What is ACTUALLY happening when you ‘fall asleep’?
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It’s one of the most mysterious things about the human body. We barely understand sleep and there’s certainly no consensus on what is actually happening when we sleep. It’s an altered state of consciousness and, like almost everything having to do with consciousness, it’s very mysterious. We’re only just starting to understand that there are brain stem repairs happening via spinal fluid exchanges when we sleep, but there’s more to it than that.
Sleep is weird: it improves literally every single human function… and we’re not sure what it is.
There’s a great book called *Why We Sleep* by Matthew Walker, one of the leading sleep researchers in the world. He’s pretty open about how much we don’t understand about sleep. If you want to get up to speed on the little bit we do know and how much more we don’t know about sleep, it’s a worthwhile read/listen.
Being awake or conscious is like drummers standing in a circle all beating their drum to the same rhythm. All the drummers drum in unison and if one changes the rhythm the others follow suit. They are all aware of each others rhythm, so act in unison and are aware of each other. This is essentially how the different parts of the brain communicate and remain conscious and aware of the world around us.
Now imagine one of these drummers gets tired and starts beating slower, then another gets tired, beats a bit slower than the first then another and another. Suddenly none of the drummers are in unison and lose the overall rhythm they had earlier. Each one just does its own rhythm and thus is no longer aware of the other drummers or the outside world, This is you falling to sleep until the drummers decide to beat in rhythm again, around 7-8 hours later when the sun comes up.
At night it is called a sleep gate. It’s when your sleep drive is high and circadian rhythm is producing melatonin.
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