Health Wonders of Sleep
BY: Rodolfo Desuasido • Nov 04, 2022
Part 1 of Two Series Article
Much of what we know about sleep is apparently faulty and may be based on the superstitions of our elders. One such belief is sleeping very often or too much will make you fat as your cells will be filled with liquid and you will get edema. However, the opposite is true. Lack of sleep will make you fat. According to medical experts, lack of sleep disrupts the production of ghrelin and leptin—the hormones that regulate appetite. This makes you crave for more food and eating more leads to obesity.
Sleep is supposed to help eliminate toxins from your blood. But lack of sleep disables your body from doing so. Thus, your blood thickens because of the uneliminated toxins. Your body also becomes acidic because of the accumulated toxins in the blood. An acidic body due to lack of sleep makes one susceptible to diseases. One of the immediate victims of this condition is the heart. Lack of sleep leads to the worsening of blood pressure and cholesterol levels, which are risk factors for heart disease and stroke.
Sleep reduces stress
When your body is deficient in sleep, it goes into a state of stress. The body’s functions are put on high alert, which causes the production of stress hormones resulting in high blood pressure. This increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. Stress hormones also make it harder for one to fall asleep.
Increased stress hormones caused by deficient sleep raise the level of inflammation in your body. This creates a greater risk for heart-related conditions, cancer, diabetes, and many other illnesses. Essentially, our illnesses are inflammations. For example, tonsillitis is inflammation of the tonsil. Hepatitis is inflammation of the liver. Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas. Prostatitis is inflammation of the prostate. These inflammations can lead to cancer.
Deep sleep for good health
Notice that when you lack sleep, you feel sluggish, weak, and mentally confused. But a good night’s sleep makes you feel refreshed, energized, and alert all day. Vigorous activities can feel great and this increases your chances for another good night’s sleep.
Meanwhile, deep sleep is an important stage of sleep that you should experience every time you go to bed. Some health benefits of deep sleep are as follows:
1. Maintains healthy heart
During deep sleep, the heart will beat slower and give the heart a chance to repair itself.
2. Lowers blood pressure
Lack of deep sleep can trigger adrenaline or cortisol production, which increases blood pressure. Deep sleep allows the body to rest and gives the heart a chance to beat slower and lower blood pressure.
3. Boosts immune system
During deep sleep, the body produces immune cells and antibodies that help fight and prevent diseases.
4. Maintains a healthy brain
As you sleep, your brain repairs its cells, your body produces hormones and neurotransmitters, and this promotes the production of new brain cells. This makes the brain fully repaired and prevents mental disorders.
5. Improves memory and creativity
Deep sleep can induce memory and improve creativity. Those who get enough deep sleep show better memory and learning performance, and greater creativity in the workplace or the classroom.
6. Prevents Alzheimer
By maintaining healthy brain functions, deep sleep significantly prevents memory loss or Alzheimer’s disease. During deep sleep, the brain will restore itself and repair the damage within.
7. Promotes healthy weight
During deep sleep, the body burns fat and eliminates toxins.
Sleep improves memory
One notes that researchers do not fully understand the nature of sleep. This remains yet a mystery, but they have found that sleep has a key role in the process called memory consolidation, or in making memory stable in the brain. During sleep, your body may be resting, but your brain is busy processing your experiences during the day. Sleep helps your brain make connections between events, sensory input, and feelings, and consolidate them into memories. Sleep helps you encode memory in the brain. This is the stabilization phase of memory consolidation. It takes 6 milliseconds to encode a memory.
Sleep affects learning and memory in two ways: (i) lack of sleep impairs a person’s ability to focus and learn efficiently, and (ii) the brain needs sleep to consolidate a memory (make it stick) so that it can be recalled in the future. Without adequate sleep, your brain has a harder time absorbing and recalling new information. Sleep does not only help sharpen the mind. Studies show that sleep affects physical reflexes, fine motor skills, and judgment.
When is the best time to go to bed?
Dr. Matt Walker, head of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of California in Berkeley, says that the quality of sleep changes as the night wears on. “The time of night when you sleep makes a significant difference in terms of the structure and quality of your sleep,” he explains. Your slumber is composed of a series of 90-minute cycles during which your brain moves from deep, non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep to REM sleep.” That 90-minute cycle is fairly stable throughout the night,” Walker explains. “But the ratio of non-REM to REM sleep changes.”
For bedtime, he says the window is roughly between 8 PM and 12 AM—during which your brain and body can get all the non-REM and REM shuteye they need to function optimally.
He says that non-REM sleep tends to dominate your slumber cycles in the early part of the night. But as the clock creeps toward daybreak, REM sleep takes place. Some research has suggested that non-REM sleep is deeper and more restorative than the lighter, dream-infused REM sleep—although Walker says that both non-REM and REM sleep offer important benefits.
The shift from non-REM to REM sleep happens at certain times of the night regardless of what time you go to bed, Walker says. Thus, if you sleep very late—say, at 3 AM—your sleep will tilt toward the lighter, REM-heavy sleep. And the reduction in deep, restorative sleep may leave you groggy and blunt-minded the next day.
According to Dr. Allison Siebern, associate director of the Insomnia & Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at Stanford University, your genetic makeup dictates whether you are more comfortable going to bed earlier or later within that rough 8-to-midnight window.
“For people who are night owls, going to bed very early goes against their physiology,” Siebern explains. The same is true for “morning larks” who try to stay up late. For either type of person—and for the majority of sleepers who fall somewhere in between—the best bedtime is the hour of the evening when they feel most sleepy.
Thus, she says, night owls should not try to force themselves to bed at 9 or 10. Work schedule or family life may dictate when you must get up in the morning. But if you can find a way to match your sleep schedule to your biology—and get a full eight hours of sleep—this is for the best.
Siebern and Walker both say the ideal bedtime changes as you age. Small children tend to sleep earlier but college-aged adults are more comfortable going to bed around or after midnight. Many believe that adults need about 8 hours of sleep per night. The fact is, some people may need more, some less. The question is, WHEN are you getting your sleep?
The best time range to go to bed is between 9 PM and midnight. This is for adults 18–45 years of age. Older people tend to sleep earlier due to their age and lack of energy, which is normal. If you go to sleep later than midnight, even with the right number of hours, it is still not optimal sleep.
Note: This article was previously published in our printed issue of The Corporate, Guide and Style for Professionals magazine.