Sometimes 8 hours sleep can result in grogginess while 6 hours can result in waking up fresh as a daisy, so what gives? Dr. Tracey Marks explains, in this short video.

Getting more than Zs in

Sleep involves 90-minute cycles, usually in 4 stages:

1. Stage 1: (drowsy state): brief muscle jerks; lasts a few minutes.
2. Stage 2: (light sleep): sleep spindles for memory consolidation; 50% of total sleep.
3. Stage 3 (deep sleep): tissue repair, immune support, brain toxin removal via the glymphatic system.
4. Stage 4 (REM sleep): emotional processing, creativity, problem-solving, and dreaming.

Some things can disrupt some or all of those. To give a few common examples:

• Alcohol: impairs REM sleep.
• Caffeine: hinders deep sleep even if consumed hours before bed.
• Screentime: delays sleep onset due to blue light (but not by much); the greater problem is that it can also disrupt REM sleep due to mental stimulation.

To optimize things, Dr. Marks recommends:

• 90-minute rule: plan sleep to align with full cycles (e.g: 22:30 to 06:00 = 7½ hours, which is 5x 90-minute cycles).
• Smart alarms: use sleep-tracking apps with built-in alarm, to wake you up during light sleep phases.
• Strategic naps: keep naps to 20 minutes or a full 90-minute cycle.
• Pink noise: improves deep sleep.
• Meal timing: avoid eating within 3 hours of bedtime.
• Natural light: get morning light exposure in the morning to strengthen circadian rhythm.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep

Take care!

Capsaicin has an array of health-giving properties in moderation, but consumed in immoderation and/or without building up tolerance first, can cause problems—serious health issues such as heart attacks, brain spasms, torn esophagus, and even death can occur.

Heating up

Capsaicin, the compound that gives peppers their “heat”, is a chemical irritant and neurotoxin that activates pain receptors (TRPV1) tricking the brain into sensing heat, leading to a burning sensation, sweating, and flushing. The pain signal can also trigger the fight-or-flight response, causing a surge of adrenaline. Endorphins are eventually released, creating a pain-relief effect similar to a runner’s high, and ultimately it reduces systemic inflammation, boosts the metabolism, and increases healthy longevity.

However, in cases of extreme consumption and/or lack of preparation, woe can befall, for example:

• A man ruptured his esophagus after vomiting from eating a ghost pepper.
• A participant experienced severe brain blood vessel constriction (reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome) after eating a Carolina reaper.
• A 25-year-old suffered permanent heart damage from cayenne pepper pills due to restricted blood flow.
• A teenager died after the “one chip challenge,” although the cause of death was undetermined.

So, what does moderation and preparation look like?

Moderation can be different to different people, since genetics do play a part—some people have more TRPV1 receptors than other people. However, for all people (unless in case of having an allergy or similar), acclimatization is important, and a much bigger factor than genetics. 

Writer’s anecdote: on the other hand, when my son was a toddler I once left the room and came back to find him cheerfully drinking hot sauce straight from the bottle, so it can be suspected that genetics are definitely relevant too, as while I did season his food and he did already enjoy curries and such, he didn’t exactly have a background of entering chili-eating competitions.

Still, regardless of genes (unless you actually have a medical condition that disallows this), a person who regularly eats spicy food will develop an increasing tolerance for spicy food, and will get to enjoy the benefits without the risks, provided they don’t suddenly jump way past their point of tolerance.

On which note, in this video you can also see what happens when Dr. Deshauer goes from biting a jalapeño (relatively low on the Scoville heat scale) to biting a Scotch bonnet pepper (about 10x higher on the Scoville heat scale):

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation

Take care!

Elizabeth Filips, medical student busy learning a lot of information, explains how in today’s video:

Active processing

An important thing to keep in mind is that forgetting is an active process, not passive as once believed. It has its own neurotransmitters and pathways, and as such, to improve memory, it’s essential to understand and manage forgetting.

So, how does forgetting occur? Memories are stored with cues or tags, which help retrieve information. However, overloading cues with too much information can cause “transient forgetting”—that is to say, the information is still in there somewhere; you just don’t have the filing system required to retrieve the data. This is the kind of thing that you will try hard to remember at some point in the day when you need it, fail, and then wake up at 3am with an “Aha!” because your brain finally found what you were looking for. So, to avoid that, use unique and strong cues to help improve recall (mnemonics are good for this, as are conceptual anchors).

While memory does not appear to actually be finite, there is some practical truth in the “finite storage” model insofar as learning new information can overwrite previous knowledge, iff your brain mistakes it for an update rather than addition. So for that reason, it’s good to periodically go over old information—in psychology this is called rehearsal, which may conjure theatrical images, but it can be as simple as mentally repeating a phone number, a mnemonic, or visually remembering a route one used to take to go somewhere.

Self-perception affects memory performance. Negative beliefs about one’s memory can worsen performance (so don’t say “I have a bad memory”, even to yourself, and in contrast, find more positive affirmations to make about your memory), and mental health in general plays a significant role in memory. For example, if you have ever had an extended period of depression, then chances are good you have some huge gaps in your memory for that time in your life.

A lot of what we learned in school was wrong—especially what we learned about learning. Traditional (vertical) learning is harder to retain, whereas horizontal learning (connecting topics through shared characteristics) creates stronger, interconnected memories. In short, your memories should tell contextual stories, not be isolated points of data.

Embarking on a new course of study? Yes? (If not, then why not? Pick something!)

It may be difficult at first, but experts memorize things more quickly due to built-up intuition in their field. For example a chess master can glance at a chess board for about 5 seconds and memorize the position—but only if the position is one that could reasonably arise in a game; if the pieces are just placed at random, then their memorization ability plummets to that of the average person, because their expertise has been nullified.

What this means in practical terms: building a “skeleton” framework before learning can enhance memorization through logical connections. For this reason, if embarking on a serious course of study, getting a good initial overview when you start is critical, so that you have a context for the rest of what you learn to go into. For example, let’s say you want to learn a language; if you first quickly do a very basic bare-bones course, such as from Duolingo or similar, then even though you’ll have a very small vocabulary and a modest grasp of grammar and make many mistakes and have a lot of holes in your knowledge, you now have somewhere to “fit” every new word or idea you learn. Same goes for other fields of study; for example, a doctor can be told about a new drug and remember everything about it immediately, because they understand the systems it interacts with, understand how it does what it does, and can compare it mentally to similar drugs, and they thus have a “place” in that overall system for the drug information to reside. But for someone who knows nothing about medicine, it’s just a lot of big words with no meaning. So: framework first, details later.

For more on all this, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

How To Boost Your Memory Immediately (Without Supplements)

Take care!