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Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 1 Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 2 Table of Contents Disclaimer: ________________________________________________________________3 Introduction _______________________________________________________________4 The Popular Myth about Sleeping ________________________________________________ 4 Recent “Eye Opening” Discoveries ________________________________________________ 5 How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? ____________________________________________ 5 The Mystery of Quality Sleep ____________________________________________________ 5 Chapter 1: Sleep Mechanics __________________________________________________7 What is Sleep, and Why Do We Sleep? __________________________________________7 Your Crash Course on Brain Waves ______________________________________________ 7 The 5 Stages of Sleep ___________________________________________________________ 7 Sleep Cycles___________________________________________________________________ 9 How Important is Deep Sleep? __________________________________________________ 11 How Important is REM Sleep? __________________________________________________ 11 So what is Quality Sleep?_______________________________________________________ 12 Chapter 2: The Inner Sleep Clock_____________________________________________13 The Underlying System that Governs Our Sleep and Energy _______________________13 Circadian rhythm _____________________________________________________________ 13 Melatonin and Sunlight ________________________________________________________ 15 Activity Level ________________________________________________________________ 15 Prior Wakefulness ____________________________________________________________ 16 Section Summary _____________________________________________________________ 17 Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 3 Disclaimer: The book “Powerful Sleep” is copyrighted by Kacper M. Postawski and PowerfulSleep.com. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any other means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holders The statements found within the pages of this book have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. If a product or treatment is recommended in these pages, it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The information contained herein is meant to be used to educate the reader and is in no way intended to provide individual medical advice. The publisher and the contributors are not engaged in rendering medical advice. All information contained in this book is received from sources believed to be accurate, but no guarantee, express or implied, can be made. Readers are encouraged to verify for themselves, and to their own satisfaction, the accuracy of all information, recommendations, conclusions, comments, opinions or anything else contained within these pages before making any kind of decisions based upon what they have read herein. The author of this e-book is not a licensed practitioner of medicine; therefore, the techniques, ideas, and opinions here are not intended as a substitute for proper medical advice! The information provided here is solely for informational purposes only. If medical advice or other professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. The contributors, Kacper M. Postawski and PowerfulSleep.com do not accept any responsibility for any liabilities resulting from the sleeping decisions made by purchasers of this book. This two chapters of is brought to you by PowerfulSleep.com, where you’ll learn how to supercharge your sleep system to sleep less, and have more time and energy in your life. You have the rights to share and give away this report to as many people as you like! Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 4 Introduction Is it possible to sleep for 4-5 hours and feel more rested, more alert, and more energized than you did when you slept for 8 or 9 hours (or more)? Yes it is! While this e-book may be short, the information in it is extremely powerful, do not underestimate it. This is state of the art optimum life performance information, which may shatter some of your old beliefs about sleep, and give you many learnings and understandings that you will be able to use to revolutionize your life. If you follow the information in this short e-book you will be able to: 1) Reduce your sleeping time. 2) Increase the Quality of your Sleep 3) Gain more energy than you ever had before. 4) Eliminate all feelings of drowsiness / inability to concentrate during the day. 5) Reduce your Daily Stress Levels Just imagine what radical changes you could create, and what things you could accomplish in your life if you were able to sleep just half as much as you do now? Time is the most precious commodity we have in our lives! Or what you could do if you slept the same amount of time you do right now, but the sleep you got was more energizing and fulfilling than ever before? The Popular Myth about Sleeping Contrary to popular belief, you do not need 8 hours of sleep to function properly during the day. There's a crazy media hype out recently telling people that America is sleep deprived, and that we should all get 8 hours of sleep, blah blah blah. This is absolute non-sense, and any sleep expert would agree. There are many people in the world today that perform extraordinary physically and mentally demanding tasks and sleep for only 4 to 6 hours per night. Are these people living zombies? Or did they somehow, consciously, or un-consciously tap into a hidden fountain of energy, a system that lets them perform this way? A good example of a person like this is someone in a trans-atlantic yacht racing crew. The crew takes shifts being at the helm and on deck, and has to fight vigorous weather, poor eating conditions, continuous motion, and drastic temperature changes, for up to 3 months! At this time each crew member sleeps about 4-5 hours per shift, and has no trouble performing the highly mentally and physically demanding tasks of sailing a yacht, fighting 30 foot waves, adjusting sails, and concentrating on keeping the boat on course. There are also many other individuals in the world who don't sail yachts or perform outrageously physically demanding tasks, yet they also sleep very little. Regardless of their ”sleep deprivation”, they're always up beat, energetic, and full of life. Were these people just born with this ability, or is it something they're doing on a conscious / subconscious level? Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 5 Recent “Eye Opening” Discoveries The longest recorded times that human beings have gone without sleep have been: - Randy Gardner in 1965, Randy went without sleep for 11 days (That’s 264 hours!). - In 1980, Robert McDonald of California stayed awake for a record 18 days 21 hours and 40 minutes. (453 hours) In both experiments, the subjects only experienced drowsiness and trouble with concentrating. This dispelled the popular myth that sleep deprivation will make you go crazy. In another experiment, a 6 year study done by the University of California, completed in 2002, revealed that people who slept less than 8 hours actually lived longer! Up until this experiment (which involved 1.1 million participants), there were many conflicting beliefs about whether sleeping less was more health beneficial. Many would argue that sleeping more was actually more beneficial. Both sides of the argument had experimental data to prove their theories. However, none of the previous experiments were carried out with such a large group of people over this long of a period of time. Many people die due to other circumstances, which have nothing to do with how long they sleep. How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? This is the first belief about sleep you will consciously dispel in this e-book. The Questions you should be asking yourself instead are really: “What Actions can I take to raise the QUALITY of My Sleep?” “How long does Quality Sleep Take for Me?” “If I increase the Quality of my Sleep - Will it be possible to gain more energy, enough to reduce my sleeping time and do all the extra things I want to do in life?” There are people who get an average of 8 to 10 hours of sleep, and always feel tired, drowsy, low on energy, and complain about “poor sleep”, or “sleep deprivation”, and try to compensate by sleeping even longer! In reality, they are sleeping TOO MUCH, and decreasing the “quality” of their sleep as well as their energy levels. This happens because there is an underlying energy and sleep mechanism in their body that they're not even aware of. You see, it is not a question of Quantity, but rather Quality :) This is the most important aspect about sleep you should grasp, and throughout this powerful e-book, we'll be exploring the secrets of this little known understanding in detail. The Mystery of Quality Sleep You hear people saying this so often these days - but you probably haven't thought of it up until now. You've probably heard someone say this to you, or perhaps you've Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 6 even used these lines yourself in your life: “I just need to get a good night's rest...” “A Good night's rest keeps the sickness away...” “Get some quality sleep, you'll feel better...” But what on Earth is quality sleep? Is it some mysterious force that just comes and attacks us in the middle of the night that we have no control over? Most people have very limited knowledge and beliefs about what sleep is. Often sleep just means “sleep”, and nothing more, and we don't pay much attention as to how it affects our health. Until the 20th century, it was believed that our minds completely turned off during sleep. Recent scientific discovery has un-covered something completely different. What you'll discover in this e-book is that once you sleep, your mind enters a state so fascinating and rich with structure that it makes being awake look boring! When we're sleeping, our minds are more active than they are when we're awake - which you're about to learn. Knowing this may lead you to asking yourself the question: “If our minds are so active during our sleep, perhaps my sleep has a greater effect on my body, and my health, than I previously thought?” Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 7 Sleep Mechanics What is Sleep, and Why Do We Sleep? Your Crash Course on Brain Waves Ah, before we take a step further into the meat of this juicy information, I'd like to give you a new understanding, which will make this easier to grasp. You may have already learned that our minds exhibit a certain brain wave when we're alive. It's not important for you to understand how these brain waves work or what they are, it's simply a measure of brain activity. The general understanding you may want to have is that brain waves can either get “high” and more intense. Or they can get “lower” and become slower, less intense, and for lack of a better word, lazy. The figure above is a general example of high and low brain waves, and how they might appear on an EEG (electroencephalogram) reading. An EEG is a reading that measures brain wave activity by hooking up electrodes to points on your scalp. The 5 Stages of Sleep There are 5 stages of sleep. Meaning, you're not always having the same experience when you're sleeping, albeit you're not aware that you're having them. As you read about these, and you allow this new understanding to come into view - you may begin to realize just how this mechanism may have played a key role in some of the sleepy experiences of your life. When You're Fully Awake Before you sleep, you're awake. Duh! But what really happens in your mind when we're fully awake? It's at this point that our wakefulness system is at its peak point Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 8 during the day, and our minds exhibit really high brain waves, called beta brain waves. When we're awake, and in beta brain waves, we are mostly in-tune with our super active conscious mind, which races from thought to thought, and keeps us on track with our daily lives. We'll get into the fun part of understanding the conscious / subconscious mind later on in the “Getting the Most out of Your Dreams” e-book you received in the downloadable package with this book. Stage 1 Sleep Whether you know it or not, you have consciously experienced Stage 1 Sleep all your life. Can you remember a time when you were drowsing off, day dreaming, or “zoning out” during a boring class or lecture? It's usually during times like these (and you'll learn why) that we enter Stage 1 Sleep. During this stage we exhibit slightly lower brain waves called alpha brain waves, and some theta brain waves. Alpha brain waves are also sometimes called “awake waves” - because we're still very awake when we're exhibiting them. In this stage our body relaxes, respiration and heart rate slightly drops, and our minds tend to drift into an altered state of creativity and relaxation, where thoughts drip like honey and it feels goooooood to just be there. You can think of Stage 1 Sleep as a “doorway” to your sleep. Stage 2 Sleep During stage 2 sleep, we experience patterns of brain waves called sleep spindles, and K-Complexes. These are sudden bursts of brain activity. Some scientists think this symbolizes the gradual attempt by the brain to “turn itself off”, in a manner of speaking. During this stage we are still very wakable. In fact, during sleep studies, most people woken up out of Stage 2 sleep say “I was still awake.” Stage 3 & 4 (Deep Sleep) During stage 3 and 4 our brain waves reach their lowest frequency, we exhibit very low brain waves called delta brain waves, and our mind goes back and forth between delta and theta brain waves. It's during these 2 stages that we are truly officially “asleep”, this stage is also called deep sleep. As we enter deep sleep, our blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate, reach their lowest point of the day. Our blood vessels dilate and most of the blood which is usually stored in our organs during the day travels into our muscles to nourish and repair them. Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 9 Stage 5 (REM Sleep) Stage 5 Sleep is probably the most fascinating stage of sleep, as scientists still do not know the true purpose of this stage. Stage 5 sleep is also termed Rapid Eye Movement, or REM sleep. During the 1950s a scientist by the name of Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that when people were in this stage of sleep, their eyes moved very rapidly in all directions. He also discovered that when people were woken up from this stage, 95% of the time they said they were dreaming just at that time. This is why REM sleep is also commonly referred to as dream sleep. It's believed that we dream mostly in the REM sleep stage. What happens to our brain waves during REM sleep? As you have learned so far, it would naturally make sense that our brain waves become even LOWER in this stage of sleep - however, the opposite is true. Our brain waves rapidly increase, and they're very identical to the ones we exhibit when we're wide awake! This kind of makes sense as you think about it - since when we experience dreams, they often feel so real and vivid it's hard to realize they weren't real when we finally wake up.... and of course, sometimes when we wake up we tend to wish those dreams WERE in fact real :o) We ALL dream every night; however, not all of us remember our dreams when we wake up. You'll explore a killer technique to remember all your dreams vividly in the How to Get The the “Vivid Dreams” e-book that came with this book. Sleep Cycles Now that you know the basics of how sleep works, we can explore how deep the rabbit hole really goes :o) What is quality sleep? Well, first you may want to understand that the sleep stages explained above don't happen only once during sleep. They happen multiple times during sleep in what are called sleep cycles. During a sleep cycle, we progress from stage 1 to stage 5 multiple times. It would seem really complicated to write out how this works, and because I want you to understand this and grasp this concept clearly, I've drawn it out for you! Aren’t I Great? Refer to the graph below, and then we'll go over it in detail. Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 10 The above graph shows an example of how we progress through the sleep stages, and how much time we spend in each stage while sleeping. Note: this graph is just an example, on average we experience about 6-7 of these cycles every night. So what's happening here? Well, the typical way we travel through our sleep stages in sleep cycles is as follows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 REM 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 REM...... On average, each one of these cycles takes about 60 - 100 minutes, varying from person to person. As you study the graph carefully, you may notice a couple of other things happening 1. Notice how the first period of deep sleep is the longest. Notice how the stages of deep sleep get shorter and shorter, and eventually non existent towards the end of the night. 2. Notice how the first duration of REM sleep is very short; notice how these periods get longer towards the end. The understanding you may get out of this is that sleep gradually gets lighter as the night progresses. You may have also realized that we don't spend an equal amount of time in each stage of sleep. You're right, and this is where we'll answer the “What is Quality Sleep?” question. Look at the chart below: Powerful Sleep – Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock by Kacper M. Postawski, PowerfulSleep.com Copyright © 2004 PowerfulSleep.com All Rights Reserved 11 The above chart shows the amount of time an average person spends in each stage of sleep. Let's talk about this in a bit more detail. How Important is Deep Sleep? - It's been proven that when we're deprived of deep sleep, we experience our greatest day-time impairments, such as drowsiness, nausea, headaches, muscle aches, and trouble concentrating. - When we're deprived of sleep for any irregular amount of time, our body will sacrifice all other stages of sleep to regain “d