The Importance of Sleep

The Importance of Sleep

0ver the years I think I’ve had a casual approach to sleep. I’ve been focused on my fitness for many years and realised the importance of good nutrition a while ago. But sleep, well I’ve always worked evenings and found it difficult to get to bed early and sadly always had to get up early. That doesn’t make for an ideal sleep routine. I’ve always thought that I could catch up with my sleep someday. What I’ve begun to realise is that catching up is not a thing and if we don’t get it now, we simply will get it..

What I’ve also realised with age is that it’s vitally important for health, wellbeing and longevity. It affects nearly every system in our body. Sleep amazingly does the following:

1.      Improves Brain Function: enhancing memory, focus and concentration. It increases creativity, reduces brain fog and enables the brain to process and store information from the day.

2.      Supports Heart Health: lowering blood pressure, reducing inflammation and decreasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. Consistent, good quality sleep allows our cardiovascular system to recover.

3.      Enhances Physical Recovery: repairing muscles, speeding up recovery from exercise and reducing the risk of injury. It is during sleep that growth hormone is released to aid repair.

4.      Helps Maintain Healthy Weight: regulates hunger hormones, reducers cravings and supports metabolism. Poor sleep increases appetite and preference for high calorie foods.

5.      Improves Mood and Emotional Balance: reducing stress and irritability, lowering anxiety levels and increasing emotional resilience.

6.      Strengthens the Immune System: improving the ability to fight infection, increasing antibody production and reducing susceptibility to colds and viruses.

7.      Supports Hormonal Balance: regulating cortisol, the stress hormone, and improving insulin sensitivity.

8.      Improves Longevity and Health: chronic sleep deprivation is linked to heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cognitive decline.

Why wouldn’t you make the effort to get the sleep you need? The first question to ask is: how much sleep do I need? Individuals are all different of course, but the target for me is between 7 ½ and 8 hours a night. I know some well-known people have claimed they only needed 4 or 5 hours a night, but they are the exception not the rule. I used to try and convince myself I was one of those people, but I was struggling by on 5 hours sleep and certainly not excelling! Most people need between 7 and 9 hours a night. Why?

Well, scientists suggest that there are 2 elements to our sleep: none rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. These 2 elements play out a push/pull battle for brain domination throughout the night. This battle is won and lost every 90 minutes or so and the architecture of sleep, scientists have patterned, runs out over 5 cycles of 90minutes. Hence the recommended 7 to 9 hours to allow for individual differences.

NREM sleep is divided into 3 stages. Stage 1 is classified as light sleep, it lasts for 5  to 10 minutes and is a transitional stage. Stage 2 begins true sleep when our heart rate slows and our body temperature drops. It’s a time when memory processing and consolidation occurs, and the nervous system is calmed. Stage 3 begins deeper, slow wave sleep when growth hormone is released, and physical repair and immune strengthening begins.

REM sleep is often referred to as dream sleep. During this phase brain activity is similar to that of being awake. The body is temporarily paralysed to prevent us acting out our dreams. It is required for learning, creativity and emotional regulation.

The pull push of these 2 elements of sleep is such that we get proportionately more NREM sleep in the first cycles of sleep and more REM sleep in the later cycles. That’s important to know. If for the sake of easy maths, we say 8 hours is our sleep target, but 6 hours is all we are getting? You might think that’s a loss of 25%, but how that plays put for our REM sleep is a loss of between 60-90%. You can’t shorten the time and hope your body just proportions the NREM and REM mix accordingly. It doesn’t! when it comes to sleep there is no such thing as burning the candle at both ends or even at one end and getting away with it.

For our health, wellbeing and longevity sleep is essential, if you’ve thought like me that you’ll catch it all up when life quietens down think again. If you don’t start and try and get what you need now you may adversely affect your: brain function, heart health, physical recovery, immune system, healthy weight, emotional health and hormonal balance. Don’t pass it off as wasted time.