A 1-minute, Monday-Friday email, to help busy professionals move more, eat better, and think clearer.
Mano Minute (3/18): What happens while you sleep 🧠
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Mano Minute (3/18): What happens while you sleep 🧠 For a long time, I thought sleep was just one thing. You close your eyes, you rest, you wake up. Turns out, there is a lot more going on. Your brain cycles through distinct stages throughout the night. The two main categories are NREM and REM. NREM stands for Non Rapid Eye Movement sleep. This is where your body does its physical repair work. Tissue rebuilding, immune system strengthening, and growth hormone release all happen here. NREM includes lighter sleep stages early in the cycle and deeper sleep stages where the heavy restoration work takes place. Most deep sleep happens in the first half of the night. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement sleep. This is where your brain does its processing work. Memory consolidation, emotional regulation, and cognitive restoration. This is also when most dreaming happens. REM sleep is concentrated more in the second half of the night. Here is why this matters. Both stages are essential. If either one gets shortened or disrupted, you can sleep eight hours and still wake up feeling like you barely rested at all. This is why sleep quality matters just as much as sleep quantity. Alcohol suppresses REM sleep. A warm room disrupts deep sleep. Late caffeine delays sleep onset and compresses the early cycles. These are the most common reasons people get enough hours but still feel off the next day. Most adults need roughly 1.5 to 2 hours of both deep sleep and REM per night. If you wear a fitness tracker, check those numbers. They tell a much better story than total hours alone. TIP: If you consistently wake up tired despite sleeping seven or more hours, check your deep sleep and REM numbers on your tracker. If either is low, start with the basics: cooler room, no caffeine after early afternoon, and a consistent bedtime. |
Mano Minute
A 1-minute, Monday-Friday email, to help busy professionals move more, eat better, and think clearer.
Mano Minute (3/20): The 12 years no one talks about ⏳ The average lifespan in the United States is 76.1 years. The average healthspan is 63.7 years. That is a 12 year gap. Healthspan is the number of years you live in good health, free from chronic disease, disability, and significant decline. Lifespan is just how long you are alive. Most conversations about longevity focus on living longer. But the more important question is how you are living during those years. That 12 year difference...
Mano Minute (3/19): Your brain can only handle four habits at a time 🔄 We try to change too many things at once. New diet, new workout plan, better sleep schedule, daily journaling, less screen time. All at the same time. And by week three, most of it falls apart. Here is why. The human brain cannot sustainably stick to more than about five new habits at a time. And even five is pushing it. The more decisions you have to make each day about new behaviors, the faster your willpower runs out....
Mano Minute (3/17): A simple strength training structure that works 🏋️ I think the biggest barrier to strength training is not knowing what to do when you walk into the gym. There are five main movement patterns that cover every major muscle group. Squat (quads, glutes, core). Hinge (hamstrings, glutes, lower back). Push (chest, shoulders, triceps). Pull (back, biceps). Carry or core (full body stability). If your training week includes all five of those patterns, you are covering your bases....