Most people acknowledge that sleep is extremely important, but many still do their level best to survive on less than the right amount. This, of course, raises the question: How much sleep is the right amount? Why is it that certain specimens of humanity can survive on just a few hours a night (we all know people like that), while others can sleep endlessly? Perhaps more relevant questions include what the long-term health effects of not sleeping enough are and whether counting more sheep hopping across an imaginary wooden fence can reverse them.
The Science of Sleep
The mechanism through which sleep allows the human body to recover and prepare itself for the daily battles of wakefulness is multidimensional. Our sleep patterns can be organized into two main categories: rapid eye movement sleep, known as REM, and non-rapid eye movement sleep, or NREM. NREM sleep includes four stages that progressively deepen and REM sleep typically occurs between NREM periods. While these two categories of sleep largely relate to the brain’s activity levels during rest, the remainder of the body is typically in a state of repair that involves building bone and muscle tissue, releasing hormones for growth and development, maintaining our immune system and more. During the deeper NREM stages, muscles are more relaxed to allow blood to more easily circulate nutrients, hormones and other components vital to the restoration process.
Homeostasis is the process through which the body maintains a stable environment for itself. On a molecular level, this involves each cell doing its part to generate energy and remove toxins from its surrounding environment. When a sleep deficit occurs, the body’s ability to maintain homeostasis is interrupted. While there are a number of neurotransmitters and endocrine hormones in flux during periods of sleep deprivation, arguably the most important is cortisol, a life-sustaining adrenal hormone essential to the maintenance of homeostasis. Called “the stress hormone,” cortisol counteracts many of the changes that occur in our bodies in response to stress. These side effects include changes in blood sugar levels, immune responses, anti-inflammatory actions and blood pressure, to name a few. When we experience a sleep deficit, the adrenal glands — with signaling help from the brain — perceive a period of stress and release extra doses of cortisol into our bloodstream. In conjunction with other hormones, the extra cortisol can result in weight gain, which can lead to obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases.
While it often takes weeks, if not months, to see those longer-term consequences of sleep deprivation on the body, the insults on each cell start to accumulate after only a few nights of subpar sleep. The more immediate risks of not getting enough sleep such as falling asleep while driving or losing the ability to focus on simple tasks like turning the stove off after cooking are significant and can often result in life-threatening injuries.
Bedtime Tips for Improving Your Health
Safeguarding your health against the negative effects of sleep deprivation deserves your attention. My advice? Instead of maintaining proper sleep habits for one week and then having an off week, try to gradually restore your sleep habits and avoid sudden changes to your sleep patterns. Plan in advance for work-related projects by building in a couple hours over the weekend rather than staying up late the night before a major deadline. It’s tough love, but not getting enough sleep is a common problem that appears to be increasingly linked to chronic diseases. You can help avoid them with a more holistic approach to health that takes into account a healthy diet with the right amount of sleep and exercise.
Once you commit to getting the right amount of sleep (eight hours a night on average), it’s important to think of the process as more of a marathon than a sprint. You should avoid sleeping well for a week and then falling into the same bad sleep habit since your body reacts unfavorably to this pendulum-like behavior by releasing stress-related hormones that are harmful over the long term. Recent research shows that periods of sleep deprivation independently affect our long-term health, reinforcing that these negative health effects last well beyond short-term sleep recovery periods. Translation: Our bodies don’t like it when we sleep different amounts, even for a few days or weeks.
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Your Body on Too-Little Sleep Over Time originally appeared on usnews.com
