Sleep and the Work-at-Home Maven

Lately, I’ve been fixating on sleep, body clocks and sleep disorders. I found I had Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, a sleep “disorder”.

DSPS simply means that my body clock is out of whack, that it has its own sleep-awake cycle that's unlike what the rest of the world (at least 99% of it) knows as "typical".

But DSPS is different from insomnia in that we:

• sleep 7-8 hours without the alarm clocks waking us
• are fully awake at night, like the kind of wakefulness and alertness that morning larks enjoy during the day
• are normal, except that we're night creatures (no not vampires, just night owls)

The last bit about “being normal” is a relief to me.

For the longest time, I thought I was just lazy--wanting to be asleep when others were awake...and plain nutty--alert and creative when others were happily snoring the night away.

Thanks to a doctor's answer in the New York Times, I finally understood what my "problem" was! Thank God, it's not a problem per se. Just being different. Again.

Now, I watched this TED Talk from Jessica Gamble. It turns out, without our nifty watches, there is an internal clock that's quite different from Modern Man’s version of “typical” sleep-awake cycles:

• sleep at 8:00 in the evening until midnight
• awake for two hours afterwards until sunrise
• in between, a meditative quiet in bed, whence prolactin surges in levels that Modern Man never experiences
• true wakefulness during sunlight hours

Some Notes on Jessica Gamble’s Talk

If you're wondering, prolactin is the hormone that helps nursing moms produce milk.

But before you say “Eeew!”, prolactin also has a hand in orgasms and the intense post-coitus relaxation that you have. (Got your interest there, huh?)

In the study that Gamble mentioned, subjects said that they've never experienced "true wakefulness" in their entire lives. That's because prolactin gave them the kind of rest that I think a combination of Swedish massage, deep facial, melatonin surge, a mind-blowing orgasm and 10 hours of sleep on a Saturday morning would have brought.

In Modern Man’s “typical” experience, prolactin peaks during REM sleep and in the early morning…when you are most rested.

REM sleep is that part of sleep where humans normally dream. Some say it's when the subconscious processes your day's experiences and helps keep you, er, mentally and emotionally balanced. Sane, to be exact.

In infants, experts say REM sleep helps in neuronal connections--synapses--that help in learning. In grownups, REM sleep boosts creativity—when the brain creates associations and combinations that lead to new stuff. Writers call it percolating.

Look at it this way: during REM sleep, your body's vital signs are the same as when you're awake, except that the body's muscles are not moving. Your brain's percolating but your body's resting.

Which is why sleep, and REM sleep to be exact, is important for online freelancers like us. Sleep not only refreshes us. If you get enough of it, it keeps us alert while we're working on one of our gigs. That way we don't miss the details besides the big picture…and therefore we don’t make costly mistakes.

Sleep—especially where you get your much needed dose of REM sleep—makes online freelancers bright, smart, and clever. Need I say more?

Here’s Jessica Gamble on sleep: