Too many of us underestimate the importance of enough shut eye. A good night’s sleep is not only essential to give us energy for the day ahead, it’s also vital for long term health. However statistics show we are sleeping less and less and experts believe this is one of the major factors contributing to our increasingly sick population. Furthermore new research suggests lack of sleep can make your pants tight and skin wrinkly. Yes too little sleep can make you fatter and age faster!
But it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the invention of the electric light, around 1879, we synchronised our sleep/wake cycle with the rise and fall of the sun – as we had done for thousands of years. This meant we would on average spend over 9 dreamy hours sleeping and up to 12 hours per night in the winter. How things have changed, today the average is probably less than 7 hours a night! In the 21 century we can now expose ourselves to 24-hour lighting and extend our waking hours long after the sun has gone down via watching TV, working, surfing the net etc.
However our bodies can only physically and mentally rejuvenate during sleep. People interested in health or improving their sports performance have a delicate balancing act between 3 variables:
1. A training program that progressively overloads their body
2. The correct nutrition to provide the raw materials to repair and build new tissue
3. Sufficient rest and sleep to allow their body to repair and grow.
If you don’t exercise hard enough your body wont have a sufficient stimulus to adapt and get better. However if you push your body too hard too often during training, don’t get enough rest and/or eat poorly this leads to overtraining, which in turn leads to suppression of the immune system (more colds etc) and more chance of injuries. Remaining injury and sickness free is one of the best things you can do to excel on the sports field. The same scenario is just as true for “non sportspeople”. Today more and more of us are pushing our bodies towards sickness via lack of exercise (to little stimulus to remain healthy), poor eating habits and inadequate sleep. This article will not only explain to you why consistently getting a good nights sleep is important for our health and vitality but also how to ensure you wake up in the morning feeling great.
How many hours should I sleep?
Each individual has unique sleep requirements this can be due to your genetics, health status, how much you exercise, age etc. But in general the average amount of sleep humans need for optimal health is 9 hours per night, a little more in the dark winter months and a little less in the summer. This is the average amount of sleep that we had about 100 years ago, prior to the widespread adoption of electric lights. But today we are down to seven hours of sleep with a trend towards less and less sleep. This is just not compatible with ideal health and is one of the main reasons why so many get sick with colds, coughs and flu’s during the dark winter days, when we need even more sleep.
Our bodies are genetically the same as our ancestors – we are simply packed in fancy cloths, drive cars, and use lots of electronic gadgets. It’s easy to forget that for thousands of years we lived in sync with the light and dark cycles of day and night. We are not designed for long term sleep deprivation. Humans are the only animal that does this. Therefore just as your ancestors did, ideally you should be in bed shortly after sunset. But its not just how long you sleep that’s important but also when you go to sleep. This is because the first part of the night from 10pm-2am is reserved for physical repair and in the second half of the night from 2am-6am there is a high amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This second period is a psychic (mental) repair period. Therefore if you exercise after 8pm, come home late from work, watch late night TV or play on the internet before finally going to bed after midnight, you will have missed most of your natural cycle of physical repair. Some people can wake up in the morning feeling fine as the have received their quota of psychic regeneration. However this may be leading them into a false sense of security as everyone for long term health needs their full physical repair period of sleep, because there are natural physically regenerating hormonal fluctuations (growth hormone etc) that occur between 10pm and 2am. In fact Chinese medicine states that every hour spent asleep before midnight is worth 2 hours after midnight! Thus sleeping from midnight to 8 is not as helpful as from 10 to 6. It goes with out saying sportspeople who regularly don’t get enough physical repair will never achieve there potential and are setting themselves up for injury and illness.
Consequences of not enough sleep
Research has shown how well you sleep or don’t sleep can seriously hinder your metabolism and alter the balance of hormones production in your body, resulting in the increased likelihood of age-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, reduced mental function and even cancer. During sleep-deprivation studies, researchers found blood sugar levels took 40% longer to drop following a high-carbohydrate meal, compared with the normal sleep period. Because the ability to secrete and respond to the hormone insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar, dropped by 30%. These changes echo the effects of insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes. In addition, the sleep-deprived people had higher night time concentrations of the hormone cortisol, which also helps regulate blood sugar, and lower levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone. These raised cortisol levels mimic levels that are often seen in older people, and may be involved in age-related insulin resistance and memory loss.
Growth hormone (GH) production also decreases with poor sleeping habits. With less GH the body tends to store more fat, resulting in your trousers feeling tighter and tighter. In addition GH helps replace what’s damaged during daily living. Adequate GH keeps tissues in good condition, skin taut, bones solid resulting in a younger and healthier you.
Study’s have also found that when healthy young men slept for only fours hours on two nights in a row, they showed dips in a hormone that suppresses appetite (18 percent lower), coupled with increases in an appetite-stimulating hormone (28 percent higher). The two appetite-regulating hormones in question are leptin, which is released from fat cells and helps alert the brain that it’s time to stop eating, and ghrelin, which is produced in the stomach and helps trigger hunger. On top of that, the volunteers reported being more hungry after their sleep-deprived nights than after nights when they slept for 10 hours, with increased cravings for sweets, salty foods like chips and nuts, and starchy fare like bread and pasta. Yes lack of sleep resulted in craving for foods high in sugar, exactly the foods you should avoid if you want to maintain good health.
Researchers have also found that the less people sleep, the bigger the ten dense to be fat and over weight. Why? Because if too much leptin is produced too often via burning the candle at both ends, eventually your brains leptin receptors to become resistant. This results in your brain not being able to send the signal to stop eating so you get fatter. That’s why fat people are always hungry because there is never any curb on their appetite and lust for sugar.
Other studies have shown that insufficient or irregular sleep increases the risk of colon cancer and breast cancer, as well as heart disease and diabetes. This may be the result of sleep disruption affecting vital hormones and proteins, such as decreasing melatonin in your body, which fights cancer, and increasing blood levels of substances that indicate a heightened state of inflammation, which is a risk factor for many illnesses A sleep deficit also puts your body into a state of high alert, increasing stress hormones and driving up blood pressure and directly affects the functioning of blood vessel lining.
Furthermore one of the reasons you are more susceptible to illness in the winter is due to the fact that enough sleep is essential for a strong immune system. As discussed above you need even more sleep in the winter and this is where people accumulate their biggest sleep debt, resulting in a weakened immune system and more sick days.
What happens to your body when you sleep?
Scientists who study human sleep patterns have found that we sleep in cycles from 80 to 120 minutes long. They have also discovered that during these sleep cycles we go through 4 stages of sleep:
Stage 1 sleep: Is not really true sleep, but it lasts about five minutes during which the body slows down, our eyes close and we are
starting to drift into deeper sleep.
Stage 2 sleep: Sleep is not deep; the heart and breathing decrease only slightly and the eyes are still.
Stage 3 sleep: Is a much deeper sleep. The heartbeat and breathing have slowed down and body temperature is decreasing.
Stage 4 sleep: This is the deepest sleep, which usually takes an hour to reach. The heartbeat and breathing has decreased 20 to 30
percent by now
As the sleep cycle bottoms out in stage 4, it will then climb until it reaches stage 1. Now an interesting thing happens. Scientists call this REM sleep, (Rapid Eye Movement) and it is during this REM-stage 1 sleep that we dream. As we go through the sleep cycles, the deep sleep that we experience in stage 3 and 4 stop toward morning. We only sleep in stage 1 and 2 as the body’s time clock awakens the entire system and we begin another day. You may be asking, why bore you with all these facts? Researchers have found that when we get poor REM and stage 4 sleep that we can have serious depression and emotional problems. It is during REM sleep that the brain reorganizes information that we have learned recently. This directly affects our ability to learn and our memory recall.
The production of melatonin and other sleep inducing hormones in the pineal (a tiny gland, the size of a pea, is located in the brain) plays a very important part in these sleep cycles. Melatonin is the hormone responsible for rejuvenating and repairing our bodies at night. Melatonin is produced when the pineal gland draws an amino acid, tryptophan, from the blood. Tryptophan is converted to sertonin, which in turn is converted to melatonin when sufficient amounts of an enzyme called NAT are present. The body does not store melatonin, thus making the daily production very important for our well being. The optimum melatonin production takes place during the night usually between 2:00 AM and 3:00 AM. During this time melatonin levels are found to be five to ten times higher than during daylight hours. In the morning when our eyes detect increased levels of light, a signal is sent to the pineal gland. The pineal then triggers the production of the hormones serotonin, which causes us to slowly awaken. This natural method of waking leaves us feeling refreshed and energized. At the other end of the circadian scale, the pineal gland, in response to darkness, triggers the production of the hormone melatonin. To maximise melatonin production and to get a relaxing nights sleep follow the advice below.
Tips for a good nights sleep
You should wake up refreshed in the morning without the use of an alarm clock and feel energetic all day. If you are having sleep problems, whether you are not able to fall asleep, wake up too often, don’t feel well-rested when you wake up in the morning, or simply want to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep, try the techniques below:
• Make sure you go outside every day and get some sunlight. Even if the sun is not shining or if it’s in the middle of winter, cold and wet its import to spend time outside everyday just as our ancestors did. Natural light from being outside regulates your biological clock and results in the as the secretion of the hormone melatonin which is essential in promoting well-balanced sleeping patterns. To boost melatonin output, it would be wise to give ourselves more time outdoors. Even on cloudy or overcast days, natural light is far more intense than artificial lighting. On a sunny day outdoor light can approach 3000 lux, while bright indoor light is only 400 lux. Another benefit of sunlight is increased seratonin production. This can help prevent fatigue as well as depression and prepare the body to produce more melatonin. If you are a parent with a baby that wakes up a lot during the night then make sure you take the baby out for fresh air and day light, to help regulate sleeping patterns.
• Get Daily Exercise. Research has shown that regular exercise for at least 30 minutes everyday can not only help you fall asleep but improves the quality of sleep. However, exercise too close to bedtime may keep you awake. Try exercising in the morning, afternoon or early evening instead. Be forewarned that occasional exercise will not be of much help, but that regular exercise can be.
• Plan on a daily transition from stimulating activities to less-active, relaxing pursuits up to three hours prior to sleep—such as reading, listening to music, or taking a casual walk. At the same time avoid bright light around the house before bed. When light hits the eyes, it disrupts the circadian rhythm of the pineal gland and will instantly shut off your melatonin production. Once you finally fall asleep your melatonin will be produced later into the night and this can cause you to feel groggy in the morning.
• Get to bed as early as possible. As discussed above, prior to the widespread use of electricity, people would go to bed shortly after sundown, as most animals do, and which nature intended for humans as well. You should be asleep by 10pm.
• Take a hot bath, shower before bed. The idea is to relax, although some experts contend that it also helps elevate body temperature, which climbs during sleep. When body temperature is raised in the late evening, it will fall at bedtime, facilitating sleep.
• Don’t go to bed hungry. Food provides fuel and building blocks for the repair of the body. Like the fuel and spare parts for a car, if they are not correct for the engine, the energy production will be poor and the car won’t run properly. The result can be poor sleeping quality. In certain metabolic types (People who require a high protein and fat diet: parasympathetics or fast oxidizers) there is usually a requirement to eat before going to bed. If these types don’t eat, they usually will experience difficulty falling asleep, and if they do fall asleep they will invariably awaken in the middle of the night. Usually, their ideal fuel mixture is a snack that contains a good amount of protein and fat. Other metabolic types (People who require a higher carbohydrate diet: sympathetics and slow oxidizers) generally don’t do well eating before bed. They often complain that when they eat before going to bed, food feels like a rock in their stomachs. If they do eat a bedtime snack, they do best eating a low glycemic index piece of fruit such as a green banana or pare. Experiment a little listen to your body and it will tell you what works best for you!
• Avoid before-bed snacks that are high in sugars and therefore have a high glycemic index (cake, coke, chocolate, sweats etc). Sugar can act as a stimulant, particularly in certain metabolic types. But, regardless of one’s metabolic type, sugar is a very inefficient source of fuel for the body and will not provide a steady “burn” through the night. In addition high sugar snacks will raise blood sugar and inhibit sleep. Later, when blood sugar drops too low (hypoglycemia), you might wake up and not be able to fall back asleep.
• Avoid products containing caffeine such as coffee, black tea, chocolate, colas etc. Caffeine it is not metabolized efficiently and therefore they can feel the effects long after consuming it. So an afternoon cup of coffee (or even tea) or chocolate after dinner will keep some people from falling asleep. Even if you think you are not bothered by caffeine, EEG (electroencephalograph) tests prove otherwise. Caffeine stimulates the sympathetic division (“fight or flight” part) of the autonomic nervous system, and the adrenals and thyroid which are major energy-producing glands of the body’s endocrine system, making it more difficult to fall asleep.
• Know that the “night cap” has a price. Although some may find that alcohol helps them to relax or even to fall asleep, the effect is short lived and people will often wake up several hours later, unable to fall back asleep. Alcohol may help you to get to sleep but it will cause you to wake up throughout the night. Alcohol will also keep you from falling into the deeper stages of sleep, where the body does most of its repairing.
• Don’t drink any fluids within 2 hours of going to bed (but make sure you drink 2½-3 liters water daily). This will reduce the likelihood of needing to get up and go to the bathroom or at least minimize the frequency.
• If you are up during the night to go to the bathroom, it is most often an indicator of blood sugar mismanagement during the day. The more that you get your blood sugar into balance during the day, the more soundly you will sleep at night. Paying attention to your sea salt intake will also be of assistance in your night time urination patterns. If our bodies do not have the proper levels of sodium and trace minerals (provided by quality sea salt), the body will not hold onto and use the water appropriately, hence an awareness of frequent urination.
• Use the bed just for sleeping. Watching TV in the bedroom, using the bedroom for exercise, working at a desk in the bedroom or doing paperwork in bed conditions the mind for activity instead of rest. In addition Bright light from these activities will inhibit sleep. Make the bedroom a sanctuary for rest and sleep only. Get the TV etc. out of the bedroom, don’t burn the candle at both ends!
• Journaling. If you often lay in bed with your mind racing, it might be helpful keep a journal and write down your thoughts before bed. Personally, I have been doing this for many years, it gives me a piece of mind knowing before I fall asleep I haven’t forgotten anything!
• Many people keep their homes and particularly the upstairs bedrooms too hot. A room that is too warm can disturb sleep by causing the body to “work” too hard to adapt to the environment. Leave your window open to allow at least a little fresh air to circulate while sleeping. An ample supply of oxygen assists your body while sleeping in its repair and rejuvenating activity.
• Wear socks to bed. Due to the fact that they have the poorest circulation, the feet often feel cold before the rest of the body.
• Poor sleep quality can often be due to strong electromagnetic fields in the bedroom. These can disrupt the pineal gland and the production of melatonin and serotonin, and may have other negative effects as well. If you suspect that electromagnetic fields from wiring, TV’s, computers and especially electric blankets may be disrupting your sleep quality, try spending a few nights in a completely different building. One night is usually not enough as people generally require a period of adjustment to a new sleeping environment. If you sleep better in the new location then you should find someone who can examine your home for electromagnetic radiation.
• If alarm clocks and other electrical devices must be used, keep them as far away from the bed as possible, preferably at least 3 feet. Remove the clock from view. It will only add to your worry when constantly staring at it… 2 AM…3 AM… 4:30 AM…
• Get up and go to sleep at the same time every day. When you vary your bedtime and wake-up time, you’re essentially doing what long-distance jet travel does: throwing off your body’s natural clock. Keeping regular hours, even on weekends, helps it know when to call for lights out. If you’ve been out late one night, wake up at your usual time and nap during the afternoon. This will help your body to get into a sleep rhythm and make it easier to fall asleep and get up in the morning.
• It is important you sleep in cave-like darkness so you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. Block out all light from windows. No night-lights or clock radio lights. Also, never TURN ON the lights should you need to get up and go to the toilet. Tests have shown that even a small amount of light hitting the skin almost immediately switches of melatonin.
• Buffer yourself from noise when trying to sleep. Although you might not feel that you are normally bothered by noise, EEG brain wave pattern tests show that noise disrupts sleep.
• Do not use sleeping pills in the long term they will do more harm than good. Instead focus on the suggestions above
• If you nap during the day, attempt to sleep for between 30 to 60 minutes for optimal recuperation, rejuvenation and repair. However don’t nap for more than 60 minutes as this may disrupt night time sleep quality.
Conclusion
Artificial light has changed the way we eat, sleep, live and die. We and everything else on this planet are synchronized to the rotation and orbit of the earth in and out of the suns light to assure us a food supply. Because we stay up late at night our time perception is off, our blood pressures up, we live with diabetes and heart disease, cancer can’t be cured, and our waists are ever expanding- and the medical profession hasn’t got a clue why! But the answer isn’t that complicated.
You can think of your health in the same way that you look at your bank account. To have a healthy account and some money to enjoy life you need to regularly make deposits in the form of quality food and water, exercise, sun, fresh air, and 9 hours sleep every night. This will give you a good economy to enjoy and get the most out of life’s pleasures. However if you constantly are taking more money out than you are depositing via, eating poorly, not exercising, too much stress and too little sleep etc then your overdraft will slowly but surely increase. If you abuse your body for long enough you will end up owing the bank a lot of money and at some time the bank manager will call you into his office to discuss how you are going to pay back all the money that you owe. Sickness and serious illness will be just around the corner and if you don’t change your bad habits to good ones the bank manager may close your account!
The moral of the above story is if you do the right things (exercise, food, sleep etc) well consistently then there is always place for the occasional late night, eating too much cake on that special occasion or a glass of wine after a hard days work. If you live healthy 80% of the time then there is always 20% left for fun. However if you do it the other way round then at some point there are serious consequences. Don’t let this happen, life is too much fun. Do the simple things well and then its ok to let your hair down once in a while!
Going to bed on time and getting enough sleep is one of the simple things that can make a big difference to your life. The best hours of sleep for your body are the hours of 10pm – 6am. These hours and what your body is programmed to do during these hours are governed by your relationship to the sun and the 24-hour circadian rhythm – all of which are out of your control! During this time the body is designed to be in a state of rest, repair, detoxification and recovery. As much as we attempt to fool Mother Nature, our bodies are nature and demands attention to this detail. If your body is busy digesting a heavy, late meal or you are up late working, playing or watching TV, your body is focused on those tasks and unavailable for rest and recovery.
Many people have a mind set that sleep is a waist of valuable time but EVERYBODY needs to go to bed on time (falling asleep at 10pm to ensure adequate physical regeneration) for quality sleep (aim for 9 hours per night), allowing nature to take its course giving the body the ability to utilize the complex process of physical and mental repair every night. Resulting in you feeling refreshed and energized when you wake up and lessening the risk of a sports injury or becoming sick. Don’t be fooled into thinking you don’t have time to get enough sleep. It’s not a question of how much time you have. What’s more important is what you can achieve in that time. If you are well rested you will get more done and saved time because you will be less sick, get more out of your training, be more productive at work – generally more alive!
Follow the advice of this article, spend more time in bed to increase your energy levels, help you maintain your weight, avoid premature aging, perform better on the sports field, be more focused and alert at work, reduce illness and provide a key ingredient for lifelong health – now that’s a good deal. Sweet dreams!
References
The Lancet October 23, 1999;354:1435-1439.
Chris Maund Chekinstitute.com Sleep; biological rhythms and Electromagnetic fields
Healthexcel.com Considerations In Combatting INSOMNIA
Van Cauter E, Leproult R, Plat L. Age-related changes in slow wave sleep and REM sleep and relationship with growth hormone and cortisol levels in healthy men. JAMA. 2000;284:861-868.
Spiegel K, Leproult R, Van Cauter E. Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function. Lancet. 1999;354:1435-1439.
Annals of Internal Medicine, December 7, 2004.
Lights out T.S. Wiley & Bent Formby
