Why it's tough to get up in the morning

How come some people spring out of bed in the morning and others hit the alarm over and over before getting up? There are several explanations, explains sleep expert Carl Brazil, M.D., Ph.D.

You may not have slept long enough. Your body wants to get the sleep you need, so if your alarm starts going off too close to when your head hit the pillow, it may be a struggle, Dr. Bazil says.

You may be waking up during your deepest sleep. If you're forced awake during the deepest stage of sleep, you may be groggy, whereas you'll more easily awaken at the end of a 90- minute sleep cycle ( you can get to know more in detail in "Sleep stages" ) sometimes even if total sleep time is less). 

You're waking up at the wrong time. Your body wants to follow a consistent sleep schedule. If you try to shift that timing too much (by trying to wake up a lot earlier than usual). it may be tough to pop out of bed.

You may be an extreme night owl. For the majority of individuals, our body clocks run on roughly the same schedule, where we tend to have more energy in the morning and feel ready for sleep later in the day. But about 15 to 30 percent of people are believed to have either biologically delayed or faster- than - usual- running body clocks ( thought to be the result of our genes). 

You may have sleep apnea or another sleep disorder. If you give yourself adequate time to sleep and have a consistent sleep schedule yet still seem to be struggling a lot to wake up in the morning (or feel particularly drowsy during the day ), it might mean you have sleep apnea or another sleep disorder that's preventing you from getting enough deep sleep each night , Dr. Bazil says

Why do us need snooze

"Your mind is processing complex thoughts, making memories stick, clearing out brain waste and much more." BY SARAH DIGIULIO

From the outside, most people don't look very active during sleep. But what's going on inside is an entirely different story- particularly for our brains.

"It's not just that the brain turns off," explains Carl Bazil, M.D., Ph.D., director of epilepsy and sleep division of the department of neurology at New York- Presbyterian/ Columbia University Irving Medical Center,

In healthy sleep , the brain is cycling through four sleep stages, each distinguished by a unique pattern of brain activity ( learn more about the stages of sleep ), he explains. Neuroscientists and sleep-medicine doctors can measure this brain activity during sleep using a test called an electroencephalogram, or EEG ( a series of electrodes is attached to the scalp to detect and record electrical signals in the brain. According to Dr. Bazil, "Sleep is actually a very active process."

One theory as to why human brains need sleep in the first place is to retain their neuroplasticity- the ability for our brain cells to strengthen important connections and get rid of the less important ones ( the "synaptic homeostasis hypothesis," which is still a very active area of research), explains Spencer Dawson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

During the day, when we're awake and exposed to new information ( whether it's in a classroom, at a party talking to a friend, while playing a sport or just observing the world around us), our brain cells are brewing these new connections, Dawson says.

We require an incredible amount of energy to maintain those new connections - and, at some point, the brain need to downscale these connections, he says. "Sleep seems to be critical for this."

Studies show that if sleep doesn't happen, things, like storing memories, learning new information, honing our deep learning and analytical skills, cleaning out brain "waste" and being able to control our moods and emotions either, doesn't happen or doesn't happen very well. Here's some of what's happening in your brain during sleep.

The brain is encoding memories

Sleep is critical for learning new information, which is something neuroscientists call "memory consolidation", according to Dr.Bazil. Research shows that if you teach something to a group of people in the evening and test them on it the next morning, those who get a good night's sleep do much better at recalling the information than people whose sleep is restricted.

More interesting, research suggests that if you teach something to a group of people in the evening and test them on it 12 hours later , in the morning , after a good night's sleep , they do better than people who learning something in the morning and are tested 12 hours later, in the evening, who have not slept during the day.

It's during the deep stages of sleep when memories appear to get translated from the hippocampus( the part of the brain that holds on to new memories for short-term storage) to the prefrontal cortex. ( where long-term memories are stored), Dawson notes.

"It's clear that you need sleep to learn," Dr.Bazil says. Read: This is why staying up all night to cram for a test doesn't work.

You learn new skills

The brain needs sleep to process new things so it would make sense that the brain also needs sleep to learn new motor skills. That is why if you're learning an action or set of actions (like how to play a musical instrument or a new dance routine), you're more likely to be better at that task after a good night's sleep.

Your brain figures out how to apply new information in different Scenarios

Have you ever been faced with a tough problem or decision and been told to "sleep on it"? There's a scientific explanation for why that works, Dr. Bazil says. "Sleep is when you do complex processing and come to conclusions about complex information."

These types of complex processing skills are essential when it comes to things like learning a new language, coming up with new theories and being able to apply certain principles to new problems.

Your ability to focus is improved

If you've ever stayed up into the wee hours of the morning in order to meet a work deadline or finish a paper, you can probably relate to it being harder to concentrate the more hours you're awake. Indeed, research reveals that if you completely deprive someone of sleep for 36 hours, they will perform poorly on simple attention tasks.

Research also shows that if a healthy individual gets only six hours of sleep per night, performance on attention tests deteriorates over time. By about day eight or 10, concentration is about the same as that of someone who is completely sleep deprived.

"People don't realize they're sleep deprived, but they're just not reacting as quickly," says Dr.Bazil.

Sleep helps maintain executive functioning skills

The frontal cortex is particularly vulnerable to sleep loss, and that part of the brain is critical for executive functioning (which includes decision making and judgment).

Studies show that the longer someone is awake, risk tolerance heightens, Dawson says. "You are going to be more likely to make risky decisions toward the end of the day and into the night - more so than you would during the day."

It makes you less moody, less irritable and less likely to lash out 

Do you think the sleep loss can make you cranky? That effect is thought by neuroscientists to be a result of having your amygdala- the emotional center of the brain - go into overdrive.

In a healthy, well-rested person, the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex work together to keep your emotional state in check. Something happens in our environment ( for example, someone cuts us off on the road or tells us good news), and the amygdala is the part of the brain where our reaction comes from. The prefrontal cortex is on standby to help reign in that response if things get a little too heated.(Think of it as the emotional "brakes," Dawson explains.)

When we're sleep deprived, however activity in the amygdala revs up, while activity in the prefrontal cortex slows down. "It's essentially as if someone cut the brake lines," Dawson says. " So we tend to be more moody , irritable, quick to anger and reactive - and we have a harder time controlling our behavior." 

The brain gets rid of its "waste"

While the brain sleeps, the harmful toxin is cleared out . Although the research behind the brain's purge of neurotoxic waste is still in its infancy, it's exciting , because there are a lot of implications for downstream effects , notes Dawson.

There are certain proteins that seem to accumulate in the brain over the course of the day when someone awake- and those proteins then get cleared out during sleep, Dawson explains. 

One is beta-amyloid, a sticky protein that can form larger clumps of plaque in the brain if enough of it accumulates. These plaques disrupt communication between brain cells and eventually kill them. The presence of these plaques in the brain is also one of the telltale signs of Alzheimer's disease.

Meanwhile, a recent meta-analysis of multiple studies that have examined the link between poor sleep and Alzheimer's disease risk shows that sleep problems do, in fact, pose a measurable risk for the chronic cognitive -impairment disorder.)

Why do children seem to sleep better than adults ?

Do you know that babies and children need more REM sleep to help filter through everything they're learning?

Sleeping like a baby is considered to be the Holy Grail when it comes to snoozing. Everyone wants it -or loves to brag about it, should they manage to get a full night of deep, uninterrupted z's. And while you might be amazed that a baby can sleep through just about anything, from the vacuum running to the dog's barking, this type of sleep plays a big part in developing a child's cognitive abilities.

"Sleep's job is to analyze all the information a child gets in the day," says Rasik Shah, M.D., pediatric sleep medicine specialist at Hassenfeld Children's hospital at NYU Langone Medical Center. "the better sleep quality a child has, the better their memory and cognitive  function."

"Children who struggle to get a good night's sleep can become dysregulated," says Jack Maypole, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Comprehensive Care Program at Boston University school of medicine. "If you have ever pulled an all-nighter and then craved (junk food first things in the morning ), it's a similar feeling. Less sleep means you act and feel (off the next day)."

Both children and adults experience an act during sleep called pruning, which is when the brain analyzes information that's been picked up throughout the day, says Dr.Shah. Because so much of their environment is brand new, babies and children need more rapid eye movement (REM) sleep to help filter through everything they're picking up. In fact, babies do not even begin shifting to a non-REM cycle of sleep until they are about 6 months old, due to the overwhelming amount of information they are processing, says Dr. Shah.

As children get older and things become more familiar to them, they need less sleep, they aren't processing brand-new learning in their daily environment, and the skills they're practicing are repeated. As a comparison, Dr, Shah says that children can sleep anywhere from 16 to 18 hours with 50 percent of sleep in REM stage until they 're 6 months old, while adults need only about eight hours and spend only 20-25 percent of sleep in REM.

Believe it or not, children can even learn during sleep, according to the 2011 study published in the journal  Infant and Child Development. The research found that on top of consolidating memories, children pick up and process additional sensory stimuli, such as learning the difference between a stranger's voice and a familiar one, like the voice of their mother or father. This is why, when a stranger (perhaps a babysitter) tries to wake a child up during sleep, they won't wake up- but when Mom or Dad does, the brain registers that it's a familiar voice and responds to it.

If you've ever been around a newborn (particularly during the 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. window), this may be confusing, as newborns seem to specialize in not sleeping. The average infant wakes up every two hours to eat, something that's more important than sleep quality in those first few weeks of life.
Think of infants as the exception to the rule, says Dr. Maypole. "When infants sleep, it's good sleep they're getting, but that's isn't an often occurrence in the beginning of a newborn's life," he says. By a few months of age, blocks of sleep get longer as they learn their days from their nights- and thus act ( and sleep!) accordingly.