Have you ever noticed that when you call a technical service number for an ailing computer or other complex electronic device, the number one instruction you are given is to reboot the device? You know the support person is going to tell you to reboot, probably before giving any other advice. Windows computers require regular updates and reboots, and virtually all personal computers and devices require occasional reboots to keep them running normally.
Computers run many simultaneous functions, any of which can miss a byte somewhere and become unstable or even stop. The computer may still be able to run fairly well without some of its functions, but performance will be impaired. Eventually enough of the computer software is misfiring, getting in the way of other software and the ability of the computer to run normally, and a software crash is imminent. A reboot will reset the software, forcing all routines to start from scratch, which is why technical services like to start a support session with a reboot.
Computers aren’t alive, and theoretically they would not need a rest and reset to keep running, but when millions of bits of data are coursing through a computer, occasional misses are inevitable, and these will eventually hit the running software. Our brains are our on-board computers, but aren’t made to completely shut down and start over from scratch. Instead, they have to do mini resets, most of which occur during sleep. The resets occur at the neuron level — the lowest level possible. Your brain never shuts down but it undergoes some very different functions when you sleep than when you are awake. These refresh you mentally and give you a fresh start for the next day — if you get enough sleep to do the resets.
Things will look better in the morning
This is a common saying. You’ve probably been told when you are grouchy or getting tired that you need to go to bed and get some sleep. If you have had a stressful day, or are feeling a bit depressed, or are mentally sluggish, a good night’s sleep may be just what you need to regain your outlook. You can literally feel the difference sleep makes in your attitude. Obviously something is happening during sleep that brings you back to normal.
Did you realize that sleep is necessary for memory? It doesn’t just restore energy, it also processes the day’s experiences. Part of the resetting process of your brain is consolidating what you learned and experienced recently into memory. College students are often tempted to try to cram knowledge for a day or two with little or no sleep, only to find they can’t remember much of what they crammed when taking the final exam. They get plenty of advice to study sooner and get rest before the finals, but they may panic if they have not studied enough and they try to cram anyway.
So what’s going on here? If you memorize something and don’t get sleep that night, what’s the big deal? The answer may lie with how neurons in the hippocampus, which is a portion of the brain responsible for memories. But it’s not that simple, because there are other portions of the brain also responsible for memories. A review article published in F1000Research explains the different brain portions involved: “the hippocampus is associated with episodic memory, the striatum with skill learning, the neocortex with perceptual learning, and the amygdala with emotional memory.” However, it goes on to explain that this is a simplistic view, and that the interactions between these portions of the brain are quite complex and we can’t treat them in isolation. But the hippocampus appears to be most involved with learning and retrieving daily learning and experiences. These types of memories are very susceptible to lack of sleep.
Did I do that?
Sometimes prescription drugs are helpful in unexpected ways, because they uncover what happens to the body when normal processes are inhibited. A common sleep drug can cause very short term memory loss: people taking the drug often report actively doing something in the middle of the night that they have no memory of doing by the next day. They see the opened snack food wrapper or things put on the counter that they could swear wasn’t their doing, yet obviously was them. How did the drug so masterfully wipe out those memories, leaving longer term memories in place? It is interfering with the process of consolidating and storing memories from short term storage into more lasting storage. The hippocampus is the prime suspect in this case as it deals particularly with episodic memory. However it can only hold so much data…
Sorry, the mailbox you are trying to reach is full. Please try again later…
If you tried to remember everything that happened in a single day with the same clarity as when those events had just occurred, you would fail utterly. You perceive many things during a few minutes that you don’t retain, and more so with a few hours. If someone gives you a phone number, you may remember it long enough to write it down. If you repeat the number a few times, you may remember it for an hour or two. But you would have to work hard on memorizing a phone number that you intend to remember the next day. Your short term memory is limited, and must be erased or reset so it is available for more use. Its like your phone battery that needs recharging periodically to restore its usability. But if resetting was all that happened, you would not remember a thing from the previous day. Somehow your brain has to figure out what it should commit to longer term memory and what it should just drop. This is a judgement process that requires the brain to quit taking in more short term memories so it can focus on processing what’s already there, then copying the relevant memories to other memory cells where they can stay longer.
This process is a critical function of sleep. Scientists have tried to explore what is happening during sleep, and how memories can keep being formed for a lifetime without running out of neuron storage. Even though you are forming new neurons all of the time, the neuron growth rate is not even close to sufficient to handle all the memorable details from each day. Sleep gives your brain uninterrupted quiet time to concentrate on consolidating memories, translating and reformatting them into forms appropriate for long-term storage, and then erasing the short-term memory for new use the next day.
In animal research published in Science, researchers from Cornell University conducted detailed observation of the hippocampus during sleep. They noted that this portion of the brain has three regions, CA1, CA2, and CA3. They saw that, during sleep, the CA1 and CA3 regions replayed the experiences of the day, encoding or translating them for longer storage, somehow choosing what to store and what to cull out in the process. Then they went quiet, during which time they got reset. CA2 was observed to be driving this process. If this process was interrupted, memory lapses would occur.
Once processed during sleep, those memories of sufficient importance to be kept are stored in compacted form. Much of the minute detail of the memories are not kept in this form. Details that are emphasized, such as a phone number that you recite back to yourself many times to commit it to memory, are kept, while details of whether you were a bit warm or cold when you sat down to eat are usually too unimportant to be retained.
Often patients with memory loss issues can remember their lives from years or decades ago better than their recent experiences. Recent memory translation and storage isn’t working. Prolonged poor sleep will give you an idea of what they are experiencing because that will also interfere with short-term memory storage. Happily you can return to normal if you get better sleep.
Don’t forget to forget
But there are some things better forgotten. Each day you experience stresses and aggravations which you do not want to carry into the next day. Sleep will not translate them into longer-term storage unless they are significant or carry enough emotional baggage to reinforce them. Even if they do, unless they are downright traumatic, the details are not all translated and sleep will “take the edge off” those memories. Sleep is therefore valuable in shedding daily stresses. Things often do look better in the morning; that is, when you get a good night’s sleep.
This is one reason sleep is so important to health. While loss of short-term memories may not influence overall health, lack of purging daily stresses will. You don’t need to compound those stresses: they should fall away as the inconsequential things they really are. If someone cut you off in traffic but nothing bad happened, you don’t need to hold onto it. If you did some little thing embarrassing in public or with a friend, why carry it? Sleep is your great reset, your time to let things go that don’t matter. And your body needs vacation time from those things, not just your brain.
There are plenty of benefits of sleep, and it is a vital part of your health program. Don’t forget!
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Why is sleep so important?
- It resets your brain and your nervous system.
- It resets your mind, your cognitive function, and your emotional balance.
- The majority of the healing in your body at the cellular level occurs when you’re sleeping, not when you’re awake.
The physical act of reset
Sleep is not only the reboot to the brain, nervous system, mind and emotions — it is the most active time of cellular repair and maintenance. This reset is necessary for cellular health and longevity for mental-emotional balance and for brain and nervous system optimal functioning — so that you can thrive when you’re 105.
Your brain and nervous system
Here we have concentrated sets of neuron cells that specialize in information processing and transfer. The key point here is what information to keep and what information to delete.
Your mind, your memory, your emotions
Where the brain and the nervous system is like the hard drive of a computer, the actual processing of the information for a functional outcome and beneficial effect comes from the mind. Your mind is one of the major influencers of the hundred trillion cell community. Your life, your health and your longevity depend upon your mind.
Subconscious Supremacy
Whether you know it or not, your day and your life is run 95% by your subconscious mind and pre-written programs. These programs were developed earlier in life, and they’ve already been through the consolidation and storage phases, which filtered what became written in your brain tissue as a program for long-term use. Like learning anything new, you have to first use a lot of conscious effort to memorize the information, to know it and use it. But after a period of time, it becomes written as a subconscious program and you don’t have to use practically any conscious energy. You’re on auto pilot now, meaning whatever you learned is accomplished automatically with little energy being expended by the nervous system and brain.
Subconscious versus conscious
Consciously, you have to put out quite a bit of effort and energy to write subconscious programs (unless there has been mental-emotional trauma), but once written, they conserve energy because subconscious programs running through the nervous system, talking to the hundred trillion cell community body, use much less energy.
The most important factor in mental, emotional, physical, and brain health
95% of your life is driven by subconscious programming. This includes 95% of your health — mental-emotional and physical health. If you get diagnosed with a disease, if you suffer with depression, anxiety, or if you feel that life has no purpose or meaning — all of this stems from faulty subconscious programming.
The answer
The way to be at your highest level of health in every part of your being is to have properly balanced health and wholeness subconscious programs. To do this, you have to first find out what is stored: is it balance or imbalance? If imbalance, then you must have a method to release and remove that program and write a new program. This protocol must also meet the objective of health, wholeness, and longevity. At Revolution New Medicine we have developed a protocol over the last 40 years, combining 3-D brain imaging and Mind-Heart-Brain-Body Entrainment to do this and verify it’s been done.
Imagine
Can you envision a life that is stress-free in the midst of the most stressful circumstances? A life that is peaceful and joyful in the midst of the most stressful situations? A life where you don’t have to spend hours of meditating to try to still or empty your mind? A life that, once new subconscious programming has been written, the rest of your life is on autopilot in peace and joy, living life to the full regardless of the circumstances.
This is the life you were meant to live. This is the life you should be living because there is no other life but this.
You turned my sadness into dancing; you removed my clothes of depression and hopelessness, and clothed me with joy.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Revolution New Medicine but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Revolution New Medicine along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
