Brain keeps working while you sleep

Brain keeps working while you sleep


Did you ever wonder why you don’t feel rested after a long day of travel? After a day battling check-in lines and squeezing into small airplane seats, sometimes all you want to do is sleep — but your brain isn’t ready. A recent Brown University study published in the journal Current Biology puts the blame for travel exhaustion and sleeplessness on our gray matter.

Researchers said that’s because a part of one hemisphere of the brain is wired to stay alert for threats in new surroundings. On the first night, when researchers played a sound into the right ear of slumbering subjects during deep sleep, they were more likely to wake up than when their left ear was stimulated by sound. By the second night, when surroundings were more familiar, all 35 participants showed no significant difference in activity between their left and right brain hemispheres.

This isn’t the first time that scientists have tried to capture data on what they call “first-night effect,” but prior results were inconsistent.

So what’s a sleepy traveler to do? Try to trick the brain into thinking it’s safe. Bringing your own pillow to create a familiar environment and shutting down your electronics 90 minutes before bed can help. So will taking a warm shower to destress. Keep the room dark as possible. Turn the thermostat down to about 70 degrees because cool environments stimulate better sleep. Even certain foods such as milk, turkey, bananas, eggs and other tryptophan-rich foods can help. High-fat foods such as a burger and fries will disrupt sleep.

Even in unfamiliar surroundings, the right mix of factors can help you meet the sandman while far from home.

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