The little known importance of sleep.

The shorter you sleep, the shorter your life.

Recent studies found that 40% of Australians experience some form of inadequate sleep (i.e. insomnia, sleep apnoea, shift worker disorder, restless leg syndrome). The negative impact on individuals and society is enormous. You may think that popping a sleeping pill is all you need to do, but think again. It has been proven that sleeping pills don’t produce naturalistic sleep, therefore they don’t give us the health benefits of real sleep. Massage is one therapy that can help to improve sleep and provide health benefits. This bog will help you to understand why sleep is so important.

You might be interested to know that when we lose and hour of sleep due to Daylight Saving, there can be a 24% increase in heart attacks. And when we gain an hour, there can be a 21% reduction in heart attacks. The same statistics apply to car crashes and suicides. And even more interesting is the fact that only 4 hours of lost sleep on a single night can drop our natural killer cell activity by 70%, which means our immune system can’t protect us very well. Understandably, there is a strong link between sleep deprivation and increased cancer. The World Health Organisation has therefore deemed any form of shift work at night to be carcinogenic.

Professor Allan Pack from the Centre for Sleep and Respiratory Neuro-biology says that sleep is a pillar of health. We need adequate sleep because it is the time when our brains form new synapses and connections, makes lipids and membranes, consolidate memories, and it is the time that the clearing system of our brain is most efficient. Sleep deprivation can be cumulative, and can cause negative molecular changes, resulting in hypertension, vascular disease, insulin resistance, and even changes to appetite. Not to mention impaired mental function, poor decision making, road accidents, and more.

A study was done see how memory was impaired due to lack of sleep. Scientists took one control group of people who had a solid 8 hours of sleep and put them into an MRI machine to test their ability to learn something. The other control group was totally sleep deprived and then put into the MRI machine where their ability to learn something was tested. The sleep deprived group suffered a 40% deficit in their brain's ability to make new memories.

Genetics determine what time our clocks are set to sleep and wake and that every cell in our body has a clock (the brain being the master clock); that’s why it is hard to sleep at the wrong time in the circadian rhythm cycle. So, take this into consideration when you are travelling overseas, or accepting shifts at work that are unusual.

You may not know that long term sleep loss can accumulate into a sleep debt. You can't get that sleep back once you have missed it. CBT-I (for insomnia) can help to calm the mind, as well as Massage therapy can help to calm the nervous system too. But if you are struggling to sleep on a regular basis, and can't get to a massage therapist, here are some simple tips to try so that you do't accumulate a sleep debt.

1/ Go to bed at the same time each night, and try to wake around the same time each morning. (The regularity helps).

2/ Keep the body cool. The core body temperature needs to be 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit to initiate sleep and to stay asleep. The optimal room temperature is 18 degrees Celsius.

3/ Keep the room dark and quiet.

4/ Restrict use of blue-light emitting devices an hour before bedtime.

5/ Meditate.

6/ Restrict your intake of caffeine.

The key message is = “The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life”.

Information collated from articles by Professor Allan Pack of the Centre for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology, and sleep Scientist, Matt Walker.

Photo by Dmitry Ganin