Why Sleeping Less Than Seven Hours a Night Is a Recipe for Ill Health and a Shortened Life Span from Dr. Mercola
Why Sleeping Less Than Seven Hours a Night Is a Recipe for Ill Health and a Shortened Life Span
May 12, 2018 • 100,455views
Edition: English
Story at-a-glance
Getting
quality sleep, and enough of it, is the single most effective thing you
can do to reset your brain and body and invigorate your health on a
daily basis
Lack
of sleep has been shown to raise your risk for chronic illnesses such as
dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. The World Health
Organization has declared shift work a “probable human carcinogen”
because it causes circadian disruption
Research
has shown that a single night of sleeping just four hours lowers the
amount of natural killer cells — powerful immune fighters that target
malignant cells — by 70 percent
During
REM sleep, the visual, motor/kinesthetic, emotional and memory centers
ramp up their activity. Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex — the “CEO of
the brain” that rules rationality and logical thinking — shuts down
Extreme
sleep deprivation can cause delusions, hallucinations and irrational or
psychotic behavior, caused by the fact that your brain goes to sleep
and you begin to experience your dreams while awake
By Dr. Mercola
In the featured video, Joe Rogan interviews professor Matthew Walker,
Ph.D., founder and director of the University of California Berkeley’s
Center for Human Sleep Science and author of the book "Why We Sleep: The
New Science of Sleep and Dreams,"1
in which he shares the latest discoveries about sleep and how it
impacts virtually every area of your physical and mental health.
I read Walker’s book last fall, and share his view that sleep is
profoundly important — even more important than diet and exercise. After
all, you’re not likely to reap maximum rewards from other healthy
lifestyle habits if you’re constantly exhausted. Beyond that, lack of
sleep has been shown to raise your risk for chronic illnesses such as dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
In fact, the World Health Organization has tagged shift work as a
“probable human carcinogen” because it causes circadian disruption.2
Lack of sleep is also associated with shorter lifespans. Like Walker, I
believe getting quality sleep, and enough of it, is the single most
effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body and invigorate
your health on a daily basis.
Sleep Deprivation Is a Form of Self Abuse
There are many reasons why you may sleep poorly, and one may simply
be related to your mindset. Many, especially in the U.S., still view
lack of sleep as a badge of honor — a sign of drive, ambition and
achievement at the expense of sleep. Worse, good sleep is often
characterized as a sign of sloth.
As noted by Walker in one of his lectures,3
“We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming
how little sleep we’re getting. It’s time for us to reclaim our right to
a full night of sleep, without embarrassment or the stigma of laziness.
In doing so, we may remember what it feels like to truly be awake
during the day.”
According to Walker, “Humans are the only species that deliberately
deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason,” and based on his
studies, he is convinced no one can make it on five hours or less of
sleep without suffering some level of short-term impairment or long-term
illness. There’s an exceptionally rare genetic mutation known as advanced phase sleep syndrome
that allows some to thrive with minimal sleep, but you’re far more
likely to be struck by lightning than have this rare genetic mutation.
Rogan and Walker also discuss more acute symptoms of sleep
deprivation. This includes wild hallucinations, sometimes reported by
ultra-marathoners and others who for various reasons have attempted to
go without sleep for extended periods of time. As an example, Walker
recounts the story of Peter Tripp, a disc jockey who, in 1959, tried to
break the world record for sleeplessness. He stayed awake for eight days
straight, doing a continuous broadcast from Times Square.
“By Day Three, he was having florid delusions and hallucinations,”
Walker says. “He was seeing spiders in his shoes; he became desperately
paranoid, thinking people were trying to poison him … “ He also became
belligerent and abusive toward everyone around him. “He was clearly
psychotic,” one of the attending psychiatrists said. His experiment is
detailed in the short video below.
How and Why Sleep Deprivation Can Trigger Psychosis
In a very real sense, when you forgo sleep for extended periods of
time, you begin to dream while awake — hence the delusions and
hallucinations. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep
is a 90-minute deep sleep cycle during which you dream. Tripp’s
experiment revealed that even though he was awake — walking around and
talking — his brainwaves showed he was asleep, and it was during the REM
cycles that he was most likely to hallucinate. Essentially, he was
experiencing his nightmares in an awake state.
Tripp finally went to bed after remaining awake for 201 consecutive
hours, and slept for 24 hours. Upon waking, there were no signs of
delusions and Tripp reported feeling quite normal. His wife, however,
disagreed, saying he’d changed. The couple eventually got divorced.
The attending psychiatrists also agree that after his experiment, his
personality had changed, and that the change appeared to be permanent.
He was no longer as cheerful and easygoing as he’d been before.
Arguments with his boss led to the loss of his job as well. Those who
knew him best insist those eight days of sleep deprivation damaged his
psyche long-term.
Parts of Your Brain Become More Active During Sleep
As explained by Walker, your brain doesn’t shut down during sleep.
Quite the contrary. While some parts are subdued, other parts become far
more active than during wakefulness. During REM sleep, the visual,
motor/kinesthetic, emotional and memory centers all ramp up their
activity. Meanwhile, activity in your prefrontal cortex — the “CEO of
the brain” that rules rationality and logical thinking — decreases.
This is why dreams can be so visually and kinesthetically powerful,
sucking you into a vortex of emotion while simultaneously being
completely irrational and illogical. And, when you are sleep deprived,
this “dreaming while awake” state can start to seep through, as it did
in Tripp’s experiment. Indeed, studies have shown skimping on sleep is a
surefire way to lose emotional control, become more emotionally
volatile — and more irrational.
If you frequently feel emotionally off-kilter or struggle with a
short fuse, chances are you might manage your emotions a whole lot
better were you to get more sleep on a nightly basis. Walker also cites
research showing there’s a dramatic difference in injury rates between
those who sleep enough and those who don’t. Athletes who get just five
hours of sleep have a 60 percent higher injury rate than those who get
nine hours.
Five Common Enemies of Sleep
Walker defines sleep deprivation as sleeping less than seven hours a night,4
and statistics show half of all American adults fail to get the
recommended eight hours of sleep each night. An estimated 1 in 3 is
getting six hours of sleep or less per night. According to a Gallup
Poll,5
Americans slept an average of 7.9 hours a night in 1942. Today, the
average is six hours and 31 minutes, Walker says, adding, “That means
there’s a huge swath of people well below that average.”
Walker also notes that “One of the big problems with lack of sleep is
that you don’t know you’re sleep deprived when you’re sleep deprived!
Your subjective sense of how well you’re doing with a lack of sleep is a
miserable predictor for how you’re doing objectively.” So, with sleep
deprivation being so rampant, what’s the cause? Walker pins the blame
for our consistently declining slumber patterns on the following
“enemies of sleep:”
Alcohol and caffeine: These and other substances, such as sleeping pills, interfere with sleep quality and sleep time
Loneliness,
anxiety and depression: The longing for connection and the effects of
mental illness can often interfere with or cause people to forego sleep
Long work hours: The international business environment, increased
global competition and longer commuter times are just a few of the
factors contributing to the increase in work hours and stress-related burnout
Overcommitment: Schedules are filled from morning to night, and many
people are unwilling to trade entertainment or socializing with family
and friends for sleep
When asked by The Guardian if he takes his own advice about sleep, Walker replied:6
“I give myself a nonnegotiable eight-hour sleep opportunity every
night, and I keep very regular hours. If there is one thing I tell
people, it’s to go to bed and to wake up at the same time every day, no
matter what. I take my sleep incredibly seriously because I have seen
the evidence.
Once you know that after just one night of only four or five
hours of sleep, your natural killer cells — the ones that attack the
cancer cells that appear in your body every day — drop by 70 percent, or
that a lack of sleep is linked to cancer of the bowel, prostate and
breast … how could you do anything else?”
Simple Sleep Hacks to Improve Your Sleep
As noted by Walker, there are a number of ways to “hack” your biology
to improve your sleep. Following are some of his favorites. For many
more, see “Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to improve It.”
• Keep a regular sleep schedule seven days a week. Go
to bed and wake up at the same times each day, even on the weekends.
This will help your body to get into a sleep rhythm and make it easier
to fall asleep and get up in the morning. To this, I would add getting
bright sunlight exposure in the morning and for at least a half-hour to
an hour right around noon, to help reset your circadian clock. • Avoid bright lights and minimize use of electronics in the evening.
Both bright lights and electronic screens are major sleep thieves,
robbing you of the ability to fall asleep quickly. Research has shown
that the more time you spend on electronic devices during the day, and
especially at night, the longer it takes to fall asleep and the less
sleep you get overall.7,8
Walker suggests dimming the lights in your room and reading a book
rather than watching TV or using electronics before bed. If you must use
electronics in the evening, I recommend installing blue-blocking
software such as Iris, or use blue blocking glasses. • Make sure your bedroom is cool enough. Studies
show the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees
F. Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep. When
you sleep, your body’s internal temperature drops to its lowest level,
generally about four hours after you fall asleep. A cooler bedroom
mimics this natural temperature drop. Sleeping naked can also help. • Keep your feet warm. While
your body needs to be cool, your extremities need to stay warm for
optimal sleep. At least one study has shown that wearing socks to bed
reduces night waking. • Take a hot bath or sauna before bed.
When your body temperature is raised in the late evening, it will fall
at bedtime, facilitating sleep. The core body temperature drop that
occurs when you exit the bath signals your body it’s time for bed.
Beware of Electric and Electromagnetic Fields
Based on the research I’ve done, I believe eliminating electric and electromagnetic fields
(EMFs) in your bedroom is a really important factor that can improve
both your quantity and quality of sleep. EMFs have the ability to
disrupt your pineal gland’s production of melatonin and serotonin, and
are a significant contributor to mitochondrial damage and dysfunction,
which is at the heart of virtually all chronic disease.
EMF exposure has also been linked to neuronal changes that affect memory and your ability to learn.9
EMFs harm your body’s mitochondria by producing excessive oxidative
damage, so “marinating” in EMFs all night, every night, can cause or
contribute to virtually any chronic ailment, including premature aging.
Ideally, shut down the electricity to your bedroom by pulling your
circuit breaker before bed. Also be sure to shut down your Wi-Fi.
Keep in mind that even if you completely shut off the electricity in
your bedroom, your room may still be electrified. This is what happened
to me, and when I used sophisticated body voltage measurements I was
able to detect this. This is a result of electrical fields (not
electricity) transferred into your home by the electric utility and
spreading in your home. This can be remediated using certain kinds of
shielding paint that is then grounded to form a Faraday cage, which
stops the fields from entering your bedroom.
Should You Use Melatonin?
Rogan asks Walker about the use of melatonin. Is it advisable to use
melatonin if you’re having a hard time falling asleep? Walker recommends
the use of melatonin to resynchronize your circadian clock
when traveling between time zones. “You can use melatonin strategically
for jet lag,” he says. “Once, however, you are stable within the new
time zone, melatonin does not seem to be efficacious for healthier sleep
… But if it works for you — no harm, no foul. Keep taking it.”
Ideally, it is best to increase your melatonin level naturally, which
is achieved by exposing yourself to bright sunlight in the daytime
(along with full spectrum fluorescent bulbs in the winter) and complete
darkness at night. If that fails or isn’t possible, I’d suggest trying a
5-HTP, which I believe is a superior approach to using melatonin,
especially if you’re older.
5-HTP is a hydroxylated form of tryptophan that easily passes your
blood brain barrier. Your body converts 5-HTP first into serotonin
(which may give your mood a boost), and then into melatonin. In one
study, an amino acid preparation containing both GABA (a calming
neurotransmitter) and 5-HTP reduced time to fall asleep, increased the
duration of sleep and improved sleep quality.10
You can also take somemagnesium malate or glycinate before bedto increase body relaxation. Cannabidiol (CBD) oil
is yet another option. CBD oil not only helps reduce pain and muscle
spasms, which may keep you awake, but also promotes general relaxation
and has been shown to improve sleep.
To Optimize Your Health, Make Sure You Get Enough Sleep
Regardless of the reason for your sleeplessness, research linking
chronic poor sleep and lack of sleep to disease and illness cannot be
ignored.
Research (cited by Walker) has shown that a single night of sleeping
just four hours lowered the amount of natural killer cells — powerful
immune fighters that target malignant cells — by 70 percent. In other
words, a single night of sleep deprivation throws you into what Walker
calls “a remarkable state of immune deficiency” that raises the risk
that cancer cells will multiply in your body.
Additionally, each spring, when we lose an hour of sleep due to the
switchover to daylight saving time, there’s a 24 percent increase in
heart attacks — and that’s from the loss of a single hour. In the fall,
when we gain an hour of sleep, there’s a 21 percent decrease in heart
attacks.
“That’s how fragile and vulnerable your body is to even just the
smallest [change in] sleep,” Walker says. Sleeping just six hours a
night for seven days straight has even been shown to distort gene
activity. Genes related to immune function were switched off, while
genes related to tumors, chronic inflammation and stress were
overexpressed.
The scientific facts underscore my belief that there is no substitute
for, nor any excuse for not getting, a full night’s rest. If you think
you “don’t have the time” to sleep for seven or eight hours because you
have too much work on your plate, think again.
As noted by Walker, “Why do we overvalue workers that undervalue
sleep?” The fact is, sleeping less does not equate to greater
productivity. In fact, the complete opposite is true. When you’re
working on an inadequate amount of sleep, attention, logic, efficiency
and productivity go down the drain and emotional reactivity goes up.
Given its importance, I encourage you to take a few moments today to
evaluate your sleep habits. Are you getting enough sleep? If not, what’s
one change you can make to improve the length and/or quality of your
sleep? If you need help getting started, check out my 16 Chronological Tips to Improve Your Sleep, or read through “Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to improve It,” hyperlinked earlier.
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