sleep

Drink water right before going to sleep? Science has finally clarified whether it is a good idea or a terrible enemy of sleep

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Before going to sleep, some people may have an almost standardized ritual in which they should drink one or two glasses of water, and also have a backup on the bedside table in case they get thirsty in the middle of the night. But there are also many questions about whether it is positive to drink water before sleeping for eight hours or if it is counterproductive by forcing us to get up in the middle of the night. And here science has something to say. It has benefits. What is clearly known is that during the night our body does not go into a total pause, but rather continues with an active metabolism even though it is attenuated. That is why we lose approximately half a liter of water simply due to evaporation when breathing and sweating, and to compensate for this, hydration can be the best ally. It is investigated. A Japanese studio published this same year analyzed a group of middle-aged men to conclude that drinking 280 ml of water just before going to bed significantly reduces morning depressive mood and improves well-being upon waking up. But it is not the only one, because a 2025 crossover trial with 15 healthy adults found a relationship between drinking fluids before sleeping and the duration and quality of sleep. REM phasewhich is what makes us truly rest. And it makes sense, because adequate hydration favors the release of vasopressin, a key hormone for regulating the biological clock and preventing tissue dehydration during deep sleep. And it is essential, because it can translate into less fatigue and headaches in the morning. He has problems. It will not always be beneficial to have this habit, since the main enemy of drinking water at night is nocturiawhich is the need to wake up to urinate during the night. And although the total time we spend awake is not drastically altered, because it is only a few minutes, there is an interruption in sleep. It depends on the quantity. Logically, drinking a glass of water is not the same as drinking a whole bottle before going to sleep. That is why when you go over half a liter of water there is a possibility that some pre-existing problems such as chronic insomnia will worsen or even increase the risk of falls when getting up in the dark. How to do it. There are a series of tips that we can follow to stay hydrated during sleep and they are summarized in the following points: You should limit yourself to drinking around a quarter of a liter of water in the final part of the day to avoid overfilling your bladder. The last glass of water should be drunk two hours before going to sleep. Maintain good hydration throughout the day to avoid reaching the end of the day with a major hydration problem. Images | krakenimages.com on Freepik In Xataka | There are people obsessed with magnesium as a supplement when the best way is to put it directly into your diet

The developers who get the most out of AI are also the ones who sleep the least: it’s called "AI psychosis"

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Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and who coined the term vibe codinghas been in what he describes as a state of “AI psychosis” since December. He works 16 hours a day directing swarms of code agents. And he admits that he feels “extremely nervous” when he has left tokens without consuming at the end of the month. This has been admitted in an interview with Sarah Guo. It is not an isolated case but rather the pattern that is beginning to repeat itself among the developers who get the most out of this type of agents. Why is it important. The dominant narrative about AI has been that of unlimited productivity and the famous “10x“What is beginning to be documented is its dark side: the most intensive users are also those who show the most worrying signs of behavioral deterioration. And they are not anecdotal profiles. Garry Tan, CEO of an entire Y Combinator, has called his own experience “cyber psychosis“. A CTO picked up by Axios says he needs prescription medication to sleep. If the most productive tools in history generate the same patterns in their most intensive users as games of chance, the debate about the impact of AI at work enters another dimension. In Xataka Having an AI on my phone that works without an Internet connection is more useful than I thought: this way you can start it Between the lines. Karpathy’s nervousness at the tokens Being left unused is the behavioral signature of someone who has internalized scarcity as a threat, exactly the same mechanism that keeps a gambler hooked on a slot machine. Developer Armin Ronacher talked about this in January: “Many of us fell into code addiction with agents. We barely slept, we built incredible things.” The context. Agents like Claude Code either Codex from OpenAI do not work like a chatbot that is asked a question. They operate autonomously for hours, writing, testing, and deploying code while the developer monitors, fixes, and re-delegates. The promise is enormous and so is the cognitive cost: the human brain is not designed to supervise processes that advance at machine speed during 16-hour days. {“videoId”:”x9f93vm”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Claude Code Presentation”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”234″} Yes, but. Programmers have always had a reputation for working in marathons of concentration. Sleepless nights before a launch are part of industry folklore. What distinguishes this phenomenon is its compulsive nature and its continuity: it is not the specific pressure of a deadlinebut an activation that does not turn off when the job ends, because with an agent that can keep running, the job never completely ends. In Xataka |I have lived the “miracle” of vibe coding: this is how I programmed an Android TV app without having any idea about programming Featured image | Anthropic (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The developers who get the most out of AI are also the ones who sleep the least: it’s called “AI psychosis” was originally published in Xataka by Javier Lacort .

We have been obsessed with measuring deep sleep with a watch for years. Science says what matters is dreaming vividly

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The reality is that waking up feeling like you’ve fallen asleep like a dormouse is one of the greatest pleasures in life, since it makes you start the day in a very different way. Until now, sleep science has told us that to achieve that feeling of rest we had to maximize deep sleepbut now the rarity and the intensity of dreams They are also gaining a starring role here. A new study. A recent published research in the prestigious magazine PLOS Biology by an Italian team has revealed that vivid and immersive dreams are directly related to a greater subjective sense of deep sleep. And most fascinating: this occurs even when the brain’s electrical activity tells us that we are in a phase of light sleep. How they have done it. To reach this conclusion, the researchers did not settle for morning surveys, but rather They took 44 adults healthy people to a sleep laboratory for four consecutive nights. Here they simply had to be connected to a high-density electroencephalogram to monitor their brain activity in real time. The methodology used was quite methodical, since all of them were awakened repeatedly, reaching the figure of 1,900 awakenings in total throughout the entire study. But they were not waking them up at any time, but rather sleep phase N2 which is what belongs to non-REM sleep and is what is considered relatively light sleep, where the biological need to sleep usually decreases as the night progresses. But the important thing is that, after each awakening, the participants had to describe their previous mental experiences and rate, from 1 to 10, how deep they felt their sleep had been just before opening their eyes. The result. By crossing the data from the dream stories with the EEG activity and the subjective perception of the participants, the scientists found a pattern that indicated that when the participants reported vivid, strange dreams, with high emotional intensity or very visually rich, they reported having been immersed in a very deep sleep. In contrast, if the mental activity before waking up was abstract, vague, or the participants had “meta-awareness,” which is thinking about real problems or being aware that they were sleeping, they felt that their sleep had been very superficial. A change. In this way, this sensation of dreamlike depth challenged the electroencephalograms themselves. And the fact is that, although the EEG showed that the participant’s brain activity was dangerously close to wakefulness, if he was immersed in an intense dream plot, his brain interpreted that he was resting peacefully. Memory doesn’t matter. One of the most interesting details of the study points to a situation that can be frustrating: waking up knowing that you had an incredible dream, but unable to remember the entire plot. Here the scientific study demonstrates that narrative memory is not necessary for rest, since the participants continued to rate their sleep as deep and restorative despite not remembering it. In this way, the simple fact that the brain has been “disconnected” from the physical environment and immersed in its own virtual world seems to be enough to preserve the subjective perception of rest. What does it mean? This discovery opens the door to new treatments for sleep disorders, since, in the case of insomnia, the problem could not only be in the clinical architecture of sleep, but in an alteration of dream activity or a lack of mental disconnection from the environment. And this is precisely where science has to begin to investigate. Images | iam_os In Xataka | Waking up at 3 in the morning is totally normal: sleeping straight through is a modern invention, not an evolution

In the Middle Ages it was common to sleep inside wooden closets. The big question is why we stopped doing it.

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Today the idea may seem to us claustrophobicextravagant and even a little uncomfortable, but in its day, a few centuries ago, sleeping locked in a closet was the best guarantee of spending a pleasant night. Pleasant, relaxed and comfortable. Our ancestors had so many good reasons to curl up in a kind of wooden closet with sheets that the curious thing is not that they did it, but that we—since the 20th century—have abandoned the habit. In fact, there are those who propose recover the concept in the 21st century. Although, yes, with a technological point and betting on a much more modern aesthetic than the one that was popular in the times of our great-great-great-grandparents. Beds in closets? Exact. Today it may sound strange to us. To our ancestors, not so much. As I remembered recently told the BBC, there was a time, a fairly long one, between the Middle Ages and the beginning of the 20th century, when wardrobe beds were popular throughout Europe. In the 21st century, such a piece may seem curious to us, but the names with which we designate these pieces of furniture —“box bed” or “closed bed”—cannot be more descriptive. Although there were variations, with more or less elegant models and the details could vary, these items were nothing more or less than that: drawers with beds inside. Wardrobe beds were popular enough that even today we can find some important samples or references. For example, in a museum in Wick, north of Scotland, they preserve a curious bed wardrobe of pine that helps to decorate, along with other period furniture, one of the rooms where the fishermen who arrived in the region during the herring season in the 19th century stayed. Other equally curious examples can be seen in places as diverse as Austria, Holland either France. There, in the lands of Brittany, they were known as lit-clos. Even in the Rembrandt House Museumin Amsterdam, you can see today a “drawer bed” like the one used by the painter and his wife, Saskia. The writers have told us about them Emily Bronte and Thomas Adolphus and Frances Eleanor Trollope and they have even shown them to us with their brushes Pieter de Hooch either Jacob Vrel. That’s not counting the multiple references to this type of furniture, both in stories and written texts. The representations show that its details could vary, but the philosophy was always the same: overhead cabinetswith legs and often doors or a small window that could be covered with curtains. Sometimes they even had two levels different. And they always contained beds for their owners to rest. “It is the resting place of the maid or any other member of the family. The opening, which is left as the only means of access to the interior of this retreat, is provided with sliding doors, generally (as well as the entire front of the bed) beautifully carved. So that the occupant may, if he so desires, completely enclose himself,” they related circa 1840 Thomas and Frances Trollope. From peasants to aristocrats If today it is possible to find so many references it is because, clarifies the BBCthis type of structures was quite popular in homes throughout Europe, both in Great Britain and on the continent, from medieval times until the early 20th century. The British network also points out that all types of families used them. From peasants who wanted to rest after long days in the countryside to fishermen or distinguished members of the nobility. At the end of the day, its purpose could always be the same, but among furniture beds—as is the case with furniture today—there were also relevant differences. There were simple ones. And there were some with engravings worthy of a palace. But… Why did they use them? The correct question could be another: Why do we stop using them? Over time they went out of fashion and became rarities, but for centuries they guaranteed a comfortable way to spend the night. The reason? They offered privacy, were versatile, made it possible to make good use of space and to top off their service record, they helped to spend warm evenings in homes where, as remembers the historian Roger Ekircj, it was not unusual for the sap from the logs in the fireplace or even the inkwells to freeze. The teacher remembers that between the 14th and 19th centuries Europe and part of North America suffered a Little Ice Age which froze the waters of the Thames River on almost twenty occasions. With such temperatures the prospect of locking oneself in a box at night didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Especially if you take into account that it could be shared with other people. Extravagant perhaps, in the eyes of 21st century families; but the box beds were also smart. The most elaborate ones offered a seat and drawers in which clothes could be stored, just like today’s folding couches. Not to mention that they were a great option to convert places that a priori had been designed for other purposes into bedrooms. For example, the Wick Society says that in 1980, a family from the Scottish Highlandsinstalled one of these beds in the barn so that part of its members could sleep there. The room designed for family rest had become too small and the design of the wardrobe bed gave them a great solution. TIt was also not unusual for them to be offered to seasonal workers and immigrants and for them to be shared among several family members or co-workers. Perhaps this way they would be less comfortable – not to mention privacy – but on one of the nights of the Little Ice Age that hit Europe in the 17th century with icy temperatures, those wooden sarcophagi were an effective way to avoid the cold. Or that it was at least more bearable. Perhaps that is why, even today, in 2024, there are those who look at … Read more

Magnesium has become the trendy sleep supplement. This is what science really says

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It is undeniable that magnesium has reached a great fame among many people who see the need to take it absolutely every day as just another medication that their doctor has prescribed. And it is no wonder, since the great list of benefits that have been sold in recent months about magnesium invites anyone to take it because it supposedly improves everything. Although some of these benefits are really dubious, such as limprovement in sleep quality. The evidence. Right now science try to find the relationship that can justify that magnesium has an important role in our quality of sleep. In this case, observational studies suggest that good levels of this mineral are equivalent to better sleep, but clinical trials suggest that the benefits are barely noticeable. Especially when we talk about patients who have started magnesium supplementation. There are examples. A key systematic review of 2023 put the cards on the table after analyzing different studies, pointing out that people who themselves maintain a good level of magnesium snore less, suffer less daytime sleepiness and have a better sleep duration. The problem comes when controlled trials of supplementing magnesium to people who have sleep problems do not show a consistently good result. But they go further, seeing that the benefits depend mainly on two factors: Take high doses of magnesium with a daily intake of 500 mg. Previous status of the patient, since it works better if the patient previously had a magnesium deficiency proven by a blood test. Where is it most noticeable? Here a 2012 study with elderly people suffering from primary insomnia who took 500 mg of magnesium for eight weeks demonstrated a tangible change, as it not only improved sleep hours, but also increased efficiency. The physiological changes shown were an increase in melatonin, a reduction in serum cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and a reduction in latency, as it was confirmed that magnesium reduces the time it takes for an older person to fall asleep. There are many formulas. The interest in magnesium has led different companies to begin creating different presentations that improve its absorption. In this way, recent trials between 2024 and 2026 have evaluated doses of 1 gram daily (for periods of 3 to 6 weeks) in young and middle-aged adults. To measure the effect, here the researchers used rings like the Oura Ring to achieve a significant increase in deep sleep phases, and also a notable improvement in general efficiency. The small print. Given all this, we can conclude that, if you do not have a magnesium deficiency in your blood, supplementing it does not make any sense to improve sleep quality. This reminds us how important it is to follow medical advice and request an analysis to determine possible treatment and look for the reasons for poor quality sleep. This way, if you have a sleep deficit, you don’t have to go out and buy magnesium at the supermarket because someone has said on TikTok that its effect on our quality of sleep is almost miraculous. Images | Natali Hordiiuk Isabella Fischer In Xataka | There are people obsessed with consuming magnesium as a supplement when the best way is to put it in your diet

It’s science and that’s why they sleep worse than men

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When sharing a bed with another person, there is a chance that there will be an eternal nighttime thermal war, with one person roasting in the heat and pulling the duvet down, while the other freezes and seeks refuge under the covers. For years, this has been treated as a simple couple anecdotebut the truth is that it has a physiological reason behind it. And something that has been seen is that women, statistically, sleep worse than men, with the thermostat being the culprit. Sleeping differently. To understand this phenomenon, we must first know how our body works when it prepares to rest. In this case, in order for us to fall asleep and enter the deeper phases, our core temperature must drop. However, during the REM phasethe body needs this temperature to rise slightly again. This is where the biological conflict comes in, as is exposed in the podcast Sleep is a Skillwhere a specialist explains how women generally tend to have less muscle mass and a lower basal metabolism than men. This translates into a skin temperature between 3 and 4 degrees colder, meaning that, with colder extremities, women prefer warmer environments to be able to reach that optimal temperature that induces sleep. Something that opens up many anecdotes, like how in a couple women need a sheet to sleep in in the summer. Their differences. In general terms (which is not universal), while men need the room and bed to be cold at the beginning of the night to lower their core temperature quickly, Women require a warmer environment to compensate for colder skin. and not suffer alterations in your sleep architecture. What science says. In the literature, there are multiple studies that confirm these gender differences in thermoregulation. One of these was published in 2023, where it was shown that women recorded higher skin temperatures than men during the sleep phase where there is higher quality. That is, it requires a warmer microenvironment to have a much more adequate sleep. Furthermore, several studies published in Journal of Sleep Research reveal that women reach nocturnal body temperature minimums earlier than men. But also, its temperature drops are less pronounced, which directly affects the quality of continuous sleep. The use of technology. Given this problem, there are companies that have set to work to do something that would a priori solve this problem for couples: use smart mattress covers to regulate the temperature on each side of the bed so that women sleep better. It is true that the data they rely on internally to sell their mattresses still has to be validated. Even so, the pre-existing scientific evidence is robust. Women are not “chilly” on a whim, but their biology requires a different thermal environment to be able to rest properly. Perhaps the definitive solution to disputes over the duvet is not by giving in, but by dividing air conditioning technology in the bed. Images | Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | We thought insomnia was just not being able to sleep. Now we know that there are five different disorders

Neuro-sama is the AI ​​that has dethroned all human streamers on Twitch because it doesn’t need to eat or sleep

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2026 already has its first milestone in the history of streaming: for the first timethe channel with the highest number of active subscribers on Twitch does not belong to a human creator. Neuro-sama, a VTuber generated entirely by artificial intelligencereached 162,459 active subscribers at the beginning of the year, dethroning all flesh-and-blood streamers on the platform. This figure places the channel vedal987from where Neuro-sama emits, in an unprecedented position: an artificial entity that surpasses established rivals in paying audiences. More human than humans. The origin of Neuro-sama dates back to 2019, when the British developer known as Vedal designed an artificial intelligence system initially aimed at running games of the rhythm video game ‘osu!’. Three years later, in December 2022, the project evolved into its current format: a VTuber that combines multiple technological layers to simulate the presence and activities of a human streamer. According to its creator, Neuro-sama’s visual infrastructure is developed in C# using the Unity engine, while the artificial intelligence systems work in Python. It is expressed. Neuro-sama’s architecture rests on a LLM (Large Language Model), technology that processes billions of parameters to generate coherent conversations in real time. These models form the basis of chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Microsoft Copilot, and operate by predicting sequences of words according to patterns learned during their training. Added to this conversational core are voice synthesis systems that generate the characteristic high-pitched tonality, and an avatar animated using Live2D technology that reacts visually to interactions. The result is a digital entity capable of maintaining dialogues, playing video games and responding to chat without direct human intervention during broadcasts. Audience records. Neuro-sama’s upward trajectory in terms of viewership is completely unusual. In January 2025, during its second annual “subathon” (a continuous broadcast format whose duration depends on subscriptions received), the channel set a world record by reaching level 111 on Twitch’s Hype Train system, an indicator that measures the intensity of subscriptions and donations over concentrated periods of time. That milestone, which surpassed the 106 levels of the previous record, seemed difficult to match. However, just eleven months later, in December 2025, Neuro-sama pulverized its own brand. The channel completed a level 120 Hype Trainaccumulating 118,989 subscriptions and 1,000,073 bits in a limited period of time. This figure makes vedal987 the only channel that has managed to break the global Hype Train record twice in a row, a distinction that earned him a global Twitch emote usable by any user of the platform. You peel them. lThe economic implications are notable. According to data from TwitchTracker, with 162,459 active subscribers and applying Twitch’s standard revenue split (which varies depending on individual agreements, but is usually around 50% for the creator), the channel would generate approximately $400,000 per month exclusively from subscriptions, not counting direct donations, additional bits or advertising deals. Currently, vedal987 occupies the 3rd place in the historical ranking of channels with the most Twitch subscriptions. He has a sister. In March 2023, Evil Neuro was born, presented as the “twin sister” of the original character. Vedal conceived this second entity so that Neuro-sama could interact with herself, but the project resulted in a differentiated personality with its own voice, visual model, and behavior. Both AIs have transcended the streaming format: in December 2022, Neuro-sama premiered ‘LIFE‘, his first original song. In August 2024 both launched ‘NEVER‘, the first duet between the two entities. The problems. The phenomenon has problematic antecedents: Nothing, Forevera series inspired by Seinfeld and generated entirely by algorithms, was suspended from Twitch after making transphobic comments. The Rubius experimented Similar dilemmas with DegenerIAa channel where ChatGPT controlled all conversations. In fact, one of the DegenerIA characters made derogatory comments about the streamer Pokimane, showing that automatic moderation systems do not always filter inappropriate content. Neuro-sama herself faced a temporary ban in 2023 for controversial statements, a reminder that the conversational autonomy of these systems carries risks. The rise of VTubers with AI. Conventional VTubers, until now, were humans controlling virtual avatars in real time through facial and body motion capture systems. Hololive, the Japanese agency that dominates this sector, manages figures such as Gawr Gura, whose YouTube channel exceeds four million subscribers. These creators choose to represent themselves through animated characters for reasons ranging from protecting privacy to building digital identities. Neuro-sama represents a qualitative leap: here there is no human behind the avatar. The VTuber industry has experienced sustained growth that YouTube quantified like this: Between 2022 and 2024, VTubers-related content generated an average of 50 billion views annually on the platform. The market for tools to produce this type of content has also become democratized: platforms such as Akool, HeyGen and VTube Studio allow creators without advanced technical knowledge to generate interactive avatars with a very small investment. Doubts about the future. What is clear is that this boom of technology-driven VTubers is full of imbalances. Continuous broadcasting without the need for rest gives these entities a structural advantage over human streamers who need to sleep, eat or simply disconnect. The question of whether this constitutes unfair competition or simply technological evolution remains without a clear answer. In Xataka | We have a problem with AI. Those who were most enthusiastic at the beginning are starting to get tired of it.

massagers, weighted blankets, sleep rings and more gifts to care for your partner

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What are you going to give on Valentine’s Day? If you are not sure or are looking for ideas, in this article we are going to review some devices that can be very useful to use at homewhether while we sleep with headphones or rings or for when we want moments of relaxation with massagers. Xiaomi Massage Gun by 93.99 eurosa massager with several speed modes and three heads. Amazfit Helium Ring from 109.90 eurosa very practical smart ring for everyday use. Soundcore Sleep A30 by 179.99 eurosheadphones designed to be comfortable when sleeping on your side. Good Nite by 56.99 eurosa fairly large weighted blanket. Huawei Watch Fit 4 by 119 eurosa very beautiful and, above all, useful sports smartwatch. Xiaomi Massage Gun Among the devices that Xiaomi has in its catalog, which are not few, there is one quite particular. It is about the Xiaomi Massage Gunwhich has a price in PcComponentes of 93.99 euros. This is a massage gun with three heads and three power modes. According to the brand itself, it is ideal for muscle relaxation, especially after physical activity. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Amazfit Helium Ring In stores like Amazon we can find the odd smart ring, being the Amazfit Helium Ring one of the most interesting because of its price and because it is available in different sizes. Its price ranges from 109.90 up to 132 euros Depending on the size, it has an autonomy of up to four days and is capable of monitoring parameters such as sleep or heart rate. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Soundcore Sleep A30 Listening to our favorite songs can relax us quite a bit. If your partner can’t live without his music and wants to listen to songs during the night, the Soundcore Sleep A30 from Anker are designed for this. They cost 179.99 euros and are designed to be comfortable even if you sleep on your side. In addition, they have a theoretical autonomy of up to 45 days and have active noise cancellation. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Good Nite The weighted blanketsalso called weighted blankets, are blankets that distribute weight evenly and apply some pressure on the body, producing a calming effect and improving sleep quality. The Good Nite can be found on Amazon for 56.99 eurosalthough the price varies depending on the size. There are more expensive and cheaper ones. In this example, The 150 x 200 centimeter blanket weighs eight kilos and it is breathable. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Huawei Watch Fit 4 If a ring doesn’t convince you, smart watches or smartwatches can give us data on sleep quality. There is a lot to choose from here, but if we are looking for a very good value for money in a very useful device for exercising, the Huawei Watch Fit 4 is ideal for it, and now it has dropped to 119 euros. It has a very elegant design, its strap is resistant, it includes a rotating crown, It comes with many sensors, such as sleep, and has a good assortment of sports activities. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Image | Xiaomi, Amazfit, Anker, Good Nite, Huawei In Xataka | Best smartwatch in quality price. Which one to buy and 10 recommended smart watches In Xataka | Best wireless headphones. Which one to buy and 21 models from 15 euros to 470 euros

The key is not to sleep well, it is to wake up correctly.

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Getting up in the morning is, sometimes, the greatest effort What a person does when they leave the warmth and comfort of their bed. Above all, when it was it’s raining and it’s cold. However, the first hour after opening your eyes marks the beginning of a day full of energy if used well. This natural moment of the body surpasses any rapid stimulus. Cortisol skyrockets, making it the perfect fuel for doing certain things that will make you lazy later. Of course, not waking up in the appropriate way can cause the rest of the day you crawl. The morning peak that activates the body. As and as he explained Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman on the podcast Modern Wisdom“the peak of cortisol in the morning is essential. If it does not occur, the body responds with more stress later and it is difficult to regain calm in the afternoon.” OK to the studio carried out by a group of researchers from different universities in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, your body works like a well-tuned clock: from early morning, cortisol begins to rise to reach a certain level that causes you to wake up. Researchers from the US and Mexico discovered that this cortisol peak is maintained for about 45 minutes, in which it draws energy from the sugars stored in the liver and puts the brain in alert mode, ready to face whatever comes without that feeling groggy in the morning. If you take advantage of this peak to stretch, walk or do any physical activity during that time, it will be much easier for you. create new habitsbecause the mind retains that moment better and assimilates it in a positive way. Enhance awakening. According to the expert, cortisol levels when you wake up are even higher than those recorded when experiencing stressful situations. However, in this awakening contextis natural behavior and should even be enhanced because that peak is what allows energy to be accumulated for the rest of the day. “The morning routine of natural light and hydration prepares the brain and body for the day,” Huberman said. One of the neuroscientist’s recommendations is to expose yourself as much as possible in natural light during that first hour. Open the window, go out to the balcony or take a short walk. That exposure sends a signal to the brain and prepares it to leave the state of drowsiness and start your “day mode”. In addition, the expert recommends drinking a good glass of water to compensate for the hours without drinking and rehydrate the body, and then start some gentle stretches or walk for a few minutes. Huberman recommends delay the first coffee about 90 minutes, since caffeine can interrupt that natural regulation of cortisol levels. Disrupting sleep routines does not help. A investigation from the University of South Australia studied the impact of changes in circadian cycles in cortisol levels, finding evidence that changes in sleep schedules imbalanced cortisol levels upon awakening. This meant that either the participants they woke up in the middle of the night or ate at odd hours and that, when they had to do so, their cortisol levels were insufficient to bring the brain out of its state of drowsiness, being out of adjustment throughout the day. Therefore, maintain sleep schedules Regular exercise helps the body know when it is time to raise cortisol levels to begin the awakening phase and prepare the brain to face the rest of the day. Getting ready to sleep. In the same way that Huberman suggests a certain preparation to have a more efficient awakening, he also recommends taking some measures to face the end of the day. “For the last hours, you should do the opposite: darken the environment, avoid stimulants and limit hydration,” explained the neuroscientist. In this sense, the expert highlighted that exposure to screens alters that hormonal pattern that means that cortisol levels must be low to allow you to fall asleep and initiate what he called the “maximum reset”: achieving a phase of deep sleep in which the brain eliminates the metabolic waste it generates during the day. through the glymphatic system. “Conscious breathing and visualization, such as mentally walking through a well-known place, are powerful tools for calming the mind before sleep,” Huberman explained in his interview. In Xataka | Neuroscientists believe they have found the trick to solving the most complicated problems: taking a nap Image | Unsplash (Adrian Swancar)

Women consistently sleep worse than men. And science has finally discovered why it is

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For years we have been able to have a perception in many homes: the women tend to sleep worse, wake up more and feel more tired than men. This is something that for a long time has been dismissed as a subjective perception, but Science has now wanted to close the debate, pointing out that it is not only a perception, but that there is a gender gap documented. The data. The Global Sleep Survey 2025carried out on a massive sample of more than 30,000 people in 13 countries, has produced a key figure: 38% of women have problems falling asleep more than three times a week, compared to 29% of men. Something that in Spain is not a very different situation, since according to the cross-sectional studies recently published in Naturewomen have much higher scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), indicating worse subjective quality. In this way, while 44.6% of Spanish women report poor sleep quality, in men the figure drops to 30.1%. A paradox. Tests with motion sensors suggest that women sometimes have higher “sleep efficiency” on paper, but it is perceived as greater exhaustion. The person responsible for this is the sleep fragmentationwhich is related to constant waking up or even in mothers due to having to get up to care for a baby, for example. The hormonal factor. It is undoubtedly one of the big differences that exist between men and women, since estrogen and progesterone levels fluctuate drastically during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy or menopause. In the specific case of menopause it can be seen as a drop in the level of estrogen, in addition to produce alterations in bone formationalso increases the immediate degradation of rest. The data indicates that 51% of the Menopausal women suffer from sleep disordersshown a big difference: 44% of women in this stage report serious problems compared to 33% of non-menopausal women. If we go to pregnancywe see something similar with physical (from discomfort) and hormonal disruptions that create a pattern of alertness that often doesn’t fully recover until years after childbirth. The mental load. Beyond the hormonal load, the social factor is, perhaps, the most difficult to correct. One of the most important is the role that women have in many cases regarding the care of other people. According to the data compiled by the University of Michigan and diverse reviews on BMJ Openemployed women wake up twice as often as their partners to care for children or dependent relatives, even when they are the main breadwinners of the home. This “caretaker” role keeps the brain in an “alert” situation, making it attentive to whether a baby cries at night or a dependent family member has any need. This causes 76% of caregivers to report poor sleep quality.since the brain cannot unconsciously disconnect to monitor the well-being of the environment. Its consequences. Poor sleep not only means being tired the next day, but also has more serious clinical consequences. One of the most important is the increase in the probability of having a metabolic diseasesuch as diabetes. In addition, it increases accelerated cognitive deterioration and causes an increase in anxiety and depression disorders. And what is interesting in this case is that the female brain in sleep deprivation is more vulnerable to emotional dysregulation. The solution. The scientific community, from the Sleep Research Institute (IIS) to publications in Frontiers in Psychiatryagrees that it is not enough to increase “sleep hygiene” by leaving your cell phone before going to sleep, for example. It mainly aims at social therapy, making changes in the structure of the home that avoid fragmentation of sleep by getting up to take care of someone, for example. But logically, if you are in a perimenopause situation, you should also choose to go to the doctor to receive pharmacological treatment whenever there is significant hormonal deregulation. Images | Slaapwijsheid.nl In Xataka | If you fall asleep in less than five minutes, you don’t have a “superpower”: it’s a warning signal from your brain

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