We all know that sleep impacts our life. Getting enough sleep is something that we all know we should kinda, maybe ensure that we do. Turns out, most countries are following a worrying trend that is seeing sleep patterns not only minimised, but interrupted and neglected and this has fundamental health risks for us. The Australian Sleep Foundation published a study in November 2019 that shows that up to 60% of Australians are suffering from a chronic sleep symptom, 3 or more times a week and that is having large effects on our well being and our ability to function at our best.
Sleep is a major part of our body rejuvenation processing allowing us to give our vital organs, tissues and brain rest and rejuvenation and how we heal soft tissues and create neuorons that help with our brain function. According to Dr Michael Twery at the National Institute of Health in Maryland United States, sleep “affects growth and stress hormones, our immune system, appetite, breathing, blood pressure and cardiovascular health” It also plays a huge role in our consolidation of memory and enhances learning capacity and retention. “Sleep services all aspects of our body in one way or another: molecular, energy balance, as well as intellectual function, alertness and mood,” says Dr. Merrill Mitler also of the NIH MD
Worrying trends the world over are recording increased instances of sleep deprivation and negative sleep effects that are having telling results on some of our chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, Cardiovascular disease and even cancer. In contemporary society, we have been sleeping less. In the 1940s 8 hrs was a normal patterning of sleep and most of the population met this criteria. But in the contemporary 21st Century we are getting less and less sleep. In 2016 30% of US citizens were not getting 7 hers of sleep and in Australia according to a Healthline Survey conducted in March 2019, 32% of Australians are not getting 7 hours of sleep.
Sleep organises our brain function and shouldn’t be undervalued. Circadian rhythms are a cycle of functions that are timed to the earths revolution. A study in 1970s found the superkchiasmatic nucleus as the master regulator tied to the circadian rhythm. We know it as the body clock. Molecular experiments have allowed for sceince to identify our human body clocks and how they regulate our circadian rhythms. Understanding how human health can be tricked by what we have done. If the brain is given the wrong signal, this body-clock is thrown into turmoil which had implications on disease such as diabetes and CV disease. The master clock in the brain and the retina distributes information to our cellular blocks in our body - that goes to the organs, skin, muscles, immune function and endocrine system, signalling functions and stimulating reactions based on the information that it is given.
Eating more and sleeping less is a trend of most global cultures in the 21st century. The Industrial revolution changed the way we eat, and sleep patterns fundamentally due to the access we have to food and our working lifestyle. The eating habits that we have developed have had a major impact on the way we sleep and how much sleep we get. Our ancestors were restricting food to when light was present in the pre industrializes era-. The use of artificial lighting and instant access to food has disrupted this pattern and we are eating later into the evening and also more often. This is not allowing us to rest our bodies and organs and results in our system being overworked.
Scientists are trying to determine how we can determine lifestyle factors for those people that do have to do shift work - and try to minimise the ill effects of rhythm disruption. Fire fighters have an increased risk of CV disease and cancer due to disruption of circadian rhythms. Dr Pam Taub, MD, associate professor of medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. says this can be influenced by eating patterns. - her teams research is finding that time restricted eating (10hrs eating - 14 hours resting) gives cells downtime to clear out damage that comes form digestion and food. This helps to optimise circadian rhythms and is having real beneficial results for firefighters involved in the study that is attempting to optimise circadian rhythms for those who suffer from this major interruption to the Superchiasmatic Nucleus axis.
These studies have led to more investigations from other research that investigates shift work and it’s damaging effects to health. When light information to the brain is delivered outside of our usual daylight/nighttime cycle, the brain activity gets interrupted and the delicate co-ordination of brain activity is interrupted that can lead to consequences for our brain health. This had lead scientists to link chronic disease such as diabetes, CV, obesity to interrupted circadian rhythms and lack of restorative sleep.
Professor Ian Hickie of the University of Sydney talks about this in regards to cognitive disorders such as bipolar disorder, depression and mood disorders. He clearly identifies the role that light disruption has on brain activity and function especially in young adults and teenagers. His findings indicate that reducing light exposure has direct implication on disease and cognition and that exposure to light in the evening has direct impact on depression and Bipolar disorder. “The brain drives just about everything, your metabolism, your immune system your CV response and the cognitive effects of this upset is severe” Vital light and dark cues influence essential hormone release such as melatonin and cortisol and interruptions to these cues increases our risk to chronic cardio-metabolic disease. Hickie cites that light exposure in the evening is an every increasing issue to keeping us awake and disrupting our body-clock and that is leading to diseases in our cognitive processes.
Dr Laura Jacobsen is head of the Sleep and Cognition laboratory at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne. She talks about the different phases of sleep that we encounter. Everyone talks about REM sleep and getting this quality of sleep, but equally as important for learning and memory retention is the non REM sleep phase that is vital for organising our memories and compartmentalising them for recall. The brain wave activity during this phase is seen to be long and slow, co-ordinated wave activity that is vital for processing, memory and retention of information. This synchronisation is critical for integrating short term memory into long term storage. New synapses form during this deep non REM stage of sleep and this leads to consolidating memories, storing memories that perhaps we don’t need and compartmentalising them into what we need to retain and what we can choose to let go of.
REM sleep on the other hand is close to our waking state where brain activity is faster and less organised. REM sleep is important for our invention and problem solving capability. Many creatives and academics talk about ideas and melodies ‘forming in dreams’ and this is due to the REM sleep pattern accessing these problem solving and inventive processes in our brain. Both these types of sleep are vital for ensuring we operate at our best and keep our systems in a cognitive functioning priority.
So sleep is vital to our bodies health and longevity. Investing in good sleep behaviour involves ensuring that we have enough rest and rejuvenation for the intricate co-ordination of our brain activity that drives pretty much all the systems of our body. Taking the steps to ensure sleep involves more than just going to bed early. Reducing light pollution, not eating late, reducing our stress responses and not interrupting our natural body biorhythms are all essential to ensuring that we get the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep that is required to help keep us healthy and functioning. Don’t fool yourself, we need to look after our sleep patterns for more than just feeling not tired. So if you aren’t investing in your sleep cycles and thinking you can function on less sleep - you’re kidding yourself.
