themedicalstate:An Epidemic of SleeplessnessThe pitfalls of getting insufficient shut-eyeBack as col
themedicalstate:An Epidemic of SleeplessnessThe pitfalls of getting insufficient shut-eyeBack as college students, we may have taken great pride in getting by with only five or six hours of sleep per night. Staying up late studying, waking up early to get a head start on that lab report… Some of these practices may have stayed with us up to this day. Evidently, insufficient sleep does not only impair your creativity and productivity at work, but also negatively impacts your cardiovascular system, immune system, reproductive system, metabolism, cognitive abilities, emotional stability, and genetic material. In brief, insufficient sleep is a perfect recipe for a shortened, lower-quality life.Interestingly, over the span of a century, human beings have abandoned their biologically evolved sleep habits that took Mother Nature 3.4 million years to instil. Industrialization led us to wake up unnaturally (through factory whistles and later alarm clocks) and also stay up for much longer due to the advent of incandescent light bulbs, delaying the trigger signal that leads to the onset of sleep. As a result, our society is now in a silent sleeplessness epidemic that has catastrophic impacts on our health, life expectancy, safety, productivity, and education.Sleep is governed by a variety of biological and chemical factors, the onset of which is determined by the release of melatonin. However, the two main factors that govern wake and sleep are 1) your circadian rhythm and 2) sleep pressure, represented by the build-up of adenosine in your brain while awake. Once asleep, adenosine levels rapidly decline, resembling the discharge of a capacitor. The greater the distance between the adenosine levels (high) and the circadian rhythm (low), the greater the urge to sleep (see figure below).Sleep can be broadly divided into rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep. While NREM sleep seems to be important for memory consolidation, REM sleep plays a vital role in integrating those newly formed memories into existing ones as well as nurturing emotional, social, and creative capabilities. Interestingly, during NREM sleep, the themes you experienced while awake seem to be replayed in an autobiographical fashion, only much faster, as can be seen by investigating the brain waves during this period. As Walker writes:When it comes to information processing, think of the wake state principally as reception (experiencing and constantly learning the world around you), NREM sleep as reflection (storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills), and REM sleep as integration (interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other, with all past experiences, and, in doing so, building an ever more accurate model of how the world works, including innovative insights and problem-solving abilities).It is worth noting that, apart from information reflection and integration, NREM and REM sleep are integral for a much wider array of restorative tasks. However, these tasks are well beyond the scope of this article.Throughout this book, Walker emphasizes the importance of sleep and how detrimental a lack of it can be, for all parties involved. Here is a brief summary of the most sobering findings:The cognitive abilities of people being awake for 19 hours are the same as those of people being legally drunk (.08% blood alcohol). Bear that in mind when getting behind the wheel.Vehicular accidents due to drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined.The event of daylight savings time in the spring (losing one hour of sleep) leads to a spike of heart attacks the following day. Conversely, the same event in the fall (gaining one our of sleep) leads to a dramatic decrease of heart attacks the next day.If you are dieting while under-slept, 70% of the weight lost will come from lean body mass, not fat.We know that the circadian rhythm shifts forward in teenagers. Yet, the early school start times of the current educational system forces them to wake up at these ungodly hours, knowing very well that this leads to severe underperformance due to the cutting short of REM sleep, which occurs in the early morning hours.Sleep deprivation not only leads to more caloric intake (typically around 300 more calories compared to well-rested individuals), but also to much unhealthier choices (more carbohydrates and sugars instead of leafy greens and proteins).Just one short night of sleep (four hours) sweeps away 70% of natural killer cells circulating in your immune system. These cells are responsible for killing malignant (cancerous) tumor cells.Well-rested employees perform much better than sleep-deprived ones. Yet, many companies overvalue under-slept employees, thinking, erroneously, that these “hard-working” individuals get more done and thus create more value for the company.Sleeping pills do not induce natural sleep, but rather put you into a mild state of anaesthesia, which does not have the restorative capabilities of natural sleep.Surgeons who only slept six hours the night before the operation are 170% more likely to make a grave surgical error than their well-rested counterparts who got eight hours of shut-eye.According to Walker, a healthy seven to nine hours of sleep per night is the cheapest medicine there is and can prevent many of the harmful consequences outlined above. In his own words:It is time for us to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep, without embarrassment or the damaging stigma of laziness. In doing so, we can be reunited with that most powerful elixir of wellness and vitality, dispensed through every conceivable biological pathway. Then we may remember what it feels like to be truly awake during the day, infused with the very deepest plenitude of being.By Thomas A Dorfer (Medium). Image: © ISTOCK.COM, Benjavisa. -- source link