Sleepy Genes.

Getting a good night’s sleep has many positive health benefits, from repairing your DNA and increasing your antioxidants, to possibly slowing the ageing process.

But do our genes actually dictate how well we sleep?

The short answer is yes. They dictate as to whether you are a morning person or a night owl, the duration of sleep, if your sleep is fragmented and if stress will affect you sleeping well.

For instance, stress and sleep can be the perfect chicken and the egg scenario. Having continuous stress will have a negative effect on your sleep quality and having poor quality sleep will increase your stress levels. 

There are a variety of factors which affect our health, one which is currently being studied is the effect of sleep and our circadian rhythm. Our circadian rhythm is thought to regulate around 15-20% of our genome and is tremendously important to keeping us fit and healthy as it affects our hormones, eating habits and reduces the chances of us becoming ill.

Our diet also has huge connotations for how well we sleep. For instance, the “Sleep hormone” melatonin, is responsible for signalling darkness to the body and regulating daily physiological rhythms, which are dramatically affected by retinol (Vitamin A).

Studies have shown high levels of retinol (vitamin A) in the mammalian pineal gland and vitamin A deficiency causes a reduction in gene AANAT, which will reduce melatonin levels. 

There are a whole variety of health implications associated with poor sleep quality.  Below we will touch briefly on a few of the main ones, which hopefully shine some light on the subject.  

Firstly, an interesting study from the University of Chicago looked at individuals who while monitoring their sleep, were also hoping to lose weight following a calorie-restricted diet at the same time.

Group 1 were sleep deprived, only gaining 5.5 hours sleep. However, Group 2 consuming the exact same diet but getting 8.5 hours sleep, resulted in a loss of 55% more body fat, simply from obtaining more sleep. 

Now this goes against the modern-day dogma of doing more to achieve your goals and in many ways sounds counterintuitive. As how does doing less (i.e. sleeping) actually give you more in terms of burning fat.

This isn’t just a matter of sleeping more. We need to sleep smarter!

What actually happens whilst we sleep that enhances everything that we do, which becomes some kind of elixir to our health, fitness and longevity?

I think what might be useful, is if I helped explain the role of a few hormones, which may have an effect on your sleep and health.

HGH, (Human Growth Hormone) is an extremely powerful hormone which we produce during the first part of your sleep cycle. HGH helps to generate additional lean muscle. It’s also muscle sparing and helps to protect the muscle that you’ve already developed. 

HGH supports the increase in our energy levels and is known as the “Fountain of Youth”. Your levels are naturally higher levels during childhood.

Sleep is the key! You will not boost your levels from a supplement which claims to “Increase HGH by 555%”, but you will increase levels by getting a good night’s sleep.

The second hormone that we need to look at is Cortisol, which has become a bit of a buzzword and bogeyman of late. Cortisol is responsible for a whole variety of metabolic functions such as helping to regulate your thyroid hormone.

The thyroid regulates almost every major metabolic function in your body; therefore, a poor functioning thyroid can have a detrimental effect on virtually every area of your health and wellbeing.

For instance, weight gain, a reduction in your metabolic rate, fatigue, feeling depressed, anxious, moody. It can affect our skin, cause dry hair and much more. Cortisol is our friend most of the time; it only becomes an issue if the amount produced is incorrect and at the wrong time.

Sleep deprivation has an instant effect, causing an increase in cortisol levels and a decrease in HGH production. Therefore, if you’re a Night Owl, who stays up late burning the midnight oil checking your emails, then your cortisol levels will be through the roof.  Your muscle tissue will literally be breaking down for energy, at an elevated rate. 

This process is called Gluconeogenesis, a process whereby you break down your valuable muscle tissue into sugar (glucose).

The next hormone in the sleep equation is Melatonin, or the “Sleep hormone” as it’s been labelled of late. Melatonin has been shown to have a notable effect on fat loss, as it supports the upsurge of Brown adipose tissue (BAT), which functions in many ways like muscle in regard to burning White adipose tissue (WAT)

Increasing your levels of BAT fat will help to increase your metabolic rate, with melatonin having a direct correlation to increasing your levels of BAT fat.

Then we have Leptin, which is your body’s satiety hormone (Feeling full). An interesting study at Stanford University discovered, just one night of sleep deprivation and poor sleep quality leads to quite a server suppression of your leptin levels.

This is one of the reasons that you will eat everything insight following a late night, as your “Feeling full” hormone isn’t firing on all cylinders.

Now the last hormone we will be look at is Ghrelin, which is your body’s “Hunger hormone”. Another interesting study showed that just one night of poor quality of sleep lead to a 20% increase in Ghrelin levels.

Again, this may be one reason as to why your appetite increases dramatically following a late night, or continually going to bed late.

During sleep is when we repair damage to our DNA. One of the ways that this is done is by releasing one of our previously mentioned hormones “Melatonin”. This hormone is inhibited by blue light during the day and hindered when we use our phones, laptops and tablets at night and activates and regulates over 500 genes that are involved in repair and antioxidant function.

Sleeping is obviously very important to repair a lot of the damage done during the day. It also activates the Glymphatic system, which is a complex network of blood vessels that extends from the spinal fluid all the way throughout the brain. 

During our sleep we will actually release cerebral spinal fluid up into the brain to wash out all the cellular waste products that have built up during the day. 

Therefore, securing a good night’s sleep has many positive health associations, from repairing your DNA, increasing your antioxidants to improving the length of your telomeres, which are mother nature’s stopwatch.

To order your DNA Kit and understand how your genes will be affecting your sleep, please head over to www.muhdo.com , or if you would like more information then contact us at [email protected].