“The shorter you sleep; the shorter your life.”

That sums what I want to communicate in this blog pretty well. The quote comes from Professor Matthew Walker, author of the book Why We Sleep.

Here in Silicon Valley where my practice is located, patients regularly get 5 or 6 hours of sleep and consider that perfectly fine. In fact, those getting 7 or more often “apologize” for being somehow lazy or excessively needy when it comes to sleep.

I’m quick to point out that 8 hours truly is the sweet spot for sleep, but let’s look at some interesting facts.

Major diseases all linked to insufficient sleep

Per Professor Walker, the diseases crippling our health-care system are these:

• Heart disease
• Obesity
• Dementia
• Diabetes
• Cancer

Each and every one of the above has causal links to a lack of sleep.

Here’s a jaw dropper: Sleeping less than 6 or 7 hours per night demolishes your immune system, doubling your risk of cancer.

Doubling…

Your immune cells require sleep to function properly

We know your immune system works at night to clean up and repair the damage that’s occurred during the day, not to mention killing cancer cells, infections, and the like. You’ve experienced having a bad cold or flu and all you want to do is sleep. That’s because your immune system is active when you’re at rest. When you’re fighting an infection that overwhelming fatigue is a protective mechanism to allow your immune cells to clean up the infection.

Why would we then be surprised to learn that cutting sleep short would compromise our immune system? We shouldn’t be.

Sleepless and develop diabetes? Yes

Our blood sugar levels are also affected by lack of sleep, even moderate reductions.

One study cited that just one week of moderate sleep reduction was enough to disrupt blood sugar levels so profoundly as to put the participants in a pre-diabetic state.

You’ve likely experience trying to “eat your way” out of feeling fatigued. Many studies have intentionally interrupted sleep to find participants gain weight as a result. The lack of sleep compromises energy and your body seeks out an alternative source, food.

When tired and cranky we fail to make good food choices. That’s when the cookies and ice cream disappear the fastest.

Sleep and brain health

How do dementia and Alzheimer’s link to sleep? There are multiple reasons, but one I think you’ll find interesting is the concept of the brain’s “recycle rate”.

Professor Walker states that our brains begin to fail after 16 hours of use and require recycling.  He states that “humans need more than 7 hours to maintain cognitive performance”.

After 10 days of just 7 hours or less of sleep will create brain dysfunction. The dysfunction is equivalent to what would be seen to not sleep for 24 hours.

Does the weekend “catch up” sleep help?

Does catching up on the weekend handle sleep deprivation during the week? No.

Not even 3 nights of “recovery” sleep are adequate to restore your mental performance.

Another kicker: the human mind cannot accurately “sense” how sleep deprived it is. Therefore, if you’re reading this thinking, “but I feel fine”, Professor Walker’s would argue that you’re are unaware of your dysfunction.

What if your issue is sleep quality?

We’ve discussed quantity, but the next issue is the quality of sleep. What if you’re putting the body in the bed, but it just won’t sleep adequately?

Perhaps you can’t fall asleep or stay asleep.

There are reasons for that, primarily digestion, immune, and hormonal are commonly at the root of it all.

We can normalize your sleep naturally

If you’re having trouble with the quality of your sleep, please reach out, we have excellent success addressing why your sleep quality is poor. And as you can see above, to enjoy a long and healthy life, sleep is beyond critical.

We specialize in identifying the underlying reason why you are unable to enjoy deep, restorative sleep.

We have great tools to really get the answers of not only “why”, but what can be done about it.

You deserve to enjoy great health; please give me a call if you want some help.