Sleep
Can Lack of Sleep Cause Premature Death ?
Increasing your energy is really simple – just get some sleep.
I’ve talked to very few people with low energy who sleep well. Lack of sleep has been associated with diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, premature aging and even mental illness.
If that’s not enough to scare you into changing your sleeping habits how about this – you’ll look older too!
All of the above diseases can occur because of the added stress that improper sleep puts on the body. Even short term sleep deprivation changes the way the body metabolizes sugar, causing glucose tolerance – the inability to utilize blood sugar.
Lack of sleep stresses the body and raises cortisol levels (stress hormone) which causes a further increase in glucose levels because of the perceived stress. Now that glucose has been raised the body cranks up the insulin levels to compensate and lower glucose.
Prolonged excess levels of insulin promotes insulin resistance or the inability of the cells to react to insulin levels, thus elevated glucose remains and your on the path to type 2 diabetes.
Prolonged lack of sleep dials up the stress levels and added to the chronic stress most people find themselves in today causes a 24 hour a day release of cortisol which amplifies all of the above.
Did You Know That Lack of Sleep Can Put on Pounds?
One more thing; the added bonus of glucose tolerance and heightened insulin is an increase in fat storage or the beginnings of what we call obesity.
It’s not the total amount of sleep you get that matters so much as how deep you sleep and if you awaken refreshed – meaning if you wake up feeling recharged.
Do You Get a Minimum of 7 Hours?
Most experts agree that seven hours is required. With seven hours sleep you’ll probably experience Deep sleep or Delta Wave. The is the type of sleep required for repair and regeneration of the physical body.
Delta Wave is essential to allow the body to reset for the next day and to utilize the nutrients from all of the great food and herbs you’ve consumed during the day and put it to use.
It also leads into REM, Rapid Eye Movement or dreaming, which promotes brain formation and prevents mental and emotional breakdown. Recent studies have indicated that sleep deprived people have inappropriate responses to emotional stimulus.
Being tired has a direct effect on how you react to stress. Reacting poorly increases the present stress and now you have the added burden of knowing you blew it and the gift of having to turn it over in your mind for hours.
A few months of that combined with a lack of nutrients needed for a balanced brain function and you’re well on your way to one of the worst case scenarios you can imagine…taking pharmaceutical drugs for something that is caused by a lack of sleep, water and good food.
Lack of Sleep = Premature Death
As if all of this isn’t enough there is even a connection between sleep and premature aging and death. Seems that chronic lack of restful sleep causes key hormone levels to drop, inflammation increases and the immune system begins to break down.
Externally you might be 35 years old but your biological clock might resemble your parents – someone 20 to 30 years older than you.
Even missing one nights sleep increases inflammation, a key component of every major illness – and minor ones too.
Taken to an extreme, sleep apnea, is a great example of accelerated aging due to lack of sleep. The main way that sleep apnea breaks the body down is through creating a tremendous amount of inflammation in the brain which will have an effect on every single aspect of your health.
Lack of sleep doubles your chances of dying from cardiovascular disease, again the theory is by increasing inflammation. We talked about elevated cortisol levels and their relation to diabetes. The signaling mechanism for cortisol release also shuts off natural killers cells of your immune system , the component needed for getting rid of things like cancer cells.
So what does all of this have to do with energy?
Cortisol, excessive stress and inflammation all cause a tremendous drain on the body’s energy.
Adaptogenic herbs work wonders for shutting down excessive stress hormone/cortisol and since it works through regulating the hypothalamus/pituitary/adrenal axis, it has a direct effect on re-establishing your natural biorhythms.
This alone may solve your sleep problem and at least you won’t be locked into stress response all night long.
What’s The Best Way to Deal With All of This?
The first step to regaining your energy is sleep and here’s a few suggestions to help.
STRESS RELIEF - If you’re constantly under stress at work or home you have to have a plan to counteract it. Exercise helps because it takes your mind off what’s bothering you. If you get tired afterword you’ve overstressed your adrenals and it’s counterproductive. Tai Chi, Chi Kung and Yoga are great in that respect because it engages the mind without maximum physical effort. All are easy to do at home on your own after a few classes. Find a good teacher and check in once a week to refine your practice but learn something you can do alone at home. Stress throws of your internal biorhythms by locking the body into the stress response. One of the best ways to re-establish them is to quite the mind. Meditation is great and I highly recommend it but for a lot of people it’s easier to focus on something radically different from your normal activity. Gentle movement can provide that focus with all the healthy benefits moving your Chi.
ALCOHOL – Reduce it or stop altogether. Sure there are numerous studies citing the health benefits of drinking in moderation but all of the benefits stop after one drink and it’s all downhill after that. If you have a lot of shoulder and neck tension, or grind your teeth at night, you have a Liver imbalance and drinking will just make it worse. Alcohol limits your ability for Deep Sleep, the kind required for initiating the healing process.
CAFFEINE – Make sure you limit consumption after 4pm. Caffiene has a half life of 6 hours, meaning in 6 hours you still have half of it circulating in your system. Most people have learned to sleep with a little bit of caffeine but once again it’s not the deep kind the body needs for healing.
YOUR BED – Make an investment into a really nice bed. Air mattresses are the newest innovation and allow for adjusting the firmness. If that fits your budget great. If not get the best sleep system you can because you’ll be spending one third of your life there. Stop feeling guilty about it and enjoy it. If someone shows you a magnetic bed check it out. Low level magnetic energy has a homeostatic/regulating effect on your energy field. We are all beings of energy and when it’s brought into balance our body accepts healing frequencies much easier whether it’s from water, nutrition or outside sources. Look at it as pain free acupuncture.
FOOD - Eat light at night. Heavy meals before bed are hard to digest and waste energy. Your digestive Chi is weakest at night and it disrupts Liver energy to be processing a meal late at night. The body’s energy resides in the Liver organ system between midnight and 3am and it’s best to use that time for regeneration and distribution of nutrients.
SEEK HELP – I don’t mean drugs. Only as a last resort should you try pharmaceuticals to correct a sleeping problem. The problems you’ll create are worse than the one you’re working on. Insomnia is just a symptom of something out of balance. Find a good herbal tonic to take. If your problem is an overactive mind that won’t shut down at night you could have a “Heart Blood” deficiency and a good tonic can start to fix that in a few days. Overstress and over worry combined with poor diet throws off your Heart energy and Heart blood houses your spirit and without it you can’t sleep. You’re probably thinking that sounds really crazy and so did I when I was learning Chinese Herbology as an apprentice. Organs are considered part of systems and Heart blood is part of the system that includes your physical heart and the mind/spirit. It may sound strange but it works; especially for woman. Being creatures of love a women’s life revolves around the Heart energy more so than men and it’s easy to be thrown off center. Blood deficiency can have many effects but long term it’s the inability to properly process emotions that will lead to many imbalances down the road. If your feeling overly hot and it’s keeping you from falling asleep that can be a different kind of deficiency. Too much tension resulting in shoulder and neck problems or teeth grinding? Use a good herbal tonic, it can help you with all the above as well.
