You may not know this about me, dear reader, but I – a writer of monthly, very wordy blogs – love words! I adore, and admire words, am amused, and delighted by verbiage, and find myself consistently and often thinking, speaking and, even writing, in the form of words. Words are powerful tools, which contain concepts, connotations, and histories all in tiny, syllabic packages. Words can alter the way you engage with ideas, places, and people. Words are the containers of knowledge and culture, and are something entirely unique to human beings, having played a key role not only in the evolution of civilisation, but potentially in the evolution of human consciousness! Now that I’ve built up some anticipation, it’s probably past time that I tell you what this blog is about. This is a blog about the words and concepts in my field of study, which are either the least well-understood or the most misunderstood by general audiences. And if that sentiment makes sense to you, then stick around, dear reader, and you might just learn something…

As a young boy, I would enthusiastically tell people that I wanted to be a meteorologist when I was older! I severely misunderstood what meteorology is. I know people my age who still believe that meteorology is what you study if you want to write horoscopes, but I’m here to disappoint you, dear reader, and explain that this is not true. Meteorology derives from the Greek term meteōron, which referred to the phenomena of the sky – also known as weather! Meteorologists concern themselves with weather patterns and phenomena – such as variations in temperature, changes in sunlight, and rates of precipitation – and the science behind these phenomena. Meteorology is an exciting and vital discipline, which most people associate with weather forecasting, but which actually expands far beyond the morning news. It’s important to note that weather and climate are two different things. When we talk about weather, we’re talking about changes in atmospheric phenomena occurring over a short time scale, like weather patterns over a period of days or months. Climate, on the other hand, examines the atmospheric phenomena in specific regions as they take place over large periods of time, usually decades. A climatologist would thus concern themselves with long-term atmospheric changes, while a meteorologist would concern themselves with short-term atmospheric changes. Whether either person would concern themselves with their horoscope would ultimately depend on the individual.

At this point, you’re most likely asking, “So, did you become a meteorologist?” Well, in a way… I became a biometeorologist! My research falls within the field of biometeorology, a field of study which spans multiple disciplines, and which focuses on the relationship between living beings and the Earth’s climate and weather processes. My research examines the effects of climate on mental health, and thus falls under the umbrellas of Human Biometeorology and Health Biometeorology, but there are many subdisciplines within biometeorology. Plant Biometeorology focuses on the relationships between plant life, and phenology, and variations in climate, while Bovine Biometeorology focuses on the relationship between cattle, bison, buffalos – amongst other bovine animals – and climate. If you’re a fan of The 1975, you may have heard their song When We Are Together, the lyrics of which reference the impact of weather on the behaviours of cows! It doesn’t go into detail, obviously, but it’s still cool!

The field of biometeorology is an especially interesting one within our current cultural climate, as our literal, physical climate is changing. The impact of climate change on living organisms is something we desperately need to understand, and research within the field of biometeorology aims to do exactly that! What makes biometeorology fascinating to me is that we live through its phenomena every day! When you get that awful cough just before your June exams, that’s biometeorology! When you see a herd of cattle lying on their sides, and it rains later in the day, that’s bovine biometeorology, baby! It’s not definitively proven that cows can predict rain, but you get my point…

As I said, my research focuses on the relationship between climate and mental health, and there are a lot of mental health conditions which are misunderstood by the general public. The great thing about social media is that the stigma around mental health is slowly being chased away, and replaced with a greater awareness of mental health conditions by general audiences. However, it has also led to a lot of misinformation, and misunderstandings of these conditions. Social media often provides generalised takes on mental health, which do not convey the nuances, complexities and variabilities of mental health conditions and their symptomology. While social media can start conversations about mental health, these conversations can be superficial, or misleading, ultimately perpetuating stereotypes and misconceptions. Remember, dear reader, words are powerful. They can alter the way you engage with ideas, and with people. Anyone can say anything on the internet, and it’s not always true! Fact check everything, dear reader, even the thing you’re reading right now…

The science of sleep weaves together nearly every other discipline of medicine. In fact, the curiosity around why we sleep and what sleep can and cannot accomplish for us binds the book of the human experience. I’d be so bold as to say that for as long as Homo sapiens have been communicating, part of that ancient communication has centred around dream recall, symbol interpretation, and ancestral connection.

There was clearly a lot of speculation that came with the phenomena of sleep states, some of which has shifted over the last 200 000 years or so into unanimously accepted “truths”. As sleep is a procedural change from one state of awareness into another, I thought I’d tell a “bedtime” story of that process rather than alphabetically list these terms…

You’ve assumed your comfy spot at the end of a long day. Your eyes delicately blink closed, shutting out the visual stimulation of wakefulness. Your state of consciousness – no, not some esoteric interpretation of enlightenment – speaks to the relative arousal or alertness of your brain activity, characterised by electrical activity between several regions of the brain. From wakeful awareness, your conscious state will slow down into “alpha, delta and theta” states that indicate the initiation of various sleep stages. This slowing is called sleep latency: the time it takes to reach a certain stage of sleep. The initiation of sleep is not only a function of tiredness and closed eyes. At various times over a given 24-hour cycle, our internal body clock releases certain neuromodulators. These are chemical messengers which brain cells communicate through, sending the global signal of “okay, time to slow down these brainwaves and get to bed!”

Though everybody has a different pattern of sleep stages, a standard hypnogram – which is the graph representing sleep stages – follows a particular pattern. Usually, the early parts of your sleep are focused on slow wave sleep, and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep increases through the night. REM is when your limbs are inactivated from bodily arousals, and your eyes move quickly, as the activity in your brain resembles a hustle and bustle that is representative of wakeful awareness, or beta brainwaves.

How do we measure the shifts in conscious awareness? Electrodes are placed on areas of the scalp, with an allocated reference point depending on which map of the brain the sleep scientist is following. Commonly, we use a 10-20 system for electrode placement; the distance between electrodes follows a universal spacing ratio despite people having heads of all shapes and sizes! The electrodes must have a low signal impedance, meaning that the interference of the environmental electrical energy (and, strands of hair or dead skin cells) does not confound the beta, alpha, delta, and theta brainwave formations which we are able to read.

From the sleep recording, called a polysomnogram, we are also able to measure the change of a person’s nocturnal oxygen saturation. Your red blood cells are responsible for oxygenating the blood; reduced “sats” suggest that the oxygen supply to the body from the oxygen available in the blood is being disrupted.

Some truly fascinating things occur in your body while you are asleep. For one, your brain has its very own detoxification system, known as the glymphatic system. Disposal of waste products – like small protein segments or unused chemical byproducts – by the glymphatic system during sleep helps to maintain a healthy nervous system. This prevents the build-up of molecules that cause neurological harm. Another important reason for getting good sleep is memory consolidation. Research supports that as your brain solidifies the things you learned or experienced during the day, a memory is replayed with a few creative additions and fictional musings; potentially, this is how memories are theorized to played out as our dreams.

Before you know it (because you’re in dreamland, of course), the internal body clock kicks in again, releasing the neuromodulators which encourage you to wake up from sleep. Your brainwaves speed up, and the connectivity between many areas of your brain is increased. In good health, you are likely more alert; rested; detoxified; and prepared to have an energized day.