Want a Good Night's Sleep? Optimise Your Sleep Routine
Sleep is one of the great mysteries of life. For a long time, it was widely thought that sleep was little more than a waste of time. Modern research, however, has shed much-needed light on the matter, showing sleep is a crucial component of a healthy lifestyle, and that lack of sleep can have far-reaching consequences, affecting everything from mood, creativity and brain detoxification to DNA expression, chronic disease risk — including dementia — and longevity.
One of the most radical and recent discoveries revealing the importance of sleep for health is that each and every organ, indeed each cell, has its own biological clock. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was actually awarded for the discovery of these cellular clocks, all of which work in tandem to control and maintain biological homeostasis, regulating everything from metabolism to psychological functioning.
In your brain is a "master clock" that synchronises these clocks and your bodily functions to match the 24-hour light and dark cycle.
When you upset your circadian rhythm by not getting enough sleep, the results cascade through your system, raising blood pressure, dysregulating hunger hormones and blood sugar, increasing the expression of genes associated with inflammation, immune excitability, diabetes, cancer risk and stress and much more.
Ideal Sleep Duration for Optimal Health
According to a scientific review of more than 300 studies published between 2004 and 2014 to ascertain how many hours of sleep most people need to maintain their health, a panel of experts came up with the following recommendations.
| Age Group | Hours of sleep needed for health |
|---|---|
Newborns (0 to 3 months) | 14 to 17 hours |
Infants (4 to 11 months) | 12 to 15 hours |
Toddlers (1 to 2 years) | 11 to 14 hours |
Preschoolers (3 to 5) | 10 to 13 hours |
School-age children (6 to 13) | 9 to 11 hours |
Teenagers (14 to 17) | 8 to 10 hours |
Adults (18 to 64) | 7 to 9 hours |
Seniors (65 and older) | 7 to 8 hours |
Poor or insufficient sleep have been linked to:
Impaired memory and reduced ability to learn new things — Due to your hippocampus shutting down, you will experience a 40 percent deficit in your brain with respect to its ability to make new memories when you're sleep deprived. |
Reduced ability to perform tasks, resulting in reduced productivity at work and poor grades in school. |
Reduced athletic performance. |
Reduced creativity at work or in other activities. |
Slowed reaction time, increasing your risk of accidents on the road and at work — Getting less than six hours of sleep leaves you cognitively impaired. In 2013, drowsy drivers caused 72,000 car accidents. |
Increased risk of neurological problems, ranging from depression to dementia and Alzheimer's disease — Your blood-brain barrier becomes more permeable with age, allowing more toxins to enter.14 This, in conjunction with reduced efficiency of the glymphatic system due to lack of sleep, allows for more rapid damage to occur in your brain and this deterioration is thought to play a significant role in the development of Alzheimer's. |
Increased risk of Type 2 diabetes — In one study, excessive daytime sleepiness" increased the risk of Type 2 diabetes by 56 percent. |
Weakened immune function — Research suggests deep sleep strengthens immunological memories of previously encountered pathogens. In this way, your immune system is able to mount a much faster and more effective response when an antigen is encountered a second time. |
Increased risk of obesity — By causing a prediabetic state, lack of sleep increases feelings of hunger, even if you've already eaten, which can wreak havoc on your weight. |
Increased risk of cancer — Tumours grow two to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions. The primary mechanism thought to be responsible for this effect is disrupted melatonin production, a hormone with both antioxidant and anticancer activity. Melatonin both inhibits the proliferation of cancer cells and triggers cancer cell apoptosis (self-destruction). It also interferes with the new blood supply tumours require for their rapid growth (angiogenesis). |
Increased risk of high blood pressure heart attacks and cardiovascular disease — As noted by professor Matthew Walker, Ph.D., founder and director of the University of California Berkeley's Center for Human Sleep Science and author of the book "Why We Sleep?: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams:"
In his book, Walker also cites Japanese research showing male workers who average six hours of sleep per night or less are 400 to 500 percent more likely to suffer one or more cardiac arrests than those getting more than six hours of sleep each night. Other research has demonstrated that women who get less than four hours of shut-eye per night double their risk of dying from heart disease. In another study, adults who slept less than five hours a night had 50 percent more coronary calcium, a sign of oncoming heart disease, than those who regularly got seven hours. |
Increased risk of osteoporosis. |
Increased risk of pain and pain-related conditions such as fibromyalgia — In one study, poor or insufficient sleep was the strongest predictor for pain in adults over 50.19 |
Increased susceptibility to stomach ulcers. |
Impaired sexual function.20 |
Impaired regulation of emotions and emotional perception — Your amygdala, one of your brain's centrepiece regions for generating strong emotional reactions, including negative ones, becomes about 60 percent more reactive than usual when you've slept poorly or insufficiently, resulting in increased emotional intensity and volatility. |
Increased risk of depression and anxiety (including post-traumatic stress disorder), schizophrenia and suicide — In fact, sleep problems are defining factors in diagnosing psychiatric disorders, and are one of the diagnostic criteria listed in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.21 |
Premature aging by interfering with growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep. |
Increased risk of dying from any cause — Sleep deprivation prematurely ages you by interfering with your growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep. Compared to people without insomnia, the adjusted hazard ratio for all-cause mortality among those with chronic insomnia was 300 percent higher. |
How Cycles of Light and Darkness Affect Your Sleep (and Health)
Maintaining a natural rhythm of exposure to daylight, and darkness at night, is an essential component of sleeping well. As mentioned earlier, the reason light is so important is because it serves as the major synchronizer of the master clock in your brain — the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN).
Most people in Western societies spend the larger portion of each day indoors, which essentially puts you in a state of "light deficiency," as the light indoors is about two orders of magnitude lower, in terms of light intensity, than outdoor light.
To maintain healthy master clock timing, it's important to get bright light exposure during the day. Many indoor environments simply aren't intense enough to anchor your circadian rhythm. The first 30 to 60 minutes of outdoor light exposure during the morning or mid-day creates about 80 percent of the anchoring effect.
This means that just going outside for half an hour at lunch time can provide you with the majority of anchoring light you need to maintain a healthy circadian rhythm. Exposure to early morning sunlight can be another important anchor for circadian rhythm syncing.
On the opposite end, you need to avoid bright artificial lighting after sunset, as light will impair your melatonin production. Somewhere between 50-1,000 lux is the activation range within which light will begin to suppress melatonin production.
One 2011 study compared daily melatonin profiles in individuals living in room light (<200 lux) versus dim light (<3 lux). Results showed that, compared with dim light, exposure to room light before bedtime suppressed melatonin in 99 percent of individuals, and shortened the time period when the body has an elevated melatonin level by about 90 minutes.
Furthermore, exposure to room light during the usual hours of sleep suppressed melatonin by more than 50 percent. So, after sunset, dim the lights and use incandescent light bulbs, not LEDs or fluorescents. Red and amber wavelengths will interfere least with your melatonin production, while blue and green wavelengths interfere the most.
Sleep Debt Has Cumulative Effect
Lost sleep is lost forever, and persistent lack of sleep has a cumulative effect when it comes to disrupting your health. The good news is there are many natural techniques you can learn to restore your sleep health.
Whether you have difficulty falling asleep, waking up too often, or feeling inadequately rested when you wake up in the morning — or maybe you simply want to improve the quality of your sleep — you are bound to find some relief from my tips and tricks below.
1.Sleep in complete darkness or as close to it as possible — Even the tiniest bit of light in the room, such as that from a clock radio LCD screen, can disrupt your internal clock and your production of melatonin and serotonin, thereby interfering with your sleep (and raising your risk of cancer). So, close your bedroom door, get rid of night-lights, cover any LCD screens and your windows. I recommend using blackout shades or drapes. A far less expensive alternative is to use a well-fitting sleep mask. Instead of a lighted alarm clock, I use a talking alarm clock, designed for the visually impaired, that audibly tells me the time by pressing a large button. Also refrain from turning on any light at all during the night, even when getting up to go to the bathroom. If you absolutely have to have some sort of night light, use a red bulb. |
2. Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. — Studies show the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees F. Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep. When you sleep, your body's internal temperature drops to its lowest level, generally about four hours after you fall asleep. Scientists believe a cooler bedroom may therefore be most conducive to sleep, since it mimics your body's natural temperature drop. If you don't want to crank down the temperature on your air conditioning, sleeping naked may do the trick. One of the established benefits of sleeping in the buff is improved sleep quality, in part by preventing overheating. One study showed a surface skin temperature difference of as little as 0.08 degrees F (or 0.4 degrees C) led to sounder sleep.24,25,26 Studies have also found sleeping in the nude has several other health benefits, including improved metabolism and blood circulation. |
3. Eliminate electric and electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in your bedroom — These can disrupt your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin, and are a significant contributor to mitochondrial damage and dysfunction, which is at the heart of virtually all chronic disease. EMF exposure has also been linked to neuronal changes that affect memory and your ability to learn. EMFs harm your body's mitochondria by producing excessive oxidative damage, so sleeping in EMFs all night, every night, can cause or contribute to virtually any chronic ailment, including premature aging. Ideally, shut down the electricity to your bedroom by pulling your circuit breaker before bed. If you have neighbors on the other side of the wall, floor or ceiling, consider installing a Faraday cage (copper- and/or silver-threaded fabric) around your bed. If you live in a high-rise and have neighbors beneath you, place the Faraday fabric on the floor beneath your bed as well. This may significantly improve your sleep quality. Another really important step is to turn off your Wi-Fi at night. It would be best to hard wire your home so you have no Wi-Fi 24/7 in your home, but I realize many are unwilling or unable to take this step. It's important to realize that the Wi-Fi in your home is nearly always more of a danger to you than what's coming from outside your home. You can confirm this by measuring the microwave signals with a meter, and see what your exposure is. The fact is, you don't need Wi-Fi while sleeping, so this is a wholly unnecessary exposure that is easily remedied by turning it off. |
4. Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your bed, and avoid using loud alarm clocks — If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least 3 feet. Keep your cellphone as far away from your bedroom as possible if it must be on. If you keep it in your bedroom, either shut it down or put it in airplane mode. Also consider your chosen method of being awakened. It is very stressful on your body to be suddenly jolted awake. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, an alarm may actually be unnecessary, but gentler alternatives include a sun alarm clock, which wakes you up by gradually increasing the intensity of light, thereby simulating sunrise. Or even better use a battery powered alarm clock that talks so there is no electricity or light. |
5. Adopt a neutral sleeping position — If you're a side- or stomach sleeper and find yourself frequently tossing and turning at night and/or waking up with aches and pains, your sleeping position may be a primary culprit. In the video below, chiropractor and exercise physiologist Dr. Peter Martone discusses the benefits of adopting a neutral sleeping position. The key to achieving this is to prop a pillow under your neck, not your head, as this allows you to maintain a proper spinal curve. For a demonstration on how to use your pillow to support your neck rather than simply elevating your head, please see the video. In Martone's experience, it takes an average of three to four months to convert from a side sleeper to a back sleeper, and even longer if you're used to sleeping on your stomach. |
6. Reserve your bed for sleeping — If you are used to watching TV or doing work in bed, you may find it harder to relax and drift off to sleep, so avoid doing these activities in bed.
7. Consider separate bedrooms — Studies suggest that, for many people, sharing a bed with a partner can significantly impair sleep, especially if the partner is a restless sleeper or snores. If bedfellows are consistently interfering with your sleep, you may want to consider a separate bedroom. Pets may also need to be banished if their presence impair your sleep.