Ways to Reset Your Body’s Natural Sleep Cycle

Feeling fatigued is the new norm

Experiencing reduced focus, appetite, and coordination? These are all indicators of sleep deprivation, a growing global issue.

About two-thirds of adults globally are estimated to awaken at least once each night. In the UK, one in five adults frequently struggle with sleep issues. As reported by the European Journal of Public Health, the UK is the most sleep-deprived nation in Europe.

A 2025 independent survey by OnePoll, commissioned by Silentnight, asked 2,000 UK residents about their sleep routines. The results showed that 24% of participants consider feeling tired to be normal.

This is a serious concern. Sleep deprivation not only impacts your mood the next day but can also lead to various health issues, as well as chronic physical and mental health challenges over time.

Discover why your body requires a nightly reset with valuable insights and tips for enhancing your sleep quality from Kathryn Pinkham, founder of Insomnia Clinic and sleep expert at Silentnight.

Please reset your mind


While you’re asleep, your brain actively resets itself for recovery. The glymphatic system clears out toxins and metabolic byproducts, while short-term memories are stored in the neocortex. Concurrently, the prefrontal cortex manages emotional responses, processes the day’s events, and prepares for what’s to come.

The brain also experiences a neurochemical reset as dopamine and serotonin levels drop notably during sleep. Brain waves slow down to the REM stage, where activity surges as the brain processes emotions and memories, aiding creative thinking during waking hours.

Kathryn shares tips on how to calm your mind before bedtime to effectively reset it.

• Alleviate stress by jotting down thoughts to relieve pressure.

• Instead of thinking, “I can’t sleep,” tell yourself, “I will get some rest, and I’ll manage the day.”

• Be gentle with yourself; don’t chase after ideal sleep. Reducing pressure allows your body to relax naturally.

Reset your body


During deep (slow wave) sleep, your body undergoes a reset and regeneration process. It’s recognized that sleep quality impacts the aging process, and chronic sleep deprivation can adversely affect both current and future health.

While you sleep, your body is hard at work. Protein synthesis fosters cell repair, the pituitary gland produces human growth hormone (HGH) to encourage muscle growth, and immune functions are enhanced.

During deep sleep, heart rate slows, blood pressure decreases, and your cardiovascular system rests. Quality sleep is shown to improve insulin sensitivity, enhancing glucose metabolism and energy levels. Hormones like melatonin are produced while cortisol, a stress hormone, is regulated.

Kathryn Pinkham advises on how to reset your body before sleep:

“The human body inherently needs sleep, a need that intensifies the longer you remain awake. Going to bed early, waking up late, napping during the day, or worrying excessively in bed can weaken this need, making it more challenging to fall asleep. To bolster your need for sleep, try going to bed a bit later and maintaining a consistent wake-up time. This way, you’re more likely to drift off as soon as your head touches the pillow.”

Reset your lifestyle


The Sleep Foundation states, “Good sleep is a 24-hour process,” indicating that cultivating productive daily habits is key to enjoying healthy sleep patterns.

“When you’re fatigued, it’s easy to fixate solely on bedtime,” Kathryn notes. “However, don’t depend only on sleep to feel rejuvenated. Other strategies for boosting energy include physical activity, ample sunlight exposure, and healthy eating. Simple adjustments like these can help your nervous system relax and alleviate stress. When your days are balanced, you’ll naturally start to sleep better.”

Silentnight’s national sleep reset campaign aims to encourage individuals in the UK to rethink their approach to rest, helping to eliminate obstacles to improved sleep through a structured three-step reset plan.

Findings from sleep reset research indicate:

1 in 3 people (30%) wake up multiple times each night.

• The main concerns keeping people awake include: Health worries (34%), Financial issues (28%), and Relationship troubles (23%).

• Nearly 30% of individuals lie awake regretting their actions from the day.

• Significant life events can also interrupt sleep, like Job interviews (30%), Moving (23%), and for 28% of women, menopause.

Silentnight provides a range of mattresses tailored to every sleeper, from our new UltraGel™ collection, designed for comfort and support throughout the night, to our Just Sleep roll-up mattress series, which combines convenience with comfort.

Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Mathematicians Uncover a ‘Reset Button’ to Reverse Rotation

Can I put the top back on?

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Picture a spinning top coming to a halt. Is it possible to make it spin again and return to its original position, as if no movement had occurred? Surprisingly, mathematicians affirm that there is a universal method to revert the rotation of nearly any object.

It seems that the sole method to reverse a complicated rotation sequence is to meticulously execute the exact reverse motion, one step at a time. However, Jean Pierre Eckmann from the University of Geneva, alongside Tzvi Trusty and a research team from South Korea’s Ulsan Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), discovered a concealed reset mechanism that modifies the initial rotation by a common scaling factor and applies this process twice.

For a spinning top, if it makes three-quarters of a turn during its first spin, you can apply an eighth scaling to retrace your steps back to the start and repeat that sequence again to achieve another quarter turn. Yet, Eckmann and Trusty have shown that this principle applies to much more intricate scenarios.

“Essentially, this property extends to nearly any rotating object, including spins, qubits, gyroscopes, and robotic arms,” Trusty explains. “You merely need to scale all rotation angles by the same factor and replicate this complex pathway twice, navigating through an intricate trajectory in space before returning to the origin.”

Their mathematical proof stems from a comprehensive catalog of all potential rotations in three-dimensional space, known as SO(3), which follows specific rules. This can be visualized as an abstract mathematical space resembling a ball. Transporting an object through various rotations in physical space translates to moving from one point to another within this ball, akin to a bug tunneling through an apple.

When a piece undergoes a complicated rotation, its corresponding trajectory in SO(3) may initiate at the center of the ball and terminate at different points within, depending on the intricacies of the rotation. The objective of reversing this rotation is akin to discovering a route back to the center, yet given that there is only one center within the ball, randomly accomplishing this is improbable.

Some of the many paths that can be taken through the mathematical space SO(3). Corresponds to rotation sequences in real space.

Tzvi Trusty

Eckmann and Trusty realized that due to the structure of SO(3), halting a rotation midway is analogous to finding a path that ends on any point on the ball’s surface. Because the surface comprises numerous points, Trusty notes that this approach is significantly more straightforward than directly targeting the center. This insight led to a new proof.

Eckmann mentioned that they invested considerable time unraveling mathematical tensions that yielded no results. The breakthrough came from a 19th-century formula that merged the two successive rotations, known as Rodriguez’s formula, along with an 1889 theorem in number theory. Ultimately, the researchers concluded that a scaling factor is nearly always necessary for resetting.

For Eckmann, this latest research exemplifies the richness of mathematics, even in seemingly familiar domains like rotation studies. Trusty pointed out potential practical outcomes, such as in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), which underpins magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Researchers assess material and tissue properties by examining the behavior of internal quantum spins under the influence of external magnetic fields. The new proof could pave the way for strategies to negate unwanted spin rotations that disrupt the imaging process.

The findings could also spur advancements in robotics, says Josie Hughes at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. For instance, a rolling robot may be developed to navigate a path comprising repetitive segments, featuring a reliable roll-reset-roll motion that could theoretically continue indefinitely. “Visualize a robot that could transition between any solid form and subsequently follow any desired trajectory through shape transformation,” she envisions.

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Source: www.newscientist.com