I believe we can prevent heart attack. We can put in place strategies to reduce risk. We can literally plan to change your future. Welcome, my name is Dr Warrick Bishop and I'm a cardiologist, an author, a keynote speaker and CEO of the Healthy Heart Network. I'm all about trying to help people live as well as possible. for as long as possible and that includes heart attacks which impact Australia enormously. We're talking a heart attack almost every 10 minutes and over 20 people per day dying from a heart attack in Australia. That's on a backdrop of over 9 million people globally being impacted. The sad truth is many of these could have been averted if only we knew what to do. Well, this podcast is all about that. weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, general health, and driving in it health literacy. I'm on a mission to help not just prevent heart attack, but improve general health on a global scale. If you enjoy this podcast, I would be honoured if you could give it a five-star review and share it with your family and friends. It may even lead to saving someone you love. video cast station. I really do appreciate you joining me. Look, today I'd like to share with you a little bit about sleep and something a little counterintuitive, which is, is waking up through the night good or bad for your sleep quality? Well, I found a nice little article on WebMD, and I'm going to recognize the author, Gina Loveless, who produced this article, which was released in August 22. The article goes on and starts with, we tend to think of a good night's sleep as being uninterrupted, but surprisingly research from the University of Copenhagen suggests that that's just not the case. Brief awakenings may be the sign that you've slept well. The study which was done on mice found that the stress neurotransmitter noradrenaline wakes up the brain many times at night. These microarousals, mini wakes, are linked to memory consolidation, meaning they help you remember the previous day's events. In fact, the more awake you are during a microarousal, the better the memory boost the research suggests. Celia Kajabi, PhD, an assistant professor at the Centre of Translational Neuromedicine who's part of the research, says, every time I wake up in the middle of the night now, I think, ah, nice, I probably just had a great memory boosting sleep. The findings add insight to what happens in the brain during sleep and may help pave the way for new treatments for those who have sleep disorders. Well, what about noradrenaline? Previous research has suggested that noradrenaline, a hormone that increases during stress but also helps you stay focused, and for those who think they recognise the word noradrenaline, it's closely linked. to adrenaline. It's a very similar compound and our body releases it in that fight or flight response. It tends to be, well we used to think that it was inactive during sleep so the researchers were very surprised to see elevated levels of it in the brain of sleeping rodents. Kajerby says, I still remember seeing the first traces showing the brain activity of the norepinephrine stress system during sleep. We could not believe our eyes. Everyone had thought the system would be quiet, and now we've found that it completely controls the microarchitecture of sleep. Those noradrenaline levels rise and fall like waves every 30 seconds during sleep. Non-rapid eye movement. N REM sleep. At each peak, the brain is briefly awake, and at each valley, it is asleep. Typically, these awakenings are so brief that the sleeping subject does not notice, but the higher the rise, the longer the awakening, and the more likely the sleeper may notice. During the valleys, or when norepinephrine drops, so-called sleep spindles occur. These are short oscillatory bursts of brain activity linked to memory consolidation. Kajabi says, occasionally there is a deep valley lasting three to five minutes, leading to more sleep spindles. The mice with the most deep valleys also had the best memories, the researchers noted. We have shown that the amount of these super boosts of sleep spindles, and not REM sleep, defines how well you remember the experience you had prior to going to sleep. Deep valleys were followed by long awakenings, the researchers observed. So, the longer the valley, the longer the awakening. and the better the memory boost. This means that, though restless sleep is not good, waking up briefly may be a natural part of memory-related sleep phases, and may even mean you've slept well. Well, what happens in our brains when we sleep? These findings fit with previous clinical data that shows we wake up roughly 100 plus times a night, non-REM sleep, stage two, the spindle-rich sleep stage. Still, more research on these small wakings is needed, says Kajabi. She notes that Professor Macon-Negarad, MD, another author of this study, has found that the brain cleans up waste products through a rinsing fluid system. She goes on to say, it remains a puzzle why the fluid system is so active when we sleep. We believe these short awakenings could potentially be the key to answering this question. Well, I hope I haven't put you to sleep sharing this information with you, but it is fascinating. And the more we find out about it, I think the more we realise sleep is incredibly important for our general wellbeing and our memories. I'm going to leave it there. I hope you found this an interesting little piece. If you have any queries or questions, drop us a note. Again, I really am grateful for you joining us and I hope you find the information valuable. I'm going to wish you the very best. And until next time, please live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now. Join the Healthy Heart Network and become part of our growing community. Do you want to know more about your heart health and know more about your risk of heart attack? For $5 get lifetime access valued at over $55. The Healthy Heart Network has been designed to support and help you understand your risk of heart attack, your risk level where you are right now and the positive steps you can take to reduce that risk. Check it out at www.healthyheartnetwork.com and press the join the family button.
