not sleeping enough? Read this..

Sleep can be one of the sweetest things we can do with our body and brain. It’s a necessity many of us have tried on occasions to do away with, but its not advisable to try to cut back on sleep. Lack of sleep can lead to several serious and chronic conditions. Sleeping is when the repair to the body and brain occur and it turns out lack of sleep, or lack of good uninterrupted sleep can lead to some serious and chronic diseases which are worth avoiding at all costs.

Alzheimer’s Disease is one of the conditions that is both precipitated by lack of sleep, or can be exacerbated by lack of sleep in cases of existing condition. During sleep, the brains cleaning machinery kicks into gear. Although Alzhemier’s is a very complex disease with many different contributing factors such as sugar concentrations (Alzheimer’s is a form of diabetes according to some studies), and very recently prions have been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s and therefore there maybe a contagious component to Alzheimer’s, we know that accumulation of amyloid beta on and around neurons contributes to progression of the disease. When we sleep, the brains clean up machinery helps to remove some of the plaques that have accumulated during the days neuronal activity. When the cleanup is impaired due to lack of sleep or interrupted sleep, the result is a greater accumulation of plaque in the brain.

Obesity and Diabetes are other serious conditions that are affected by sleep. A study showed that a group of men who got 4 hrs of sleep vs a similar group who got 8.5 hrs of sleep found that the men with little sleep had a 30% increase in their blood of a type of fatty acid that increase insulin sensitivity and negatively affect overall metabolism leading to weight gain.

Cardiovascular Disease- In a 2014 study it was reported that sleep directly affects our cardiovascular profile. Poor sleepers had a much higher incidence of heart attacks and strokes.   2.6 times the risk for heart attacks and up to 4 times the risk for stroke! Not enough sleep also increases anxiety in many people.

Mental health– Poor sleep is also linked with serious mental health problems. A 2014 study found a link between poor sleep and suicide in adults, regardless of past bouts of depression. Chronic lack of sleep is linked to 1.4 times greater risk of committing suicide.

Ulcerative Colitis– This is an autoimmune condition where the patients immune cells start to attack a protein in the lining of the large intestine, resulting in ulceration and possibly worse.   The immune system is affected by the stresses that come from lack of sleep and therefore ulcerative colitis as well as Crohn’s disease and few other auto-immune conditions are made worse by too little sleep. Interestingly, too little sleep ( 6 hrs) as well as too much sleep (9 hrs) both made the condition worse whereas 8 hrs of sleep really helped with the inflammation in the gut!

Prostate cancer– An Icelandic study showed that when men had trouble falling sleep were 60% more likely to develop prostate cancer than those who slept good, and if they had trouble staying sleep, then they had a 120% increase in getting prostate cancer and that the cancer in these cases would be more aggressive!

The bottom line is sleep is not a luxury or a convenience when we can afford it! We have to arrange our lives and daily activities in a way to get the sleep we need so that none of these chronic and debilitating diseases will affect us.

There are those who for one reason or another have difficulty falling sleep, or they fall sleep ok but then they are wide awake from 2 or 3 or 4AM on! What to do in those cases? What to do when sleep deprivation becomes a chronic issue? In those cases the bodies important and essential balance for sleep is disrupted and only acupuncture and herbal medicine can help without side effects.

Call Summit Healing Arts where helping people get the sleep they need and deserve is a specialty, and where immune system functionality is a specialty. Let me help you have your best health now.