Sleep Is Key For Learning
We all know how it feels to go a night or two without good sleep. It seems to affect everything from your focus and concentration and can even cause unnecessary anxiety or effect your appetite. Turns out, there is even more good reason for you too make sure you get your quality Z’s. Just recently, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found evidence in studies on fruit flies that in addition to promoting long-term memories, sleep also helps make room in our brains for new learning. So how does sleep perform this incredible act? Well, neurologists believe that the creation of new synapses is one key way the brain encodes memories and learning, and since the brain needs a break every now and again from synapse-making, sleep time may be just the moment for it. At the same time, less critical synapses are eliminated, and though scientists don’t yet know how this is done, the theory is that only the less important connections are trimmed back, and connections encoding the real important memories are maintained. Interestingly, many aspects of fruit fly sleep are similar to human sleep; for example, flies and humans deprived of sleep one day will try to make up for the loss by sleeping more the next day. While sleep is a recognized as a promoter of learning, a few years back the same researchers found that learning also increases the need for sleep in the fruit fly. When the flies slept, the number of new synapses formed during social enrichment decreased and when researchers deprived them of their sleep, the decline did not occur. Bottom line? Sleep is critical for proper function and your ability to learn and absorb new information. What to do if you aren’t getting quality sleep at night? Here are some quick tips you may want to try:
• Relax in a warm bath with soothing essential oils
• Make sure your bedroom is dark and free of excess noise, with plenty of fresh air
• Take a supplement of magnesium 30 minutes before bed for ultimate muscle relaxation