Insufficient Sleep
Feeling lethargic or unproductive lately?
You may want to look at your sleep habits. Getting enough high-quality sleep is a major factor in improving your mood and overall health. Yet a lot of people fall short on it, increasing their risk for various health problems.
While sleep is still a largely neglected area of health, research shows that without proper sleep — both in terms of time and quality — every aspect of your health will be adversely impacted.
Many important things happen during sleep, and only during sleep.
For example, sleep is required for the maintenance of metabolic homeostasis in and the removal of toxic waste from your brain, as well as the maintenance of biological homeostasis in your body.
Without proper sleep, you leave yourself wide-open to chronic illness of all kinds, including diabetes, heart disease, neurodegeneration and cancer.
· Archives of Internal Medicine 2003;163(2):205-209
· 3 Neurobiology of Aging August 2014; 35(8): 1813-1820
· Sleep Medicine Reviews August 2009; 13(4): 257-264
According to recent research, lack of sleep when you’re already struggling with a chronic health issue could be a downright deadly prescription. As reported by CNN Health:
“If you're a middle-aged adult with high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes or existing heart disease and you typically sleep less than six hours each night, you could be setting yourself up for cancer or an early death from heart disease.”
Lack of Sleep Makes Chronic Health Problems Extra Risky
The study CNN is referring to was published in the October 2019 issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA). In it, researchers sought to determine whether short sleep duration would increase the risk of death associated with cardio metabolic risk factors and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
· JAHA October 2, 2019;8:e013043
· 7 Medical News Today October 3, 2019
· 8 Science Daily October 2, 2019
The influence of sleep is also seen in cancer.
The pineal hormone melatonin is involved in the circadian regulation and facilitation of sleep, the inhibition of cancer development and growth, and the enhancement of immune function.
Individuals, such as night shift workers, who are exposed to light at night on a regular basis experience biological rhythm (i.e., circadian) disruption including circadian phase shifts, nocturnal melatonin suppression, and sleep disturbances.
Additionally, these individuals are not only immune suppressed, but they are also at an increased risk of developing a number of different types of cancer.
As explained in this paper, while melatonin plays an important role, there’s a reciprocal interaction between sleep and your immune system that is independent of melatonin as well. When your sleep cycle is disrupted, your immune function can be suppressed, allowing cancer-stimulating cytokines to proliferate and dominate.
Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensure discussion or debate.
Thank you … Set a Nightly Alarm to Help You Get Enough Sleep
There’s simply no doubt that sleep needs to be a priority in your life if you intend to live a long and healthy life. For many, this means forgoing night-owl tendencies and getting to bed at a reasonable time.
If you need to be up at 6 a.m., you need a lights-out deadline of 9:30 or 10 p.m., depending on how quickly you tend to fall asleep. If you find it difficult to get to bed on time, consider setting a bedtime alarm to remind you that it’s time to shut everything down and get ready for sleep.
improve your sleep if you’re having trouble falling or staying asleep,
Want to add word or two?
I think we all need different amounts of sleep and this may change at different ages of our lives.
Some of us do better sleeping at certain hours that are not considered standard.
I also sleep more in the winter when it is dark and wake with the sun in summer to work long days.
Without as much sun, I think our bodies are meant to rest more. "Night-owls" may be some sort of genetic variation as ancient societies benefitted if some individuals were awake to stand watch or figure out the movements of the constellations.
It is probably a variation of "normal".
Perhaps it is more important to know that you are on your proper path doing what you are supposed to do.
Perhaps it is not the lack of sleep, per se, but the fact that the body may lose buffering minerals and compounds if not well-nourished and supplemented.
Then, there are no reserves to fall back on.
Maybe how well you sleep and how refreshed you wake is more important than how long you sleep.
I am able to rapidly pass into a deep sleep and have no difficulty falling asleep.
In certain monasteries, they pray every 4 hours, even waking at night. It does not seem to harm their health.
Your comment ….?
When cortisol is rising, melatonin declines. As melatonin levels increase, cortisol levels fall. That balance is part of the circadian rhythm too, and is normally tied closely to the sleep/wake cycle that governs most people’s lives. Melatonin production starts around two hours before bed and acts as a messaging system to signify the arrival of night and this can be disrupted by things like blue light for more then a few minutes and emfs or lack of nutrients.
The highest concentration of melatonin is produced between 9p and 2am, then generally achieve the deepest sleep at around 3 am, and from then on the melatonin level starts to decrease.
By the morning when there is little melatonin in your system, cortisol starts to rise. This cycle is repeated every day of our lives.
All stressors to the body can lead to an overactive cortisol production at night and sleep issues for example.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../PMC3538178
Ashwagandha can potentially be beneficial at night to lessen cortisol if in that state and reduce anxiety and stress over time.
Poor dream recall, stressful or bizarre dreams, or nightmares, signs which the brillant late Carl Pfeiffer, MD in the 1970s attributed to low vitamin B6 status.
He suggested that your dreams and dream recall serve as a good indicator of your need for vitamin B6.
You should dream every night and you should remember your dreams. They should be pleasant—the kind of dreams where you wake up and want to close your eyes and continue dreaming.
This was recently studied. Taking vitamin B6 improved people's ability to recall dreams compared to a placebo. Prior to taking the supplements, many of the participants rarely remembered their dreams, but they reported improvements by the end of the study.
www.sciencedaily.com/.../180427100258.htm
Lower magnesium can contribute to a potential deficiency, that may then impact the vitamin B6 conversion to the active Pyridoxal-5-Phosphate (P5P) form which needs Magnesium, Zinc and Vitamin B2.
Always slept very well as I was always very physically active. Then came a number of ops. Could not get past 5 hour unless I had time to sleep in "relays" and make up the hours.
Ashwagandha broke the curse. It weirdly only took a few of the pills, not even a whole bottle of it. Interesting field of study I used to yerk awake in the mornings during that time.
Now I "float" back into a state of wakenes. Seems one now has the time, while waking up, to slowly orientate yourself towards the day, relating yesterday’s happenings, to what needs to be done today. As though there is now more continuity.
Also seem to be catching up to all the dreams I seemed to have missed during those years! If one cottons on to interpreting a small portion of the (often) symbolic meaning of images in dreams, matters can become rather interesting.
Enough Sleep - Everyone needs a certain amount of sleep that differs from person to person. Healthy people will make sure they sleep enough every night, according to what their body needs. Usually 7–9 hours.