Show Notes
What are we sleeping less and less? What are the benefits of getting a good nights sleep and the risks if we consistently don’t? How is sleep linked to memory, cognitive performance, blood sugar regulation & stress hormones? How is young people’s development affected by sleep? In this episode we have the surprising data on the science of sleep to get up to date on; so, why there’s a sleep deprivation epidemic; how sleep works and what it’s required for; dreams; and importance of sleep for learning and for immunity. We’re also going to discuss the wide range of serious health issues that arise with even a small sleep deficit, and the vast benefits of getting sleep right; and the lifestyle tips we need to consistently get the sleep we need. And of course, sleep and mental health, and the importance of sleep for development in young people. Gratefully our guest today is a psychologist and neuroscientist that specialises in sleep, mental health and dream research, particularly in young people. She’s the Scientific Director of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, Roxanne Prichard! She’s the author of over 40 highly citied scientific papers, and her TEDx talk “Addressing our Childrens Sleep Debt” was featured in the lecture series: Transforming Education. She’s quoted regularly in the press, inlcuding the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, and USA Today. What we discussed: 00:00 Intro. 05:00 The Sleep deprivation epidemic. 07:15 Shaking off prejudice about resting being laziness. 08:31 Glymphatic system for toxin removal. 10:00 Synaptic plasticity: Learning & unlearning. 11:10 Learning & memory require sleep. 14:00 The hippocampus processes memory during sleep. 15:00 Late night cramming for exams blocks learning. 15:50 Lack of sleep appears to the body as a threat out in the world. 17:40 Blood sugar regulation is affected by sleep. 18:00 “Sleep! Like diet and exercise only easier!” 19:10 Immunity and sleep deprivation. 21:00 Cancer & regularity of circadian rhythms. 22:00 Evolution, daylight, circadian rhythms & learning. 23:45 Sleep delay of morning stress hormones in teens. 26:15 Light Vs Deep ‘Slow Wave’ Vs REM sleep. 30:00 REM Sleep explained. 33:00 Dreams: The top theories. 36:30 The electrical nature of sleep & brain waves. 40:00 Alpha Waves and biofeedback for insomnia. 42:00 Insomnia & the health risks of sleep deprivation. 46:00 Sleep is within our control. 47:15 The inflammation link with sleep. 49:30 The mental health risks of sleep deprivation. 50:00 Catastrophising and attention deficit. 50:45 College students mental health & sleep as a crucial marker. 57:30 Persausive technology, screens & sleep. 01:02:30 How much sleep do we need? 01:04:25 Avoid external stimulants & go to low light. 01:06:00 Avoid internal stimulants like caffeine and alcohol. 01:07:40 Sleep and wake at regular times every day. 01:08:40 Core temperature dropping signals sleep. 01:10:00 Roxanne’s campaign points. 01:12:00 The shame around rest. References: Ya Chai at al, ‘Two nights of recovery sleep restores hippocampal connectivity but not episodic memory after total sleep deprivation’ paper.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65086-xN.I.H. article, 'Sleep on it - How snoozing strengthens memories' (40% drop in learning after sleep deprivation)https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2013/04/sleep-itU. Chicago Medicine article, 'New study helps explain the link between sleep loss and diabetes'. Trisha Hershey, ‘the Nap’ Bishop. - “Rest is Resistance” book.
More from Chasing Consciousness
Do EM fields across and around the body and brain correspond to and contain information about our experience of consciousness? Can resonance help explain how larger and smaller systems with consciousness can harmonise into a single field of consciousness? Does mind evolve as matter evolves? Today we have the possibility that consciousness relates to electromagnetic fields to look into. So, we get into the arguments for why consciousness might be baked into the physical world as panpsychism holds; we compare General Resonance Theory to other electromagnetic theories of consciousness; look at how GRT solves some of the problems of panpsychism like the combination problem and the boundary problem; and how we might use resonance to theorise about consciousness at various levels of existence above and below our single organism subjective experiences; we get into why the hippies were right about vibration, fields and resonance, and also what the hippies got wrong; And we also get into some of modern science that seems to show an alignment between science and spiritual ideas rather than an incompatibility. For this broad range of topics we are fortunate to have the polymath, environmental lawyer, author and philosopher at University of California Santa Barbara, Tamlyn Hunt. He’s written over 40 academic papers and 3 books for the general public, “Eco, Ego, Eros”, “Mind, World, God” ,and his brand new book “The Hippies Were Right”, which we focus on today.
How can we explain vivid, life changing experiences and true perceptions occurring in patients between brain death and resuscitation? What are the implications of true information being anomalously communicated during these experiences? What are the implications of some children being able to access the memories of deceased people? Why do such a high portion of these kids remember a traumatic death?
How have metrics surreptitiously replaced our internal value guidance system? How much nuance is lost when we scale collective counting across contexts? How dangerous is data that at first appears independent, whist in fact having heavy value assumptions baked in from that start? Today we have the worrying topic of value capture to discuss; that is the phenomena of how the majority of our personal values have been outsourced to external generic data sets and measurable scoring systems, often without us realising it. We discuss how, whilst useful in getting the wider picture, these measurables replace our internal lived sense of why things are important, motivating and worthy of goal directed behaviours. We also get into the root of this phenomena in the artificial demotion of the subjective to a lower level of value than the objective; how subjectivity is in fact supertangible and salient rather than intangible; and we get into how data is not neutral and has interests that in turn influence how we collect that data - risking a kind of objectivity laundering. On the other hand we also look at what measurables are good for, and how awareness of the tension between our external and internal value guidance, offers a middle road that gets the best of both worlds. Fortunately to unpack this slippery topic we have the philosopher of games and art at the University of Utah, C. Thi Nguyen. He’s the author of over 70 academic papers and 2 books for the general public. “Games: Agency as Art”, and his brand new book “The Score: How to stop playing somebody else’s game”, that we’ll be focussing on today.
Why were fungi so important to the evolution of life on earth? How do they collaborate with plants to help them communicate? What does the difficulty separating individual fungi from the collective of a mycelial network teach us about collective intelligence and interconnected co-dependence in ecosystems? In this episode we discuss how fungi are a brilliant example of symbiosis in nature. We get into their importance to evolution; how they facilitate plant communication; how they exhibit both collaboration and competition simultaneously; how they can solve problems without brains; and how they confound our ideas of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Fortunately to decode these ideas we have biologist, ecologist, mycologist and award winning author Merlin Sheldrake as our guide. He is a research associate at Oxford University and Vrije University in Amsterdam. He has written 20 scientific papers and his 2020 book “Entangled life - How Fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures”, has sold more than a million copies in over 30 languages. The book received the 2021 Royal Society Science book award and the Wainwright prize for writing on Global Conservation. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 05:00 Entangled Life Book. 06:40 The difference between the plant and fungal kingdoms. 08:00 Mycelium Networks: shapeshifting, sprawling networks. 09:55 Fungi’s symbiotic role in early evolution of land plants. 13:15 Mychorrhizal fungi: plant partners. 14:00 Katie Field - Re-creating early earth conditions in the lab. 15:50 Plant-Fungi electrical and chemical signalling. 19:40 Mutual vs parasitic simbiosis. 22:15 Inherent intelligence in fungi behaviour. 27:15 The skin and gut microbiome. 31:45 The enteric nervous system - possible mood changer. 33:00 The dance of competition and cooperation in evolution. 37:30 Climate Change innovations with fungi - Carbon cycling. 39:50 Writing Fungi into conservation targets with better data. 42:00 Fungal problem solving and distributed intelligence. 46:00 The blurring of self and other - fungi make us reconsider our separateness. 48:00 Individuality is a convenient concept but over emphasised. 50:00 The wood wide web over romanticised concept. 52:00 Fungal communication studies. 55:00 Sound communication in plants & fungi. 58:00 Implications of plant and mushroom memory. References: Merlin Sheldrake, “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures”. Dr. Katie Field, ‘How fungi helped create life as we know it’ article. Justin D. Stewart et al, ‘Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks’ Paper. Loteto Galvez et al, ‘A travelling-wave strategy for plant–fungal trade’.
How has new research changed the way we see nutritional health? What role do ultra-processed foods, fibre, gut microbes, inflammation and insulin resistance play in the new paradigm? Why does the gut microbiome affect our mental health? How can simply diversifying the quantity of plants in your diet change health outcomes radically? In this episode we have the complex topic of nutrition to get up to date on. There’s been so much research over the last 20 years that has contradicted some of our most deep seated preconceptions about food, so today we clarify science’s new take. We discuss the rise of lifestyle medicine as a solution to western health crises; individualised diet; ultra processed foods; fibre; glycemic index issues; the gut microbiome; inflammation; a variety of foods over restrictive diets; how to support the use of new GPL-1 weight loss drugs; and what the nutritional organisation Zoe is doing to make this all easier for the public to put into practice.