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  • Imagine you wake up thinking I had a wonderful night’s sleep, I feel fantastic and I’m going to get up immediately.

  • If youre anything like me, that never happens.

  • No matter how much sleep you get, there’s always that niggling voice inside your head

  • the snooze button, more alarms, and you thinking

  • about how tired you are.

  • But simply thinking you got a good night's sleep can improve your brain function.

  • In a recent study researchers told participants that those who spend more than 25% of their

  • time asleep in REM sleep have better cognitive functioning.

  • Last week I mentioned when we sleep, we cycle through stages of light and deep sleep. The

  • first and second stages are light sleep and we can be woken up easily. When you reach

  • the third stage you enter deep sleep. And following that is rapid-eye-movement, REM

  • sleep, where your eyes actually move back and forth and youre most likely to dream.

  • But the study was all a set up. The participants slept in a lab and the researchers told some

  • that they had 16% of REM sleep and others they had 29% of REM sleep the night before.

  • When they were tested for their attention spans and processing speeds, those told that

  • they had above-average REM sleep performed better and those told they had below-average

  • performed worse.

  • The researchers called the effect Placebo sleep because it’s kind of like the placebo

  • effect, where in medical treatments a fake treatment like a sugar pill is given to a

  • patient and it actually improves their condition because they believe it will help.

  • In this case, simply believing that you had a good night’s sleep, even if you didn't,

  • improves performance. But can you really fake sleep?

  • Not in the Homer Simpson way, but in the way where you actually believe you had more or better quality sleep the night before.

  • It’s totally unrealistic that you would be in a lab setting every night or you would have an expert with you every morning to say you slept well.

  • That would be weird.

  • But you could stop thinking and talking about how tired you are, and plan a nap.

  • Researchers say an afternoon nap is the ideal remedy for fatigue from sleep loss.

  • Again, that's kind of unrealistic for those of us with jobs who aren't as brazen as George Costanza.

  • One solution is active rest or progressive muscle relaxation. You focus on one muscle

  • group in your body, like your hands, make them really tense for about 15 seconds then

  • release and you do that up and down your body. You should feel recharged. Like napping, active

  • rest improves our mood and is good for feelings of fatigue and your stress levels.

  • While it’s really hard to tell what the quality of our sleep was actually like, if

  • youre feeling fatigued you should snooze less and nap more. Or active rest. It's almost

  • napping.

  • So it seems that the key to faking sleep is actually... Faking sleep. In the Homer Simpson

  • way.

  • Chances are you've woken up feeling really drowsy and confused. Check out my video last

  • week, which is an explainer on severe sleep inertia or sleep drunkenness. And if you've

  • tried active rest instead of napping, let me know what that's like in the comments or

  • if you haven't, try it at work and let me know how it goes... if you can get away with

  • it. And if you haven't already, subscribe to BrainCraft! I have a new brainy video

  • every Thursday.

Imagine you wake up thinking I had a wonderful night’s sleep, I feel fantastic and I’m going to get up immediately.

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