Scientists have discovered a new treatment that makes you live longer, enhances your memory, makes you more creative, makes you look more attractive, keeps you at a healthy weight, lowers food cravings, protects you from cancer and dementia, wards off colds and flu, lowers risks of heart attacks and stroke not to mention diabetes, makes you feel happier, less anxious and depressed. Nothing about the above is “fiction” and if it was a new drug everyone would want it.

Of course, this isn’t a wonder drug but simply the proven benefits of a full night sleep. So, why is it that we will forgo this benefit by staying up later when we know the alarm will go off at 6h00am or resorting to a glass of wine so we fall asleep only to awake 2hrs later staring at the ceiling unable to fall back asleep. No matter the circumstances you find yourself in: can’t fall asleep, can’t stay asleep, can’t shut my mind when I go to bed, jetlag from business travels, sleep but wake up tired, sleep apnea, menopause-related sleep disturbances, and so on. Sleep is not the absence of wakefulness. Our sleep is a complex, metabolically active and in a specific order depending on your age.

Numerous functions of the brain are restored by and depend upon your sleep. No one type of sleep accomplishes it all (light NREM, deep NREM and REM sleep, nap during the day to catch up on a poor night sleep) offer different brain and physiology benefits at different times of the night. This short article isn’t meant to give a full explanation of each stages or what they do but to simply bring awareness of this extremely important healing part of your life that must be taken as ONE OF THE MOST important part of your day to not shorten or even believe you can function optimally with 4-6hrs each night. Scientists studying sleep for decades all have concluded by their findings (17,000 well-scrutinized scientific reports to date) that less than 7hrs per night ongoing have negative consequences for almost every single human on the planet….and no, you’re probably not one of them that can go with less than 6hrs and be 100% unaffected. Electrodes put on your head to measure specific brain function would show a different story, as per many scientific reports.

In my practice, I ask for a questionnaire to be filled before we meet and there are a few questions on sleep. Sadly, the majority report not getting quality sleep. Here are a few things sleep deprivation will do:

• Reduce growth hormone – growth hormone is a healer of the body, which surges at night to replenish the lining of blood vessels (endothelium) and reduces your risks of atherosclerosis. • Reduce testosterone – especially men with sleep apnea have lower levels of testosterone. • Men with shorter sleep cycle also report a 29 percent lower sperm count and the sperm themselves have more deformities and under-slept men also have significantly smaller testicles (I am simply quoting the research). • Testosterone maintains bone density and builds muscle mass and strength. • In a compilation of studies over the past forty years of more than 100,000 women working irregular nighttime hours resulting in poor sleep, 33 percent had abnormal menstrual cycles than those working regular hours. These women also had issues of sub-fertility and more likely to suffer miscarriages in the first trimester. • A series of epidemiological studies spanning several continents, independent from one another found higher rates of type 2 diabetes among individuals that reported sleeping less than six hours a night routinely. The question is: does the state of diabetes impair your sleep, or does short sleep impair your body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, causing diabetes? After doing sleep deprivation testing on these individuals, impaired sleep was 40 percent less effective at absorbing a standard dose of glucose compared to when they were fully rested. Cells were shown repelling glucose instead of absorbing it. • In a controlled study, when sleep-deprived, healthy and lean participants lost their hunger signals and ate on average 300calories extra per day. The hunger hormone ghrelin more than doubles when sleep-deprived and the “stop eating” hormone leptin is less than half indicating that a sleep-deprived body will cry famine in the midst of plenty. • When two groups were put on a restricted diet where half of the participants were offered five and a half hours of sleep per night and the other half were offered eight and a half hours, both groups lost weight but the type of weight loss came from very different sources. The group on the restricted sleep loss 70% of their weight in lean body mass, not fat. The other group had 50% of their weight loss from fat while preserving muscle. • Sleep deprivation impacts the response to the flu vaccine. If sleep deprived before a flu shot, a 2002 study demonstrated that the body’s ability to generate antibodies, determining if the vaccination was a success, was less than 50% of the immune response than those who had sufficient sleep. • Sleep and cancer: Natural killer cells (NK Cells) are elite immune cells able to destroy free-flowing cancer cells by destroying the outer layer of cancer cells and inject a protein that can destroy them.

One single four-hour night of sleep will wipe out over 70% of those cells – this is a dramatic reduction in the immune system. Imagine your cancer-fighting immune armory after long months or even years of sleep deprivation. A European study of almost 25,000 individuals demonstrated that sleeping six hours or less was associated with a 40 percent increased risk of developing cancer. Similar associations were found in a study tracking more than 75,000 women across an eleven-year period. The relationship between sleep disruption and cancer is now so damning that the World Health Organization has officially classified nighttime shirt work as a “probable carcinogen”.

Do you think you got enough sleep this past week? Can you recall the last time you woke up feeling refreshed, not needing caffeine? You may know that you lack sleep but do you know the long-term consequences. Some of you purposely cut short your night sleep because of work or other “things” you must “get done” and some of you seriously cannot fall asleep, stay asleep or feel rested even after a full night of sleep. Take a moment to re-read the first paragraph and let’s rebalance this “life-saving” and necessary part of your day.