Sleep Better
If you or some one you love isn’t getting enough sleep, is struggling to get to sleep or you’re waking up feeling tired and worn out, this post is for you.
As stated in previous post on this blog: Sleep is super important.
So important that we really need to think of it as a pillar of health the same way we do diet, exercise and stress management.
What happens when we don’t get enough sleep?
One of the major areas impacted by sleep issues is our cardiovascular health.
Impacts of sleep on cardiovascular health include:
Increases chance of both developing and dying of CV disease by 45%
Heart attack - leading cause of death in Australia and stroke is a leading cause of disability.
Main mechanism - increases BP
Often people can think of sleep as wasting time, but the reality is that your brain doesn’t work as well without it.
in an Australian study, no sleep for 19 hours was shown to have equivalent impact on concentration as being over .05 blood alcohol
As well, less than 5 hours sleep can lead to a 500% increase in risk of car accident
Once again, Martin has come through with the goods with a video that will have you catching some of the best quality Z’s of your life in no time!
As always, the video is transcribed below. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to get you back on track!
Intro: 0.00
Hi, Martin Harvey here from Align Chiropractic, and today’s video is all about sleep, why you need to get more of it, why it’s important for both your health, and also how easy it is to get the things you need to do done. So, timing this video, I’ve decided to do this video partly because I think sleep is super important, but also because this Saturday is when we go to daylight savings. Daylight savings is kind of like this mini experiment that we have each year where we all get like a tiny little bit of sleep deprivation and all feel mildly excited that it’s a step closer to summer. It’s interesting how many people are coming into the practice each year in this sort of period of time afterwards just not feeling as well as they normally will because they’ve missed out on one hour of sleep.
Impact of not enough sleep: 0.51
So, what I want to do is share with you a little bit of information about why health is super important, and then I want you share with you a couple if really simple things you can do to help yourself sleep better, and in the context of transitioning to daylight savings, what you can do to kind of get past that little hiccup as quickly as possible.
So, when we’re talking about sleep and impacts on health, there’s lots of things that it affects. It affects your risk of obesity, your risk of diabetes etc. One of the key things that I wanted to highlight was the impact of not enough sleep on cardiovascular health- your heart health, because the leading cause of death in Australia is cardiovascular issues, and also one of the leading causes of disability in Australia, Stroke, is also at an increased risk if you have sleep deprivation. So, interesting research in this area shows that you increase your risk of having cardiovascular disease by about 45% if you’re not getting enough sleep, and if you already have cardiovascular disease, increase the chance of dying from it by about 45% if you’re not getting enough sleep. So, it’s kind of important.
Now, how does it work? What’s the link between not enough sleep and this impact of cardiovascular health? It’s probably a bunch of mechanisms, but what the research suggests is a lot of it is because it increases your blood pressure. Even one night of not enough sleep can have a measurable impact in terms of increasing your blood pressure. So, it’s not a tiny thing- it’s a really important thing.
So, the information that I’m sharing with you is mainly from a really cool book by a neuroscientist called Matthew Walker. It’s kind of a world leader in the area of sleep and health. Another thing- and this is often one of the things that people notice, is that they just kind of feel a bit foggy and a bit out of it when they haven’t slept as much as they should, and the science in this area is really, really interesting. You see, if you haven’t slept enough, it impacts your concentration. That not only mean that it’s harder to get the work that you want done, it’s harder for you to be as present for your family and friends, it’s harder for you to do everything. It’ll measurably increase the chance of you having a car accident.
Experiment: 3:15
So, there was some research done in Australia where what they tried to quantify this. What they did was look at how well subjects in these studies did on a standardized concentration test, and the findings were really amazing where having the subjects be up for 19 hours- which isn’t a huge amount, like it’s not missing a complete night’s sleep, but just staying up a little bit later than you normally would. It meant that those subjects performed as badly on concentration tests as people who were over 0.05 blood alcohol level. So, not having enough sleep dulls down your brain to the level that you’re functioning almost as if you’re a little bit drunk.
Sleep better: 4:00
Now, what you can do to sleep better? If you’re one of those people who have trouble sleeping, or you just want to optimise your health and sleep better, there is a couple of really simple things to help yourself sleep better.
It feels bad to say this because I’m such a coffee fan, but avoiding caffeine late in the day is an obvious, but really important one. When Matthew Walker’s talking about this in his book, he talks about the half-life of caffeine. This means how long does it take for the amount of caffeine in your bloodstream to reduce by half- which is about 12 hours. So, what that means then is if you’re wanting to go to bed at 10 and you had a coffee at 10, you still have a significant portion of the caffeine in your blood. So making sure that if you are a coffee lover like I am, biasing that toward earlier in the day is going to help you sleep better later at night.
Interestingly, a lot of people will say that they sleep better if they have a glass or two of alcohol, but the science says there’s a pretty fine balance there. Yes, a glass or maybe two glasses can help people relax and be in a better state to sleep, but it often reduces your ability to go into the deeper levels of sleep which are the ones that we need to really rest, repair, and wake up rejuvenated. It also puts you into a shallower state of sleep. Often if we’re having more than a couple of drinks, there’s a mechanism which will often wake up once your liver has finished dealing with the alcohol- so, you’ll often find that after having had a few drinks that you’re then waking up at 3 in the morning finding it very, very difficult to sleep. So, minimising alcohol is a really important thing. So, looking forward to this Saturday when we lose an hour of sleep, it’s probably a good night to go easy in terms of how many drinks you have.
Exercise: 5:52
Exercise is a really powerful lever in terms of impacting our sleep. Exercising earlier in the day tends to create a biorhythm where we’re much more relaxed and drowsy for sleep later in the day. For a lot of people – particularly people who are in that night owl sort of group, exercising late in the day can often act as a stimulant, making it much harder to get to sleep.
Sleeping Strategies: 6:15
There are a couple of things that you can do in your environment to help you sleep better. One is having a hot bath later in the day because the heat and then the drop in temperature when you get out of the bath, that drop in temperature will make it easier, and sort of allow you to become dozy. We’re very strongly triggered by cool temperatures that will tend to stimulate an appropriate melatonin response, which is the sleep hormone
Related to that is having a cool room. They talk about wanting a room that’s under 20 degrees- ideally about 17/18 degrees Celsius, is sort of the sweet spot for most people to sleep better.
The last thing I want to share with you is the importance in terms of melatonin and getting sunlight into your eyes earlier in the day. So, getting outside and getting natural sunlight. Our melatonin production is stimulated by sunlight coming into our eyes, and then stimulating our pituitary to make melatonin. That production earlier in the day is what helps us feel sleepy later in the day. It sort of sets that biorhythm, but it’s strongly stimulated by light that’s coming in at that low angle that is present earlier in the day. So, getting outside without sunglasses early in the day, particularly going for a walk can be really powerful way of setting your biorhythm so you’re better able to sleep later on in the day.
Conclusion: 7:50
So, this is Martin Harvey from Align Chiropractic with a few tips to help you sleep better and get over the hump of the daylight savings.
Home care during Stage 4: Move and Soothe your Neck and Shoulders
This post is for anyone missing their normal routine and would like some tips on getting rid of the tension and restriction they are starting to feel in their neck, upper back and shoulders.
As most of you are aware, during the stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne allied health are only allowed to practice on a more urgent basis, meaning that a lot of our regular clients are missing out on getting their regular adjustments as well as maintaining themselves while living in lock down.
Never fear however as Martin and I are still in practice!
If you have a specific issue please do not hesitate to contact the practice so we can see how we can keep you going.
Below is a video Martin made at home about how to keep yourself moving at home, helping your neck keep moving, free up a lot of the tension you have felt building, especially over the last few weeks of stage 4 lock downs.
As usual with our videos, the transcript is available below, but I strongly recommend you have a watch as Martin runs through some excellent tips, stretches, exercises and muscle releases that will have you feeling a lot more yourself during this period.
The video has a few sections so if you REALLY felt like it you can skip to a section you find most relevant, however the way that Martin has filmed it the segments build on each other to get the most out of each one.
Enjoy!
2:00 Todays video is about...
3:52- Where to begin?
4:15 Rotational Movements of the Neck
5:32 Lateral Flexion of the Neck
7:12 Flexion/ Extension of the Neck
8:07 Shoulder Exercise
9:28- 3 exercises to open shoulders
13:48- Overhead position for shoulders
14:54- Focus on Alignment
17:23- Intro Spikey Ball Exercise
18:27 Beginning of Spikey Ball Exercise
23:27 Conclusion
Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic. Today's video is a follow along video, meaning I'm going to be taking you through some things that you can do, and you can more or less just watch the video and follow on.
So, the purpose of this video, it's really about moving your upper spine, your neck, your shoulders, your middle back to get mobility in those areas but also to soothe those areas.
It's really based on the clinical model that we use in our practice where we see that there's a real benefit in looking at the spine in kind of a sequential way, that spinal problems generally what's happening is that segments of the spine rather than having the ability to move through their full range of motion and kind of jammed up from either trauma, or long periods of time in particular postures, or stress tightening up the muscles around it.
And then as the joints jam up that changes the way the nerves and muscles and all the other soft tissues work, which then changes the alignment of your spine, and this change in movement and alignment of the vertebra causes misfiring of nerves which has a whole range of effects on your body, but specifically it can affect your ability to kind of balance the whole system.
If you're not balancing the whole system then your spine's going to be less stable. It's much more common for you to have problems with your back, your neck and the rest of your body if things aren't stable. So, if we look at that it goes movement, then alignment, then balance, then stability and so a common thing that I’ll see is people talking about ‘I need to do stability work or core stability work’.
I actually think it's really important that we do the basics first we've got to get movement happening first, and then once we've got movement, then we want to have a proper alignment so that when we're stabilizing first of all it's more effective, but we're also locking in a good movement pattern and a good alignment pattern rather than locking in poor ones.
2:00 Todays video is about...
So this one specifically, today's video is really about dealing with this upper part of the spine because many of us are locked into these postures working at a desk or the effect of stress tightens up our neck and shoulder muscles and pushes our head posture forward and so this is really about restoring movement to those areas and then getting our alignment back into that nice upright posture.
I'm also going to be combining some approaches that come from new research into the interplay between how we breathe and our stress response and in particular if you want to dive deeper into this, there's a neuroscientist called Andrew Hubermann who's based at University of California, sorry based at Stanford and we're going to be using a couple of different approaches to breathing that we're combining with the movement approach and using a ball- spikey ball, or a tennis ball, or a lacrosse ball that we'll be using to just release muscle tension and some of that will be just I'll be cueing you to breathe in through your nose, and then we'll also be using an approach called a physiological sigh, which is really where you just take in a deep breath through your nose and then another deep breath through your nose before
letting it out and the emerging evidence is that this is a really quick and easy way of us helping to unwind some of the neurological effects of stress which we know can have really significant impacts on how we feel and how healthy we are. So, let's dive straight into this follow along routine to help release tension in neck, shoulders, upper back, and get movement into those areas so that you can have a healthier, happier, more active body
3:52- Where to begin?
Well the first thing that we want to do is we want to encourage movement back into the neck, so with the postures that we've been in and the lack of movement and there's a tendency for our neck to kind of stiffen up, and there's a segmental part of that which is what wewould address in office with an adjustment, then there's kind of an overall regional movement that we can address with exercise.
4:15 Rotational Movements of the Neck
So first movement we're going to do is we're going to be doing rotational movements. With this I just want you to be taking nice slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
So first of all just turn your head all the way to the left, and then go all the way to the right. I'm going to go through this five times each way, and we're not pushing we're just holding at that end range- nice and gently.
Let's see it just easing into it letting your shoulders drop, just letting that tension, that sort of habitual tension ease away. That's it. I think that's four, probably need a better way to count to be able to do this. Okay, I'm going to say that's five.
5:32 Lateral Flexion of the Neck
So next we're going be moving into lateral flexion so we just need to be cautious with this, if you get any pinching, any sort of sharp sensation that says you don't want to go that far, you want to stop before that point.
All of these mobility things are done within what feels just you're touching that point of tension or restriction. So sideways it's going all the way over there.
I'm just pausing at that end range, maybe a count of three. Just working our way into that range, just getting every vertebrae in our neck and even into our upper back starting to move.
This is our third one. Maybe just pause a little bit longer there, any sort of knotty points you can just almost sort of focus on it, just get that movement happening, just nodding a little bit back and forward. Okay that's four. So one more to go.
Last round for lateral flexion. Lateral flexion's actually a really important movement there's not many day-to-day activities that we do to encourage this range of motion, so it's often an exercise that we'll have people do because getting lateral flexion actually encourages movement in the other range.
7:12 Flexion/ Extension of the Neck
So now we're going to go flexion/ Extension. Flexion I'm going to get you to go nice and gently on, because we all tend to spend a lot more time in flexion than we do an extension. With extension which is the one going back, again just be really mindful that you don'twant to be getting any pinching sensation with that. With this one I'm doing it up against the wall. If you feel any dizziness with this then back off, maybe skip this part of it. This is our last one, our fifth repetition. Okay.
8:07 Shoulder Exercise
Now functionally interlinked with your neck is your shoulders, and so again all this time spent like this, there's an alignment component of that, but before we can really address the alignment we've got to get the ability for these joints to move, so first up I’m going to do a stretch across the body, trying not to mess up my mic here.
So come all the way across, and we're just going to breathe in through the nose, and out. I'm going to do this one for three breaths. Just going to go a little bit further on this third one. Okay and then we're going to swap our arms. Bringing the arm across, the other arm just hooks in next to the elbow there. Breathe in, out. Breathe in, and out.
9:28- 3 exercises to open shoulders
So, it started to get some mobility, but really if we want to be able to bring our shoulders back which is what most of us need because so much of our activity is in front of us, we want to be opening up and restoring that movement that way.
So what we're going to do here is spend sort of three exercises bringing and opening up this in the front of our shoulder.
The first one what we're going to do here is we're going to put our hand up on the wall above horizontal, so if that's horizontal first one we want is up here, and then i've got my body sort of facing away there my elbow is straight, and then i'm turning out this way, and then i'm going to do three breaths there. So in through the nose, and out. That’s two. I can just rotate a little bit more, and three.
I'm just going to take that tension off, and now i'm going to that horizontal level, and it'll feel a little bit different, it's going to hit a slightly different part of the shoulder.
So again in through the nose, and out through the mouth. And three. Now we're just going to do just below horizontal to again getslightly different part of the shoulder.
We're going to come across. One, Two, that’s three. Okay, so now we're going to repeat exactly the same thing but on the opposite side. So first one, if that's horizontal we're going up maybe 30 degrees above horizontal, rotating away feeling the stretch at the front of the shoulder maybe a little bit into the arm. One, Two, That's three.
Then we're going to a horizontal point now, taking that stretch back up, and then in through the nose, out through the mouth. That's three. So, I'm going to get out just below horizontal one there, take that stretch up. And then in through the nose, and out. Then that's it, just move your shoulders around enjoy that extra mobility there.
13:48- Overhead position for shoulders
So next what we're going to be working on is bringing up into flexion or sort of like an overhead position for our shoulders. So, with this I'm standing sort of basically like arm length away from a wall, and I reach out, I put my hands down keeping my elbows straight and then what i'm doing from here is keeping my arms straight and dropping my body all the way down.
I'm not rounding my back, I'm keeping my back quite straight, and then getting that movement back into the shoulders giving them that full range. We're just going to do three breaths here, so in through the nose and then out.
14:54- Focus on Alignment
So next what we're going to do is move on from looking at movement and we're going to focus instead on alignment. What we're really wanting to do is to reverse that tendency that we all have to have this sort of position, and so what we're going to do is do an exercise called a W exercise, which is where you make your arms into a W shape with the thumbs facing backward.
I always like to sort of correct the head posture so pull your head back, and I also like to look up slightly because that helps just release the activation here. What we're really wanting to do is use these muscles down here in between our shoulder blades. So, make the W shape look up slightly and then what we're doing is trying to not use these muscles but use those ones in between your shoulder blades.
We're squeezing back one two three. Relaxing one, two, three. One, two, three. One two, three. We're going to go for ten so that's four, three. One, two, three, so I'm going to say that one's four, and five
Six. If it's getting uncomfortable, if things are starting to burn just take a little break, six and seven.
So it's kind of this back and down movement that we're after- just caught myself looking down too much. Nine and last one. Good.
What we've done there is really kind of reset our alignment, and that'll mean that rather than when your heads forward everything through has to be working overtime just to stop your head from going forward with gravity. So we're going to use that we've gotmovement, we've got alignment.
Spikey Ball: 17:23
Now what I want to do is just kind of soothe this area. We're all doing a lot of this, let's just work through with some pressure on those areas, and for this i'm going to suggest that you use a ball, a spiky ball. In this case this is a lacrosse ball, and what we're going to start with is we're going to be doing three individual spots. We're going to be doing one right in between the spine and the shoulder blade here, then we're going to be doing one that's up, almost on the meaty bit above your shoulder blade, and then we're going to be doing this little corner in here where your arm joins onto your shoulder blade there.
We're going to do that on each side. We're going to use that slightly different breathing where rather than just breathing in through your nose and then out through your mouth, if you want to experiment with it, this is a really good place to use that physiological sigh, which just helps reset our nervous system from a stress sort of state, into what they call a parasympathetic state, which is putting your nervous system in a state to promote rest and relaxation and kind of de-stressing.
18:27 beginning of spikey ball exercise
So let's start off. You put the ball against the wall, and then just drop it down a little bit so you can get into that spot and rather than rolling around, what I like to do for this is just find a tender spot, hold pressure there. And then we're going to go breathe in through the nose, and then second breath, and then out. So just moving into a slightly different spot there.
Breathe in, second breath, and out. Breathe in.
Now we're going to move to the top of the shoulder. So, for this one you almost need to angle back a little bit. I'm just going to find that fleshy bit there. All right so I’m going to breathe in. Okay, so that's our three breaths there. Now for this one, I've got a really a choice of going on the actual arm here, or for most people this area in the side of the shoulder blades the spot that you want to hit, so I'm going to hit that one.
If you're doing this by yourself you could maybe do an extra round where you go to the other one if you're feeling tender in both, but I'm on the side of the shoulder blade.
The easiest way of getting there is having your body sort of on a 45-degree angle there, just finding that tender spot- okay that's definitely it. And so I'm going to breathe in through my nose, that's number two, let's go for number three- that's a really tender one.
Okay, so now what we're going to do- oops dropped my ball. And i'm back. All right so same sequence, we're just going to do the opposite side. So again, ball against the wall, I'm just going to roll into that spot just next to my shoulder blade there. All right that's it, I've got the right spot, so I'm going to breathe in through my nose. Second breath.
So now I'm just going to reposition that ball. I'm getting ready from the top of that shoulder blade there. First breath, double breath. Second breath, that's our third breath there.
Now we're just going to move to the outside of the shoulder there. So again, looking for either on the shoulder blade or the back of the arm. So I'm going to keep it consistent that 45 degree angle here. I’m going for that spot on the shoulder blade just breathing in I'm just moving up a little bit, finding that real epicenter of tension there. All right that's it, so breathe in at that spot...really relax into it. One more, breathe in through the nose.
Conclusion: 23:27
So there we have it, we've got movement through shoulders, neck, sort of upper back as well, then we've reset our alignment so thatwe're in a nice upright position and then we've kind of reset the tension, reset the nervous system giving you the best chance of having ahealthier, happier more active body. Thanks for following along.
The top 11 tips for improving your sleep - how to sleep your way through lockdown
Supporting your sleep cycle.
This article is for anyone who needs to address how they are sleeping, want’s to feel more rested or are looking for the best thing they can do for themselves to make the most of our new lockdown.
I have written about sleep on this blog before but when I was asked to speak about this topic in a webinar last week I realised that this topic is too important to leave further down the list of blog posts we have accumulated thus far. Also, for reasons that will become clear shortly, this is actually a perfect time for all of us (especially Melburnians) to be assessing their sleep habits.
I wish I were writing this under better circumstances, but unfortunately we have all found ourselves back were we were several months ago.
Lockdown 2.0 - This time it's frustrating.
Obviously Victoria’s current situation is less than ideal but it has actually highlighted to me the importance of today’s topic.
This could not be coming at a better time for us all, who among you reading this found during the lock down that days just rolled together and that it was hard to find any real rhythm?
I want to set a challenge to all of you during this lock down period, and that is, I want you to genuinely and honestly re-appraise your sleep habits and find ways that you could improve them, then set yourself the goal to make the most of your lock down by creating new habits that WILL change your life.
I don’t often use this term, but in terms of habits or activities you undertake to improve your health and your life, sleep is like a magic bullet.
It has probably the largest impact of any one activity you can undertake.
Speaking of undertakings, the research indicates that it takes just 3 weeks to set a new habit. People in Melbourne have been given 2 rounds of that time to set new habits up and really hone them before hopefully getting to enter the world a little more normally again. Make the most of it!
So now, having said all that, I want to come clean to you.
I come from a bit of a weird back ground with sleep.
If I am really honest, I was always known amongst my friends as someone who just flat out doesn’t sleep. This was until just over 2 years ago Martin the other chiropractor that I work with exposed me to some information that TERRIFIED ME.
The information was an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast with Professor Matthew walker who is the author of a book called “Why we sleep”.
Now academically, I was already aware that sleep was good for me, I was convinced that I was just one of those people who didn't need as much sleep as everyone else. I just genuinely believed that lack of sleep obviously didn't affect me as much as it seemed to affect everyone else.
The reason we became interested in sleep in our practice is that we take care of a lot of people with stress related issues. As I am sure many of you are aware and especially if you have ever read my blog posts or spoken with me in the practice, stress is perhaps the leading cause of illness in Australia and as it turns out, poor sleep and lack of sleep is one of the leading causes of increased daily stress.
Reducing stress is actually soo important to spinal health that in our practice we have a special interest in stress management.
Martin and I have completed courses on adjusting and management techniques aimed specifically at stress reduction and sleep promotion.
So today, I wanted to break down for you, what exactly IS sleep? How much do we need? I want to discuss what happens to us when we don’t get it sleep and finally, my 11 best tips to improve your sleep.
The Background
It has taken millions of years to develop into homo sapiens. We came into anatomical being at least 315,000 years ago, with our modern behavioural and mental capacities being at least 60-80 thousand years old.
We have only had a reliable and controllable ability to erase the night using electric light for - give or take - 150 years. Since that time, humans have become the first and only known species that actively and persistently forgo sleep.
Think about that, no other species will choose any activity over sleep outside of a survival situation.
For us, far from being a survival situation, it means, to stay up and watch Netflix, scroll Instagram, or generally to just get a few jobs done without anyone interrupting us.
Think about that...why is it that WE choose to avoid rest, when no other mammal will do this naturally?
And apparently this is incredibly common, according to Matthew Walker, 1 out of every 2 people are sleep deprived, and almost 1/3 of those people are sleep deprived on 6 hours sleep or less. But let’s face it, have you ever heard any person say to you “you know what, I am just getting soo much good sleep at the moment!”
SO the first thing to ask ourselves is;
HOW MUCH SLEEP ARE WE MEANT TO GET?
As humans we need between 7 and 9 hours of good QUALITY sleep for our body to operate the way it is intended to.
Thats not just physical time in bed,
Quality in this sense refers to our biological imperative to get through all of the stages of sleep for an appropriate amount of time, in order for our brain to recharge.
What are the 4 stages of quality sleep?
stage of sleep:
1. Awake,
2. light sleep,
3. deep sleep,
4. REM (Rapid Eye Movement), and repeat.
Awake time is the time spent in bed before and after falling asleep. It also includes brief awakenings during the night.
As I said earlier, quality sleep contains appropriate time spent in each of 4 stages of sleep.
Although all 4 stages of sleep are essential to the quality of your sleep, I wont get into the nitty gritty of how sleep works specifically, it can be more complicated than my level of specific understanding and that would involve MANY blogs about that topic alone, so just to hit the high notes here today, I am going to GROSSLY oversimplify everything.
Stages 1 and 2 are your “set up” stages of sleep, they are the period where your body begins to turn off your monitoring systems and relax the “awake” portion of sleep, changing your heart rate and breathing to eventually get into stage 2 and eventually into deeper levels. This is also the stage where you can have a power nap as long as you don't doze for more than 20 minutes.
Stages 3 and 4 are where you get down into deeper levels of sleep.
In Stage 3, your brain waves become very long and slow and become much less responsive and harder to wake up, while your brain “paralyzes” your body in a type of muscular incarceration so that during stage 4, otherwise known as REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, you don't get up and start acting out your dreams…it sounds scary but its a handy survival mechanism. You have probably experienced this lock down first hand if you have ever suddenly felt awake at night time but been unable to move your body.
Stages 3 and 4 are where most body replenishment occurs. This type of sleep is excellent for cardiovascular health, metabolism, and most importantly, removal of waste products that accumulate in your brain throughout the day.
SO...WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON'T GET ENOUGH SLEEP?
Think honestly about how many hours you spend sleeping and if you are honest, what sort of quality do you believe you actually achieve?
When we sleep for fewer than 7 hours, our performance, both physically and mentally dimities by 10%.
When the hours we sleep are fewer than 6, our performance is decreased by 30%.
30%.
That means if you average fewer hours than that, like I did over a 15 year period from year 11 onwards, my ability to work, to remember, to drive, to study or even enjoy downtime with my friends and family was down by 10-30%.
Equally as scary, the research suggests that people who are sleep deprived are actually incapable of measuring the negative effects of lack of sleep on themselves. It's like knowing your exact blood alcohol while drinking (a comparison that will become more relevant in Part 2 of this post). We know we have been drinking but have no actual way to know if we are .05 or not until its measured externally.
Imagine the compound interest of life lost over 15 years of being 30% less of yourself. I am certain I would likely still be at Align, and I know I would still be a chiropractor, but who knows how much further I would be in my career, how much more I could have given to my clients or how much more I could have enjoyed those years?
WHAT HEALTH ISSUES DOES IT CAUSE?
Short answer? Heaps. Almost everything in fact.
According to more recent research, the shorter you sleep, the shorter your life.
Fewer hours of sleep predicts all cause mortality. Put simply, you’ll be dead sooner and the quality of your life will be worse.
Fewer than 6 hours of sleep leads to a decrease of physical endurance and function of 30% due to lactic acid build up as well as the bodies ability to expire our breath, but anything below 7 hours has been shown to impair us, with decreases in our peak muscle strength, peak running speed and our vertical jump.
Coupled with this fact is that it has been shown that sleep and frequency of injury has a linear relationship, stating that 9 hours of sleep Vs 5 hours of sleep leads to a 60% increase in the probability of injury.
Another more functional element to sleep is that it has been shown to improve learning performance (in rats at least) by 20-30% as it is thought to be the time when our brain strengthens its connections when learning something new.
Have you ever been trying to learn something new or studying and come to a point where you are just stuck so you give up for the night?
If your anything like me, I know that you found that the next morning it just clicked. Things you were struggling to learn just came to you, or you could remember the whole piece of information correctly.
It appears that while we sleep the brain literally prunes away the unnecessary elements of the pathways and streamlines your new skill.
Another health issue lack of sleep causes, is weight gain. Sleep doesn't just help you lose weight, it actually helps you keep it away!
Lack of sleep decreases the body’s levels of a hormone called Leptin, who causes the sensation of satiation (aka - feeling full). At the same time, the hormone ghrelin (the guy responsible for NOT feeling full, and making you hungry), is ramped up.
It has been shown that people who sleep between 5-6 hours a night will eat 200-300 MORE calories a day, equalling roughly 70,000 calories a year, leading to 10-15 pounds (or 4.5-6.8kgs) of obese mass a year.
Worse, you eat more of the WRONG THINGS, going for heavy hitting carbs and heavy processed food, while simultaneously staying away from leafy greens etc.
So just to clarify…on average, if you slept more than 7 hours a night, you would eat fewer calories, crave better quality food and with no extra effort or will power necissary, you would have to manage up to 7kgs of fat FEWER, each year.
Do you know any other “magic” weight loss solution that can offer all that with zero negative side effects and at zero cost?
More importantly, insufficient sleep according to the podcast, degrades our DNA.
Specifically it has a negative effect on immune response genes, decreasing their reproduction. At the same time, we get increased chronic inflammation, increased stress response leading to cardiovascular disease and an increase in the expression of genes related to the promotion of tumour growth.
Apparently this is most exemplified by people who do shift work. Night shift workers suffer from higher rates of obesity, diabetes and cancers, most notably bowel, prostate and breast cancer.
This is apparently so prevalent Matthew Walker states, that the World Health Organisation now classifies night shift work as possible carcinogen in and of itself as 4 hours of sleep even for just one night, causes a remarkable state of immune deficiency, a significant drop in anti cancer cells in our immune system.
Sleep deprivation affects your sex hormones too, in fact, Men who sleep 5-6 hours a night will have testosterone levels 10 years their senior, a critical element of health, strength, muscular performance etc, in short, it ages you a DECADE (apologies for not having the data for women too but you can safely assume similar effects can be found).
Consider how you are when you're deprived of sleep; reduced alertness, impulsive, lack of ability to concentrate, difficulties with learning and memory.
What do you think happens to your brain when you are like this for weeks, months or even YEARS on end?
While we are awake our brain builds up toxicity, especially a protein called ‘Beta Amyloid’. You may have hear of this protein before as it is the main mechanism in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease. When we sleep properly, the process of sleep wipes our brain, reducing build up of Beta Amyloid.
Insufficient sleep across lifespan now appears to be one of THE most significant lifestyle factors in determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease.
Simply put: wakefulness causes low level brain damage and sleep offers reparatory function.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan have arguably had a huge effect on our world today. They were both known as having strong wills with sharp minds. They were both also famous for getting around 4-5 hours of sleep a night. They both died with Alzheimer’s.
This anecdotal evidence is hardly proof of the research but it raises a few questions about the concept, two people with very active minds and social lives (two factors previously thought to be predictive of the disease) got it anyway.
Now you might be saying to yourself:
“I’M ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO DOESN’T NEED THAT MUCH SLEEP…SO I’M ALL GOOD RIGHT?”
Wrong.
Well…at least its a safe bet that you're wrong anyway.
You’ll remember that Matthew’s research has shown that people are completely incapable of determining how much they are affected by sleep deprivation.
I was convinced of my own ability to get things done when I was working off lower levels of sleep, but it turns out, like you, I am completely unqualified to make that assessment.
Negative effects of your lack of sleep can ONLY be assessed by external sources and measurements.
Although studies show us that there is a population of humans that can function as normal from just 5 hours of sleep, but those same genetic studies show that is a group of less than 1% of the population.
In fact, you're MORE likely to be struck by lightening in your life time than to be one of those people, so you should probably assume that you aren't one of them.
SO…WHAT CAN I DO THEN?
Get to sleep. Seriously, its as simple and as difficult as that.
The minimum you should aim for is 7 hours! 7-9 hours appears to be our sweet spot as humans.
11. WAYS TO IMPROVE SLEEP:
Consciously think about sleep hygiene. Make it something you factor into your health routine like you do exercise.
Regularity; try go to bed at same time.
Decrease light; Try away from screens for at least an hour before bed or at LEAST have your screens on night mode. Think of circadian rhythm, no blue light, black out curtains, eye masks.
Halve the number of lights on in your home in an evening. Apparently, if you are in an environment with no lights at all, we fall asleep 2 hours earlier.
Keep it cool, brain decreases temp by 2-3 deg fahrenheit to initiate sleep. always easier to sleep in a room thats too cold rather than too hot. We fall asleep faster and deeper in cold.
Wear fewer clothes to bed. Again, its a heat thing.
Try to have warm feet and hands. It helps keep your brain cool as it stakes blood away from your core. You could also try having a hot bath or shower before bed, it brings blood to the surface then your core body temp plummets when you get out of the water and you're more ready to sleep. The reverse is true for waking up, studies have shown that its the rise in temperature in the morning not just the light that wakes you.
Time your exercise, try to exercise earlier in the day, hormonally exercising earlier sets you up to sleep whereas later in the day it can wake you up.
Eat earlier and go for a short walk, help your body digest so it isn’t working soo hard when you are trying to settle down to rest.
Decrease stress in other areas of your life, meditate, work on your posture, breathing exercise, plan opening your emails etc, decreasing stress chemicals will allow your body to relax faster and more fully, letting you get to sleep.
Watch the Joe Rogan podcast I talked about a lot of my information coming from here. It goes into a lot more detail if you are that way inclined, but it is worth the watch. It is also available as a traditional podcast.
AND REMEMBER
Sedation is NOT the same as normal sleep, pills and alcohol might help you nod off but they do not allow you to go through the full normal stages of sleep and so you will miss out on a lot of it’s benefits. Be sure to discuss your inability to sleep with a health practitioner about improving your sleep hygiene as Matthew Walker states in the podcast that sedatives are an absolute last resort.
Sleep is NOT like a bank, you cant accumulate debt during the week and then make it up on the weekend.
Lastly NO ONE tells you to stay awake on a problem. “Sleep on it” so that you can have a fresh perspective is a suggestion with no cultural boundaries.
Accumulated wisdom for centuries has promoted sleep as a way of better tackling your problems, getting things done and improving your life.