#sleep week

So little time....

Just a recap of everything that’s going on this week.

Monday: Brain Food on the overpass

Tuesday: Guided Meditation in the Prayer and Meditation Room at 6:00pm; Stressed at Hogwarts in HCL 8 at 7:00pm

Wednesday: Sleep Hygiene Wellness Workshop, 11am in the GDC

Thursday: Pet Therapy with Cat Depot, 12pm, in the GDC; Guided Meditation in the Prayer and Meditation Room at 6:00pm

You are getting sleepy. You are getting very sleepy. When I count to three, you will fall asleep and start acting like a chicken. The stereotypical hypnosis pendulum, as used by Hypno, is famous for being able to induce hypnosis. But can a swinging action really make you fall asleep?

Hypnosis really isn’t as magical as it seems. Its simply a state of intense relaxation and imagination. Essentially, you become so focused on the motion of the pendulum that you lose track of all stimuli around you. It’s extremely similar to reading a book or watching a movie, and getting lost in that world.

Physically, this kind of trance is similar to sleep, but its closer to daydreaming. Your brain waves starting getting slower (like the waves you produces while dreaming), activity in your left brain decreases and your right brain goes crazy, accounting for the heightened imagination, creativity, and suggestibility.

The suggestibility, the cause of “cluck like a chicken” is due to your subconscious mind being in control. Generally, you are aware of your thoughts and actions, but the subconscious mind can do a lot as well. For example, you usually don’t think about yourself breathing, because your subconscious mind usually controls it. Right about now, however, you are probably very aware of your inhales and exhales, meaning your conscious mind has taken over.

So, with your conscious mind out of the picture, most “filters” you have aren’t going to be an issue. Someone tells you to do something, you’ll do it without a second thought. Without even thinking about what you are doing. 

So perhaps Hypno can put its victims in this state and then tell them to “go to sleep”. Without thinking about it, completely subconsciously, they’ll go to sleep. Alternatively, Hypno doesn’t need the victims to be asleep at all. If it gets energy from theta waves like Munna, it can just feed on the theta waves produced during hypnosis. Its meals don’t even have to be asleep!

Hypno’s victims focus on nothing but the pendulum’s motion, inducing a state of hypnosis. In hypnosis, the brain produces more theta waves which Hypno can eat without them being asleep.

Requested Anonymously

Definitely check out our entry on Munna to learn how Drowzee eats dreams. But there’s still more to Drowzee that we haven’t covered, and tons of interesting lore behind Drowzee’s design.

Drowzee is said to be a descendant of a Baku, a japanese supernatural creature that feasts on dreams. The word also has a second meaning, referring to the very natural Tapir, an interesting mammal that you can see where Drowzee got its design from:

Tapirs are known for their flexible, elongated prehensile snouts called proboscis. They use this trunk to forage for food, pick up leaves and fruit, and so on. Drowzee, however, uses his to sniff out some good dreams.

In any case, I don’t think Drowzee is able to tell what you’re dreaming by sniffing, in terms of the olfactory sense. Instead, consider Munna’s family, who also have a clear proboscis: and who also eat dreams. Maybe this body part is what allows them to eat dreams like they do, meaning Drowzee doesn’t “sniff” your dreams to tell what you’re dreaming, but rather eats them. Drowzee’s might be more advanced than Munna’s, and as he’s eating he can learn the content.

So why are children’s dreams tastier? Children spend significantly more time in REM sleep than adults, meaning they probably dream more often. There’s a lot we don’t know about dreams, but according to a few psychological studies, younger people experience more vivid emotions in their dreams than the elderly. Similarly, here’s an excerpt from an article on dream science:

Early dreams (ages under 5) are primarily bland with static images and thoughts about daily events.  At ages 5 to 8 dreams become more story-like with movement and interaction, but are not well developed.  The dreamer only appears as an active participant at around 8 years.  The structure of children’s dreams do not become adult-like until the ages 9 to 11 and they are noted to have less aggression, misfortune and negative emotions than adult dreams.  The length or content don’t become adult-like until the pre-teens (about 11 to 13), nor does the dream content show a good correlation to their personality until about this time.

Less nightmares, more exciting storylines, of course children’s dreams would be more desirable.

Sleep Week wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t talk about the famous Route 12 Culprit! This guy weighs over a thousand pounds, eats over 800 pounds of food every day, and promptly falls asleep to conveniently block the plot progression of anyone who has not obtained a pokéflute. But why in the world is Snorlax so lazy?

If you’ve ever properly celebrated Thanksgiving, you might already have a clue. Eating, especially eating a lot, makes you feel very tired, very fast. This is because of what goes on in your body as you digest food. 

First of all, after a large meal your body redirects a lot of blood and energy into the digestion process. It focuses on stomach and intestines, and leaves less for your muscles, your brainpower, and everything else. 

As your body extracts all the delicious nutrients from your meal, your blood sugar rapidly increases from all those delicious nutrients entering your body. Your pancreas responds by producing insulin, which is the “key” to help your body absorb and use all of the blood sugar. Diabetics have trouble producing insulin, so their bodies have trouble using the sugar they digest. In any case, a side effect of insulin is increased serotonin and melatonin, which as you might remember from Darkrai, regulates your sleeping patterns. Digesting food = higher blood sugar = increased insulin = increased melatonin and serotonin = sleepiness.

Some food is worse than others when it comes to this process. For example, cheese and turkey both contain high amounts of tryptophan, an amino acid which your body uses to produce serotonin. By eating foods like this in large quantities, you’re practically telling your body to make you sleepy. 

The simple fact of the matter is that Snorlax eats a lot. Because of this, his body really can’t afford to do anything except digest food all of the time. Since this is such a huge process for him, his body focuses solely on digestion and he is practically forced to take a nap every time he finishes a meal.

Because Snorlax eats so much, its body redirects blood and energy into the digestive process. As he digests, chemicals like serotonin cause him to fall asleep.

Requested Anonymously

In any species, eating has two functions: Getting energy and getting nutrients. Munna, Drowzee, and their families all eat dreams. Kicking off sleep week, let’s figure out how this works!

First of all, Munna is definitely not going to get any nutrients from eating dreams. Through the power of deduction, then, Munna eats dreams for the energy. A psychic equivalent of photosynthesis, if you will.

In any case, we need to figure out what’s going on in a brain while it dreams. There are 5 stages of sleep, through which brain activity is gradually slowing until you reach the deepest sleep. Dreaming typically occurs during the fifth stage, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep. In all stages of sleep, your brain is characterized by the speed of wave that it produces:

Delta Waves (.5 to 3 Hz, 20-200 μV) are only present in dreamless sleep. They suspend external awareness and promote the healing process.

Theta Waves (3 to 8 Hz, 10 μV) are present in sleep and deep meditation. External senses are withdrawn and only internal signals are considered, resulting in vivid imagery and fleeting intuition. These are associated with dreaming.

Alpha Waves (8 to 12 Hz, 20-200 μV) are your primary thought waves when you are awake. Associated with coordination, calmness, focus, and learning.

Beta Waves (12 to 38 Hz, 5-10 μV) correspond to fast brain activity: strong concentration, problem solving, information processing, anxiety or excitement.

But what exactly is a “brain wave”? Brain waves are caused by neurons firing off, like they always do when your brain is working. The catch is these signals are entirely and practically electrical signals. How do you think we know about these brain waves? EEG (Electroencephalography) uses small electrodes that you can attach to the outside of the head, which monitor small voltage fluctuations to record the brain’s activity in this way.

As you know from your phone or your laptop or whatever you’re reading this on, electrical signals can be used as energy. Now we’re getting back to Munna. Munna harvests the brain’s electrical energy--specifically the theta-wave signals, to produce energy.

Photosynthesis might not be a bad comparison at all. For plants, photosynthesis maximizes at red wavelengths of light. For Munna, production peaks with theta waves in the brain. Theta waves produce about 10 micro-volts of electricity. Munna captures this energy, probably through some sort of system like a capacitor (see Pikachu or Pokéballs), to use for itself later. Think of it like charging a battery. Munna doesn’t tamper with your brain’s waves, but rather stores their energy for her own use.

Munna gets energy by “eating dreams” from storing the energy associated with theta brain waves from its sleeping victims.