Chapter 6 – Sleep & Digital Stimulation
Sleep helps children, youth & adults to reconcile the oddities of the last wakeful hours. So we wake up prepared for next day. We often wake up wanting to put right things that went wrong the day before. This is God’s process that helps mankind with nightly reconciliation. Dreams are functionally useful. All psychoactive drugs disturb the right ratio REM dream sleep & NREM no dream sleep. 3 hrs of dream sleep is naturally therapeutic. Any fat soluble drug such as common paracetamol also affects natural sleep rhythm to some extent. There’s generation of digital abusers whose sleep is terribly disturbed. They have long term character problems because each night the dream software program did not have time to effect its helpful redress.
Studying late into the night results in poor memory recall. It’s far more memory stable to store facts early in the morning after a good night’s rest. Memory enhancing by drugs is a dangerous myth.
Sleep disturbed children are a major source of concern. Family trouble, unknown food additives in junk food & medicinal drugs given ad hoc, already wired up brain because of too much digital stimulation are all a cause. While sleep time is war zone even after sleep child may not fall into natural deep sleep with proper rhythm NREM & REM alternating. The habit of parents dosing children with allergy drugs, cough syrups etc ad lib makes the child to sleep fitfully. In deep healthy sleep child’s character grows & brain neuronally “refurbishes”. Watch out for digital programs, food stimulants & drugs that may disturb the child’s sleep rhythm. You end up with a rude irritable child in the morning. Gently putting the child to sleep with story telling & prayer should be a priority in the day’s schedule of mom & dad.
Mom every morning is precious wake up time with daughter & son. Don’t miss a morning before school send off – for anything. That’s the time to send the child well buttressed in love. Hug, cherish & prolong the moment in love. God has done His part in sleep “soothing” the neuronal tracts to basal levels giving a refreshed start for new day. Stressed up spiked up dendritic branches of the neurones become smooth with sleep. Morning is not the time for last minute recitation, irritation etc. you are not sending a soldier to war but a much loved son to tutelage – extended home is school.
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Default Mode Network (DMN) is the basal pattern of deep thought children or adults develop & DMN needs refreshing thru sleep 8 deep introspective contemplation. When children are made to rest & think thru stories that promote contemplation, there is a greater increase in gamma waves, which are involved in attention, memory building, and learning. Well functioning DMN connects the salience network, which helps determine what we pay attention to; Digital surplus disrupts DMN & child does not know on what to pay attention.
Default Mode Network (DMN) is what makes a child or adult to know in his basic resting thoughts. Digital invasion gives no time for child or adult to recoup basal thought patterns for stability, empathy & belonging. He or she becomes a creature of the moment & the pressure or demand of the moment. Take time off digital screen – best is emulate the natural sleep pattern of the brain – non REM & REM alternating. Disturbed DMN causes sleep & personality disorders. DMN is renewed by deep sleep. Keep them off blue light before sleep for them to have normal sleep. Digital gadgets before bedtime is a tragic habit.
Sleep inversion – habit of studying in the night & sleeping till midday, disrupts circadian rhythm of cortisol & growth hormone. Night time study produces poor memory. You get stuck with lower recall at Exam time. Body’s daytime rhythm is designed to awake by 6 am & shut down gradually 6 pm onwards. Disrupting this causes high cortisol levels at all odd times readjusting satiety, hunger & fat distribution. Digital addiction is paralleled by junkie habits in junk foods. Excess cortisol causes central obesity in children. Of course there are other issues of junk food with additives producing childhood steatosis & cirrhosis. This also contributes to Juvenile Diabetes. Digital addiction & over-stimulation affect serotonin levels in brain & contributes to malfunctioning satiety & craving for certain foods.
Sleep disturbed children are a major source of concern. Family trouble, unknown food additives in junk food & medicinal drugs given ad hoc, already wired up brain because of too much digital stimulation are all a cause. While sleep time is war zone even after sleep child may not fall into natural deep sleep with proper rhythm NREM & REM alternating. The habit of parents dosing children with allergy drugs, cough syrups etc ad lib makes the child to sleep fitfully. In deep healthy sleep child’s character grows & brain neuronally “refurbishes”. Watch out for digital programs, food stimulants & drugs that may disturb the child’s sleep rhythm. You end up with a rude irritable child in the morning. Gently putting the child to sleep with story telling & prayer should be a priority in the day’s schedule of mom & dad.
Sleep helps children, youth & adults to reconcile the oddities of the last wakeful hours. So we wake up prepared for next day. We often wake up wanting to put right things that went wrong the day before. Dreams are functionally useful. All psychoactive drugs disturb the right ratio of REM dream sleep & NREM no dream sleep. 3 hrs of dream sleep is naturally therapeutic. Any fat soluble drug such as common paracetamol also affects natural sleep rhythm to some extent. There’s a generation of digital abusers whose sleep is terribly disturbed. They have long term character problems because each night the dream software program did not have time to effect its helpful redress.
Cartoons & digital games over-wire & chemicalise the kinaesthetic, music & visual tracts (formerly called Right Brain activism) – overtaking language, mathematical, logical & relational tracts of the brain (formerly called Left brain activism). You get a child who is always in the realm of the fantastic & is bored with the normal. Present day spooky cartoons introduce even the paranormal resulting in fear, disturbed sleep & depression. Why shouldn’t give daily cartoons or daily digital games is because anything done daily becomes an addictive feeder habit. Somehow make it every other day. Over 30 min of anything wires a tract memory. So limit to less than 30 min.
Default Mode Network (DMN) is the basal pattern of deep thought children or adults develop & DMN needs refreshing thru 8 hours of sleep & deep introspective contemplation. When children are made to rest & think thru stories that promotes contemplation, there is a greater increase in gamma waves, which are involved in attention, memory building, and learning. Well functioning DMN connects the salience network, which helps determine what we pay attention to; Digital surplus disrupts DMN & child does not know on what to pay attention.
Retina has an area called macula which has the highest concentration of cones (visual receptors) & is needed for sharp vision (visual acuity). Normal light helps us see with the whole retina. Sharp vision when needed is done by macula. What the increased presence of blue light in digital gadgets & all LED screens or bulbs do is make macula work overtime – most impulses then will be absorbed by macula which responds to blue light preferentially. This leads to macular degeneration of the young.
Blue light is also the one that most suppresses melatonin secretion of the brain. It is important as a free radical scavenger of brain & retina besides having other health benefits. When children or adults peer into their smart phones in darkness at night or when you wake in the middle of sleep, you disrupt your melatonin production – this has drastic results. Six hours of deep sleep in total darkness is needed for adequate melatonin secretion by the Pineal Gland. Smarter the phone for energy preservation graver the damage to Retina. If you need a night light it should be red, orange or yellow. We must give up the dangerous habit of peering into digital gadgets in darkness & waking up in the night & checking smart phones for emails etc.
Those who work night shifts or regularly disrupt sleep has a higher incidence of breast, ovarian, testicular cancer consequent to disruption of melatonin production in the night.
Reading solid print improves concentration, memory & recall at exam. Reading & imagining makes one brilliant. Story on digital visual suppresses imagination. Pixels are illusory – so reading off digital screen (LED) produces shorter memory. Reading off LED is an additional photo-stimulation which also depletes brain melatonin that is useful for brain & retinal health. Reading & reflection stores memory. Handwriting subject matter or model answers increases memory many fold. Memory of interrelated facts stored in your brain connects when you are researching & conceptualising anew. Merely finding facts from computer networking does not produce frontier advancing knowledge or concepts. So original research has suffered.
Retina has an area called macula which has the highest concentration of cones (visual receptors) & is needed for sharp vision (visual acuity). Normal light helps us see with the whole retina. Sharp vision when needed is done by macula. What the increased presence of blue light in digital gadgets & all LED screens or bulbs do is make macula work overtime – most impulses then will be absorbed by macula which responds to blue light preferentially. This leads to macular degeneration of the young.
Blue light is also the one that most suppresses melatonin secretion of the brain. It is important as a free radical scavenger of brain & retina besides having other health benefits. When children or adults peer into their smart phones in darkness at night or when you wake in the middle of sleep, you disrupt your melatonin production – this has drastic results. Six hours of deep sleep in total darkness is needed for adequate melatonin secretion by the Pineal Gland. Smarter the phone for energy preservation graver the damage to Retina.
Children need to have initiation, navigation, end goal, end reward – every 30 minutes if they are to wire up their executive empathic plan pathway (EEPP) from PFC via frontal lobe to motor cortex. For this mother or an adult must give directives & be present to reward end achievement. If not he child will do whatever she can – circular, aimless, repetitive. If you fill the gap with digital toys & screens, they will wire up wrong. So give a time table for every 30 minutes – if not the child will shift from one to the other aimlessly – it will be like “multitasking milkshake brain” – shift will be to reflexive (rather than reflective) risk survival behaviour. Please mom every day the child is growing – she needs you daily at least one hour. At the end of the day when the child is tired & sleepy is not the time to engage the child. He deserves better quality time.