Does Sleep Affect Your Health? | Focus On Health NOW

A Good Night’s Sleep Is Important for Your Immune System

Sleep deprivation weakens your immune system leaving you more susceptible to other diseases and disorders like cancer and even the common cold. It is not uncommon for many people who suffer from sleep deprivation due to sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, narcolepsy, insomnia, etc. to also suffer from other problems including diabetes, asthma, or obesity.

Sleep deprivation also causes much stress and again, stress weakens our immune system – a double whammy. Both sleep deprivation and stress can upset your mental processes. You may suffer from confusion, memory loss, irritability, or emotional highs and lows. If you already have a mental disorder, sleep deprivation only adds to the problem.

Sleep Well or Run the Risk of Developing Heart Disease

One study, conducted on nurses, found that those who slept five hours or less per night had a 39% increase in cardiovascular disease. High blood pressure, clinically known as hypertension, is an early indicator of cardiovascular disease. Studies have shown that people who sleep for only four hours have higher blood pressure and heart rate for eight hours after waking than subjects who were allowed a full eight hours of sleep. These findings suggest that your sympathetic nervous system – your fight-or-flight mechanism that you use to cope with emergencies becomes activated when you don’t sleep enough.

Sleep Deficiency Can Actually Increase Your Risk of Diabetes

Diabetes is another deadly disease that is more likely to strike those who do not get adequate sleep. A 2003 study followed 70,000 diabetes-free women for a period of 10 years and found they had a 34% greater risk of developing diabetes than women who slept 7 or 8 hours a night. Studies of men have also shown almost twice the risk for diabetes among those sleeping 6 hours or less per night. This is a serious issue, as one out of three people in the United States has either diabetes or pre-diabetes. One reason for this is that sleep deprivation can result in low glucose tolerance. Low glucose tolerance means that there is not an optimal level of insulin released; insulin helps cells store glucose as energy, and a lack of it can result in hyperglycemia (high blood sugars) which can in turn, lead to diabetes.

Not Enough Sleep Can Make You Fat

It is now well-established that inadequate sleep is a factor in obesity. Fourteen different studies have found higher rates of obesity among people of all ages who reported getting inadequate sleep. The reason sleep deprivation causes weight gain is because it causes hormone disruption.

Sleep deprivation:

Increases cortisol, which causes increased appetite and fat deposition around your mid-section. Memory loss and insulin resistance (a precursor to diabetes) can also result from an increase in cortisol.
Increases ghrelin, which increases appetite and prevents the body from using up its excess fat stores.
Decreases leptin, which causes the body to crave more food, especially
carbohydrates.
Decreases insulin, which increases the appetite, and leads to low blood sugar levels and insulin resistance.

Sleep Enough or Risk Being Depressed

Studies have shown that loss of sleep leads to a reduction in serotonin levels, which slowly over time, can lead to depression.

Not Enough Sleep Impairs Your Thinking

Studies demonstrate that sleep-deprived hospital staff and residents make a significant number of serious medical errors, averaging 36% more than those with adequate sleep.

If Growth Hormone is the Fountain of Youth, Then Sleep is the Pump Under the Fountain

Growth hormone has many functions, such as increasing the growth of children and promoting muscle mass in adults. It does this by increasing the number of new muscle cells. Growth hormone promotes lipolysis, which is the breakdown of fats, resulting in a decrease in body fat. Growth hormone enhances the function and longevity of the beta cells of the pancreas, which are responsible for releasing insulin to help metabolize carbohydrates. Growth hormone also stimulates the immune system, to enable you to better protect yourself from infectious microbes. The two most powerful stimuli for the secretion of growth hormones are sleep and exercise. If you do not get enough sleep, you may become deficient in growth hormones.

Melatonin: Why You Need Pitch Black Darkness All Night Long

Your bedroom should be so black at night that you can’t even tell where the window is. It should be so black that if you get up to use the bathroom during the night, you would have to grope your way forward slowly in order not to collide with anything. This may seem like an unrealistic suggestion, but if your drapes are heavy enough, you should be able to block out all outside light. Hopefully, you don’t live right next to flashing neon signs. If this is the case, you will need black-out shades or drapes as well. If you have a digital clock in your bedroom, turn it face down so the light does not show, as even this small amount of light can affect your sleep. Nightlights are out of the question for the bedroom.

If you are unable to make the investment to darken your sleeping room completely then you will want to consider an eye mask. I have used them when flying on planes overnight and they really do make a difference. However, it is definitely an inferior option to having a completely dark room while you are sleeping. Once you get your bedroom totally dark, you have a strong, health-saving advantage for getting a good night’s sleep. That advantage is melatonin; a natural hormone produced by your pineal gland (a light-sensitive gland at the base of your brain) and is released when darkness falls. Melatonin makes you feel drowsy and helps you to achieve deep and restful sleep. But melatonin does more than just help you sleep – it helps support your immune system function to support healing while you are asleep. Optimal melatonin production is important for your health. Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland in a diurnal rhythm, but electric lights, which keep the room bright even after the sun sets, suppress melatonin production. As soon as you are faced with either the light of day or someone turning on a light in the middle of the night, your melatonin production suddenly shuts off, and it becomes harder to get back to sleep afterward. As a consequence, people who keep bright lights on until they go to bed at midnight only have optimal melatonin production for half of the 8-10 hours of sleep they should be getting.

Melatonin is one of the strongest anti-oxidants and many experts believe it is one of the most important cancer fighters.

Recent research has shown that exposure to light at night significantly increases the risk of breast cancer.

Secrets To A Good Night’s Sleep:

Food and Drink To Avoid

It is best to avoid eating 3-4 hours before bedtime, especially grains and sugars. These simple carbohydrates break down into simple sugars and raise your blood sugar, which is stimulating and interferes with drifting off to sleep. Worse yet, simple carbs raise your blood sugar for a very short period. They then abruptly lower your blood sugar, leaving you hypoglycemic, which itself can awaken you and prevent your return to sleep.

Also, avoid alcohol. Although it makes people drowsy, that effect is of short duration, and you may wake up several hours later and feel that you cannot go back to sleep. Alcohol also keeps sleep light, which is not optimal for the repair and restorative functions that deep sleep accomplishes for you.

If caffeine keeps you awake, try to avoid it in the afternoon. Caffeine is metabolized slowly by many people. Although some people can drink coffee and be ready for sleep an hour later, many others cannot sleep if they have had any afternoon caffeine. Amphetamine analogs, such as diet pills or the drugs used for ADHD (Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, etc.), can promote wakefulness.

If you know you are sensitive to certain foods, it would be best to avoid them. Delayed food sensitivity may appear one to three days after the ingested antigenic food. Dairy and wheat are very common culprits. For many people, they cause abdominal upset, gas, sinus congestion, and even sleep apnea.

Don’t drink any fluids within two to three hours of bedtime so that before bed, you have the opportunity to void the liquids you have consumed during the day. That way, there is less chance of your sleep getting disturbed by the need to go to the bathroom.

Exercise

Exercise is the best natural sleep aid if done early in the day (morning is best), not near your bedtime. Exercise tires you out in all the right ways, and later when your body is ready to repair muscle tissue from your workouts, you will be ready for a sound sleep to enable that repair. Exercise for at least 20-30 minutes. Around five days a week is best, but you should try for at least three times per week. If you aren’t already exercising, this is a great excuse to start your program now! Exercise includes aerobic (walking, biking, etc.) and anaerobic workouts (PACE, weights, sprints).

Energy and Light

As discussed above, it is important to sleep in complete darkness. Even the smallest amount of light can disrupt your daily rhythm of melatonin and serotonin levels and can shut off your production of these hormones for the rest of the night. Even if you go to the bathroom during the night, don’t turn on the light. It is better to take a few more moments to walk and move slowly in the dark than to assault your eyes and brain with light while it is still in sleep mode.

Avoid Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs)

It would be best to eliminate all electricity from your bedroom. Even after you turn off the light, residual electricity is circulating through the wires in the walls, which has a mildly stimulating effect on your body. Dr. Herbert Ross, author of Sleep Disorders, goes so far as to recommend that you kill all power in the house by switching off your circuit breaker before going to bed. If any electrical clock or other device must be in your bedroom, keep it at least three feet from your bed and pointed away from you, because of the EMFs they emit. Make sure your bedroom is not awash in electromagnetic fields. Like light, such fields disrupt the pacesetting of the pineal gland in managing melatonin and serotonin in the brain. You can measure EMFs with an inexpensive gaussmeter that can be easily found and purchased online.

Alarm Clocks

If you have a clock radio or other fluorescent alarm clock, then during periods of insomnia you may worry about the time and how you can’t sleep, leading to a progressively worsening cycle. Therefore, it’s best to turn the clock facedown at night. Loud alarm clocks are also stressful for your body. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, you should not even need an alarm clock, because your body and mind adjust to your regular wake-up schedule. Sun alarm clocks or dawn simulators are excellent choices if you need to use an alarm clock. They will not startle your adrenal system as traditional alarms do because they go on gradually and closely approximate a normal wake cycle by having the light gradually come on so you wake up more naturally.

Evening Activities That Will Prepare You For Sleep

Get in the habit of going to bed early. Before the invention of electricity, our ancestors were in the habit of going to bed shortly after sundown. Being asleep by 9:00 p.m. in the winter and 10 p.m. in the summer gives your adrenal glands the opportunity to repair and recharge. During this time, your gallbladder also dumps toxins. So it is a good idea to keep your body rested and let these internal organs do the cleansing and repair they need to perform. Also, don’t change your bedtime. This just makes it harder for your pineal gland to adjust to the new schedule with appropriate levels of neurotransmitters and hormones. Once you get used to a certain sleep schedule, it is easier to get sleepy and then wake up at the usual times. Often, sleeplessness is due to the common condition of “busy brain.” If you suffer from busy brain, you may be lying awake with many plans and other thoughts racing around your head. For this, you may find it helpful to keep a journal, so you can write down your thoughts before bed. This is a kind of catharsis which allows you to release your thoughts so they don’t haunt you through the night. Read something calming, spiritual, or religious in order to help you to relax. Don’t read stimulating material, such as crime stories or suspense novels, because if it is a page-turner of a good story, you might end up turning those pages all night long. Many people feel more relaxed listening to relaxation CD’s of music, nature sounds such as a waterfall or the ocean, white noise, or brainwave-enhancing audio technology. Keep your bed for sleeping. If you are in the habit of eating or doing work or crossword puzzles or watching TV in bed, then you are associating stimulating activity with a place that should be used just for sleeping. It is the wrong association. Reserve your bed for sleep. Television can ruin your health in multiple ways. The U.S. Census Bureau in 2007 documented that the average person in the United States watches 4.5 hours of TV every day. While I firmly believe you need to significantly reduce this amount in general, you clearly don’t need any TV exposure prior to bed. The fast-moving images and routine over-dramatization are too stimulating to the brain, as you need to wind down for the evening. The flickering lights and colors are too stimulating to the pineal gland that needs to prepare for sleep.

Health and Wellness Considerations

If you are overweight, work towards achieving a normal body weight. Being overweight is a risk for sleep apnea, which is a condition where a person frequently stops breathing during sleep and awakens throughout the night to restart the breathing process. Sleep apnea prevents a restful night’s sleep. Insomnia can also be caused by excessive levels of the hormone cortisol. This may reflect a dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which is just a fancy way of saying that your brain may be telling the adrenal glands to pump out too much cortisol. On the other hand, it could be the adrenal function itself that needs treatment. Menopausal and perimenopausal women may have insomnia as a result of fluctuating hormones, resulting in hot flashes or other stimuli for nighttime waking. If you suspect any of the above conditions, check with a physician specializing in natural medicine (such as a naturopathic doctor) for diagnosis and treatment. Also note, many over-the-counter and prescription drugs can affect your sleep so be sure and check your medications for side-effects.

Temperature Considerations

If you have cold feet, try wearing socks to bed. Feet have the most sluggish circulation in your body, so they often feel cold before the rest of your body does. One study has shown that people who wore socks to bed had the least nighttime waking. What a great simple, non-toxic, no-cost way to enhance your sleep! However, your bedroom should not be too hot. Keep the temperature in your bedroom 60° – 70°F, at least in cool weather. Another way of relaxing is to take a hot bath, shower, or sauna before bed. When body temperature is raised in the late evening, it will fall again at bedtime, and this cooling promotes sleepiness.

Supplements

Homeopathy, meaning “like cures like,” is an energetic system of medicine that matches the symptoms of an energetic remedy to the symptoms that the person has, and these symptoms cancel each other out. Homeopathy is very individualized, but one of the more common remedies given for insomnia is the homeopathic remedy of coffee (homeopathic remedies are diluted so many times, there is no physical substance of coffee in the remedy). If homeopathic coffee doesn’t work, consider getting a consultation with a trained homeopath or naturopathic doctor. As a last resort, you can supplement with melatonin spray, sublingual tablets, or drops of 0.05-0.5 mg 1-30 minutes before bedtime. Your best option is to increase melatonin with full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs in winter and exposure to bright sunlight, preferably an hour per day, during good weather, as well as complete darkness at night as previously described. You can also use L-tryptophan or 5-HTP as a precursor to melatonin. L-tryptophan is safer than straight melatonin. It is simply an amino acid, and it is common in many foods. However, to get enough tryptophan from food sources to make a difference in your sleep, you would have to eat massive amounts of food. Tryptophan and 5-HTP have been found to be helpful with insomnia. Tryptophan has been helpful for reducing sleep latency (the length of time it takes to fall asleep). This has proven true over numerous studies for people with insomnia, people with normal sleep patterns, and in animal studies. Tryptophan also does not produce distortions of sleep physiology when first administered, during long-term use, or after withdrawal. Unlike pharmaceutical sedatives and hypnotics, tryptophan is a molecule that is actually a natural part of our bodies and the food we eat. 5-HTP, which is 5-hydroxytryptophan, has been found to be of benefit for children’s nightmares, according to a study in which almost all of the children who took 5-HTP improved their nightmares, and almost all of the children given placebos did not.

Other Helpful Considerations to Help You Sleep Better:

Establish a bedtime routine (this could include deep breathing, meditation, aromatherapy/essential oils, massage, etc.)
Go to the bathroom right before bed so you will reduce the chance you’ll wake up to go in the middle of the night.
Put work away at least an hour or two before bed so your mind has a chance to relax.

Sleep Labs

If you have tried everything and you still aren’t sleeping, or never feel rested, you may consider seeing a sleep lab, especially if you are significantly overweight. Many people have discovered that they have sleep apnea and have benefited from a CPAP machine while they worked on losing weight. At any rate, be sure to make a good night’s sleep one of your top priorities. Your body deserves it.