concentration, weight gain, reduced fitness or burn out, for example.
Chris: That makes a lot of sense. I’ve never tried to go without sleep for too long, but I’ve definitely seen the slow accumulation effects in myself on many occasions.
I’ve even experienced those “mini naps” you’ve spoken about, just from an accumulation of poor sleep over a number of weeks.
Accumulating the lack of sleep can almost be worse because it’s usually part of a much deeper pattern of behaviour you need to break.
Mother Nature: Very much so. It’s easy to say “sleep more” but often difficult to achieve.
Chris: Especially when your night is disrupted by young children, pain or insomnia.
Mother Nature: Yes, I agree.
Chris: Do you have any words of wisdom on these issues?
Mother Nature: Only to remember our second option – take mini breaks throughout the day so that there is less pressure on sleep.
This is why I gave you the ability to recover in small bouts.
Prioritising “Downtime“ is an effective way to improve your overall recovery and take the pressure off night time sleep a little.
Chris: Ah yes. It’s easy to forget that.
Learning to take time for yourself and relax every day is an important skill to master. I’ve noticed doing so actually improves my ability to sleep better too.
Mother Nature: Very much so. I designed daytime rest for exactly that reason.
Just look at any other animal, like a dog for example.
They’ll happily work all day if you ask them to, but the moment they get an opportunity, they’ll be fast asleep by your feet, taking it easy – No matter what time of day it is.
Chris: True. If you pay attention, nature all around you is prioritising sleep.
Mother Nature: Well, I did design it that way.
Chris: I’d love to dig deeper into the Downtime conversation, but let’s save that for another time.
For now, could I just summarise what I learnt from you today about sleep.
Mother Nature: Sure.
Chris: Being awake and active, both mentally and physically, creates a mess of waste products and damage to our cells.
The law of Entropy says that we can only descend into more mess. Never the other way around. So we have to put energy in, to tidy up, if we want to remain healthy. Fortunately for us, the “energy” we need to put in takes little effort at all on our part. We just need to sleep.
Sleep is what gives us the opportunity to repair our body and mind, and remove the waste chemicals that build up. Without it, our natural clean up systems simply can’t keep up with demand.
We have two options available to us for effective clean up.
- Go hard all day then get a long bout of deep restful sleep, to give enough opportunity to do a thorough clean and repair.
- Use opportunities for downtime during the day to do “mini clean ups”, taking the pressure off night time sleep processes. Especially useful if you have an environment where you can’t sleep well at night.
Is there anything more you’d like to say on the subject of sleep before we close this up?
Mother Nature: I think you summed that up nicely.
Maybe I’d just like to say that putting pressure on yourself to “sleep better” or “get enough sleep” can be counter productive.
Sleep, and Downtime for that matter, is about relaxation. If you put pressure on yourself, sleep can become difficult.
Chris: So rather than force yourself to meet someone else’s standards, it’s better to just allow yourself to improve your sleep quality just a little bit, and build on any successes you have?
Mother Nature: I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Just look around you at nature. Nothing is in a rush or trying to be what it is not.
Chris: That’s very true, Mother Nature.
Thank you as always for your sage advice. I’ve learnt some good lessons today that I’ll be keen to develop upon in the coming weeks and months.
I very much look forward to our next conversation.
Mother Nature: You’re welcome.
Thank you for listening today.
I hope you took away from the conversation that there is a fundamental law of nature that governs sleep. We call that law ‘Entropy’. And, as with any law of nature, we can’t escape it. No matter how good the coffee is!
Entropy states that things always descend into disorder. And that includes your body too.
In the same way that we need to put ENERGY IN to clean up our home, we have to commit ENERGY to cleaning up our body. Fortunately, finding that energy is just about committing to giving ourselves downtime and sleep.
Will talk more about Downtime and getting deeper into ways to promote better sleep in later conversations. But, for now, I hope this has left you with some food for thought.
Thanks for listening, and remember, health emerges quite naturally when you allow Mother Nature to guide you.
