CONCEPT

Stages Of Sleep

Chronotypes and Circadian rhythms

Social Implications

Homeless man sleeping while standing.jpg

Health Implications

Noise

Noise or Sound

Solutions

As we sleep our body moves through may different stages, each with distinct characteristics.

Stage 1 – This is when we begin to fall asleep. In this stage you are easiest to wake up. The body is not yet relaxed, however both the body and brain functions start to slow. This is the shortest stage of the sleep cycle and lasts for only a few minutes
Stage 2 – Our body temperature beings to cool as our muscles relax and our breath and heart rate slows. Brain activity continues to slow however short bursts of activity are present that actually help us to not be woken up by external forces. This stage is where we spend around half of our time.
Stage 3 – This is the stage known as deep sleep. During this stage is when our body heals and restores itself. This stage has significant benefit to us as its said to help memory, immune support and growth. The more you sleep at one time, the less time you spend in this stage of sleep.
Stage 4: REM – REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement) is when we dream. During this stage our muscles experience temporary paralysis, the only parts which continue to move are your eyes and our breathing functions. REM is believed to be crucial to cognitive functions. REM sleep takes up around 25% of the evening and increases in length as the evening goes by. This stage does not usually occur until you have been asleep for 90 minutes.

These different natural functions are what shapes our sleep and lives every day as they work together. A circadian rhythm is the natural 24-hour clock of your body. They function to tell us when to sleep, when to eat, when we are most productive, when we need a rest, etc…. These rhythms are not just specific to humans but every living thing has a circadian rhythm. We are programmed to follow these rhythms to allow us to perform at the peak of our efficiency and it is controlled by light sensors in our eyes. Circadian rhythms can be trained by formulating a set schedule for every day which dictates when you wake up and when you sleep, when we eat and even when we use our phones. Since the rhythm is controlled and impacted by light, this artificial light we are surrounded by every day can jolt our pattern and disrupt this natural motion. Although circadian rhythms can be trained our chronotypes are much more regimented. Chronotypes are individual to each person and they determine your sleep-wake schedule. This is different to your circadian rhythm as these are not based around when you actually sleep but when your body wants to sleep. Chronotypes are dependent on my things such as genetics, geographical location, age and gender as well as sunlight levels.

These natural functions in our body in an ideal world sync together and provide us with the peak of our health, focus and creativity however the strict modern world we live in today restricts this. The world we live in today favours people who are predisposed to be awake and ready to work in the morning, evidenced by our ‘normal’ 9-5 working day as well as schools starting in the morning. In general, most children have early Chronotypes however when we age and enter adolescence this chronotype is pushed much further back. This later wake up is part of the reasons people associate teenagers with being lazy and unproductive however this is just their natural rhythms. These rhythms for teenagers are interrupted by the early start times, leading to a decrease in productivity and health problems.

These problems are not just evident in adolescence however, as we can see there is a significant shift in sleep health when we look at class and wealth as well. For many people their jobs necessitate them to tamper with their sleep schedules. Shift work is a major factor in the interference of sleep schedules in lower class households, having to work jobs which provide irregular hours (very early morning, very late at night). Shift work is that destructive to our health that it has been recognised as a carcinogen which can be as bad as cancer causing chemicals by the World health organisation in June of 2019.

Some of the health implications of a disrupted sleep schedule/lack of sleep are:

Cardiovascular disease
Obesity
Cancer
Depression
Decrease in effectiveness of the immune system

These side-effects come as direct result of sleeplessness. Some people believe that you can catch up on your lost sleep and avoid these harsh effects however this simply isn’t true. In a quantitate study performed looking at the effects of different forms of sleep deprivation (long, short and partial) on cognition, motor skills and mood. The form of deprivation which actually had the most damning effect on these criteria was martial sleep, the kind of sleep many students rely on as well as shift workers as neither have enough time to sleep in regular pattern so try and sleep whenever they can.

The World Health Organisation defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity". How can we uphold this when so many are struggling with their sleep? It almost feels as if many have given up and merely accepted that this is the way it has to be.

It isn’t only shift work and irregular patterns which had led to certain groups becoming affected by this sleepless epidemic, the shift in our modern life has increased the likelihood of people having sleeping disorders. Noise is a key factor in the sleep of the world. Noise can be perceived in may different ways, from noisy traffic, an active airport or evening living with noisy neighbours to the constant alertness that the world has come accustomed to due to constant connection as well as an unhealthy view that ‘poor people sleep’. Our bodies were built for the day night cycle of the natural world but our evolution has pushed us to challenge this with the belief that people can survive the 24-hour day without sleep – evidenced by the masses of 24-hour shops around the world. Our bodies were not designed to be constantly stimulated and need to time off to repair and the society which we find ourselves in today does not cater for this.

If we aren’t careful, we shall fully drown out our own voices in the uncontrollable wall of noise we have created for ourselves. Despite multiple studies in the field our noise levels are still increasing at an unfathomable rate, creating more devices to silence ourselves. Our current society is based on wealth and personal gain and is the first of many that has no philosophy of restraint. If we cannot restrain ourselves and learn how to conserve, we will continue to destroy our environment and the more we do this, the noisier our planet shall become.

Defining the difference between a sound and a noise is one of a very subjective nature. There is no real difference, they are both vibrating sound waves which trigger emotions from us, however, we associate the word sound with positivity. Noise for most is the presence of unwanted sound at undesired times. Noise comes in any form and from any perspective, as one person tunes their instrument from noise to sound others tune car engines however both can be noise when played at undesirable times whether tuned or not.

The Decibel scale (dB) is the scale in which we measure sound the loudness of a sound. This scale is not linear and instead works with proportions. For an increase of sound worth 10dB the sound has to be 10x more powerful than the last. For a noise to be classified as harmful it has to exceed 70dB. For context, Human speech is around 60 dB. Despite knowing this. Within most built up cities, dB levels sit at around 75 with peaks moving much louder as general life occurs. This extreme noise which we face in our every day life is of a manmade origin and has been proven to cause hearing damage at prolonged periods of exposure. This danger is not only with our every day lives, it has also been weaponised by groups of people.

Sound has always been used a weapon through history such as the Nazis in WW2 America in the Vietnam war using loud speakers to keep up their enemies as well as for intimidation there have been recent cases of using high dB level noise for crowd control. In America in 2014 the NYPD used an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) to disperse a protest. This LRAD can be used to create a sound of up to 136dB from up to 1 meter away. The aftermath of this use of sound was lawsuits against the NYPD as many people had suffered significant health effects due to the use of the weapon.

In places around the world jobs have been started to be allocated based on your chronotypes to allow people to work when they are most effective. This was tested in a factory in Germany and the effects were overwhelmingly positive, with increased worker satisfaction and productivity. Other solutions such as quiet hours have been introduced by countries such as Switzerland to try and combat noise pollution to increase the health and happiness of its citizens:

Midday quiet hour: weekdays between 12 and 1 pm
Night-time quiet hours: weekdays from 8 or 10 pm to 6 or 7 am
Sundays and public holidays: all day

For personal solutions you can try and regiment you daily routine, eating at set meal times every day and avoiding eating in the evening, have a strict sleep schedule so you are always refreshed and by avoiding artificial light sources in the evenings. All of these ideas can help improve your sleep which will in turn improve your general health and wellbeing.

For some people it isn’t as easy as making a strict schedule due to their lives so this is where we need governments to step in and help their citizens. Sleep should not be a privilege or a goal you have to work towards, it a basic human right that everyone deserves no matter who you are.

Art has tried to provide a meaningful way of salvaging our soundscape, from hotels in the middle of the Alps to acoustic spaces within cities. Null Stern is an art installation hotel which is seen as a luxury experience. This experience is merely a bed on a mountain with ‘room’ service. This idea that to find a luxury experience we have to completely remove ourselves from our current urban environment to find the natural highlights the privilege that silence has become. In Germany in 2009 an acoustic space was set up in a project called Hoerstadt. In this project they developed an acoustic space with the purpose of providing a safe, noise free space in the middle of a built up area. This followed the Linz Charta which exemplifies the idea of values of equality, diversity and the avoidance of unnecessary noise pollution.