Stress disrupts sleep. Poor sleep heightens stress. This loop has no exit unless something intervenes from outside.
The vicious cycle repeats, each pass harder to break than the last. This is one of the most consistently replicated findings in stress and sleep research.
A stressed nervous system keeps cortisol elevated into the evening, which blocks melatonin from rising properly. The sleep that follows is shallow, leaving your stress response with less capacity to regulate itself the next day.
The loop has several points where it can be intercepted. Stress shows up differently depending on where you catch it, and we mapped each of these entry points individually.
Smaller things then provoke bigger reactions, cortisol climbs faster and stays elevated longer.
This is why the Upside range looks the way it does: different formulas for different points in the same stress-sleep cycle.
