We all know sleep is important, but few people realize that not getting enough sleep pretty much neutralizes the benefits of healthy eating and exercise.
When we sleep, protein production takes place that provides the necessary building blocks for cell growth and repair: The body recovers from stress damage, damage caused by ultraviolet rays and immunity is boosted.
Without sufficient rest the body is weakened, exposing us to greater risk of poor health.
Lack of sleep also wreaks havoc with our hormones.
In fact, just one night of missed or inadequate sleep is sufficient to make you as insulin resistant as a type 2 diabetic.
Lack of sleep causes persistently high cortisol levels, which can cause a myriad of disorders, including thyroid and metabolic dysfunction, cognitive decline and low serotonin levels – resulting in depression, irritability, anxiety and carb cravings.
Lost sleep affects physiological and cognitive functions like memory and attention, complex thought, motor response and emotional control. It also makes us pretty miserable, irritable and stressed.
So why then are we sleeping so little?
The average night’s sleep decreased from about 9 hours in 1910 to about 7.5 hours in 1975, and is now at an all time average low of 6.5 hours, with many shift workers getting 5 hours or less.
But even more worrying than losing a couple of hours here and there is that a huge number of people are using medication to aid sleep.
An estimated 10% of the American population takes some form of medication to sleep.(Source: National Sleep Foundation).
A study headed up by Dr. Daniel Kripke of the Scripps Clinic, compared 10,529 people that took sleeping pills with twice as many who didn’t.
The study revealed that those taking prescriptions were at a 35% increased risk of cancer compared with the non-prescription group. The study showed that the risk of developing lymphoma, lung, colon or prostate cancer associated with sleeping pills was greater than the effect from smoking.
Pretty shocking, I know.
It’s crazy. Instead of making positive, natural changes to our lifestyle and environment we resort to sleeping pills, wake up pills, caffeinated drinks and other stimulants to get us through the day.
Sure, it’s very challenging to find more time for sleep in an increasingly busy world where we’ve more to do and more to think about.
But the truth is we’ve also become our own worst enemy: We stay up too late, we eat too late, we stimulate the brain with computers and phones all day long, we constantly eat stimulants and we don’t give the brain adequate time to rest, relax and wind down each day before bed.
Sleep is as natural as eating and drinking. So why then are we working against this natural function rather than embracing it?
Abusing the sleep-wake cycle over a prolonged period can lead to the onset of insomnia, which has serious health risks.
The good news is that it’s easy to improve the quality of your sleep. Most cases of poor quality sleep and insomnia can be cured using six core steps, as documented in Peter Litchfield’s book Six Steps To Sleep.
If you have trouble sleeping, or wouldn’t mind getting improving your sleep and overall health, I highly recommend Six Steps To Sleep.
P.S. Six Steps To Sleep also comes with a cool Sleep Diet Guide that teaches you which foods to eat/avoid to improve the quality of your sleep.
