Sleep is
an often overlooked essential for optimal health and well-being. Yet millions
of people do not get enough sleep and many suffer from lack of sleep. The
results of recent surveys reveal that at least 40 million Americans suffer from
over 70 different sleep disorders and 60 percent of adults report having sleep
problems a few nights a week or more. Most of those with these problems go
undiagnosed and untreated.
In
addition, more than 40 percent of adults experience daytime sleepiness severe
enough to interfere with their daily activities at least a few days each week.
What Are
The Signs of Excessive Sleepiness?
Irritability and moodiness are some of the first signs a person experiences
from lack of sleep. If a sleep-deprived person doesn't sleep after the initial
signs, the person may then start to experience apathy, slowed speech and
flattened emotional responses, impaired memory and an inability to be creative
or multitask.
Amount of
Sleep Needed
Everyone's individual sleep needs vary. In general, most healthy adults are
built for 16 hours of wakefulness and need an average of eight hours of sleep a
night. However, some individuals are able to function without sleepiness or
drowsiness after as little as six hours of sleep. Others can't perform at their
peak unless they've slept ten hours. Contrary to common myth, the need for
sleep doesn't decline with age but the ability to sleep for six to eight hours
at one time may be reduced.
What
Causes Sleep Problems?
Psychologists and other scientists who study the causes of sleep disorders have
found that such problems can directly or indirectly be tied to abnormalities in
various systems, such as:
Physiological systems
- Brain and nervous system
- Cardiovascular system
- Metabolic functions
- Immune system
Furthermore,
unhealthy conditions, disorders and diseases can also cause sleep problems.
These can include:
- Pathological sleepiness,
insomnia and accidents
- Hypertension and elevated
cardiovascular risks (MI, stroke)
- Emotional disorders
(depression, bipolar disorder)
- Obesity; metabolic syndrome
and diabetes
- Alcohol and drug abuse
Groups
that are at particular risk for sleep deprivation include night shift workers,
physicians (average sleep = 6.5 hours a day; residents = 5 hours a day), truck
drivers, parents and teenagers.
How
Environment & Behavior Affect A Person's Sleep
Stress is the number one cause of
short-term sleeping difficulties, according to sleep experts. Common triggers
include school- or job-related pressures, a family or marriage problem and a
serious illness or death in the family. Usually the sleep problem disappears
when the stressful situation passes. However, if short-term sleep problems such
as insomnia aren't managed properly from the beginning, they can persist long
after the original stress has passed.
Drinking
alcohol or beverages containing caffeine in the afternoon or evening,
exercising close to bedtime, following an irregular morning and nighttime
schedule, and working or doing other mentally intense activities right before
or after getting into bed can disrupt sleep. Traveling also disrupts sleep,
especially jet lag and traveling across several time zones. This can upset your
biological or "circadian" rhythms.
Environmental
factors such as a room that's too hot or cold, too noisy or too brightly lit
can be a barrier to sound sleep. Interruptions from children or other family
members can also disrupt sleep. Other influences to pay attention to are the
comfort and size of your bed and the habits of your sleep partner. If you have
to lie beside someone who has different sleep preferences, snores, can't fall
or stay asleep, or has other sleep difficulties, it often becomes your problem
too!
Health
Problems & Sleep Disorders
A number of physical problems can interfere with your ability to fall or stay
asleep. For example, arthritis and other conditions that cause pain, backache,
or discomfort can make it difficult to sleep well. For women, pregnancy and
hormonal shifts including those that cause premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or
menopause and its accompanying hot flashes can also intrude on sleep.
Finally,
certain medications such as decongestants, steroids and some medicines for high
blood pressure, asthma, or depression can cause sleeping difficulties as a side
effect.
It is a good idea to talk to a physician or mental health provider about any
sleeping problem that recurs or persists for longer than a few weeks.
Six
Reasons To Get Enough Sleep
- Learning and memory: Sleep helps the brain
commit new information to memory through a process called memory
consolidation. In studies, people who'd slept after learning a task did
better on tests later.
- Metabolism and weight: Chronic sleep deprivation
may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store
carbohydrates, and by altering levels of hormones that affect our
appetite.
- Safety: Sleep debt contributes to
a greater tendency to fall asleep during the daytime. These lapses may
cause falls and mistakes such as medical errors, air traffic mishaps, and
road accidents.
- Mood: Sleep loss may result in
irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness. Too
little sleep can also leave you too tired to do the things you like to do.
- Cardiovascular health: Serious sleep disorders
have been linked to hypertension, increased stress hormone levels, and
irregular heartbeat.
- Disease: Sleep deprivation alters
immune function, including the activity of the body's killer cells.
Keeping up with sleep may also help fight cancer.
Sleep Is
Important To Training Performance Gains
You and
your training partner carefully measure the optimal protein intake for the
"max" in muscle growth response. You both take the exact same
anabolic state-of-the-art supplements and follow the same "perfect"
workout dictated by your aggressive, but prominent personal trainer. Your
partner's gains are what you'd hoped for. So what went wrong? Deep sleep
patterns may mean the difference between big anabolic gains and none at all!
Both bodily repair and anabolic growth occur only during quality rest, and when
deep sleep patterns become routine.
How long
can a person go without any sleep? Based on small animal studies in which the
subjects have been exposed to extreme sleep deprivation, scientists have
estimated that the average human may not live past 10 days without sleep. Not
as clear, however, are the exact physiological mechanisms resulting from sleep
deprivation that ultimately lead to death.
While
lack of sleep can have dire consequences, adequate sleep provides only
positive, healthful benefits. In a typical day, a person's waking hours are
consumed trying to meet the many mental and physical demands encountered at
every turn, as well as replenishing vital nutrients as they are being used up
during these daily activities. In the hours remaining during sleep, the body
takes time out to rebuild and recharge, preparing for the day ahead.
Recuperation
During Sleep Is Related To A Sensitive Built-In Biological Clock
Electrical
activity measured in the brain during sleep indicates that healthful physiological
changes occur in 90-minute periods throughout the night, which means that the
active biological clock in a person is set to operate in a circadian rhythm of
90-minute cycles that repeats every 25 to 28 hours. This clock is set and reset
according to the amount of natural daylight available each day, thus evening
sleep begins later in summer than in winter.
Losing
sleep during any 24- or 48-hour period interferes with the essential and
healthful cycle of physiological changes that occur during sleep and is
detrimental to both physical and mental recovery. Recovery in subjects deprived
of sleep for 24 hours has been measured at 72%, while recovery after a 48-hour
period without sleep further deteriorated to a level of only 42%.2
Other
clock-like rhythms occur between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. and from 3:00 a.m. to
6:00 p.m., when our body temperature dips a degree or two and drowsiness
results. We have all experienced this mid- or late-afternoon slump. In
contrast, when body temperature peaks between 6:00 and 9:00p.m., we may become
aware of a heightened sense of alertness. Then, as we tend to wind down from
our daily activities sometime after 9:00 p.m., our body temperature falls
again, and we are lulled into a state of drowsiness during which the brain converts
low-voltage "beta" waves into higher voltage "alpha" waves.
As these
alpha waves are, in turn, converted to slower "theta" waves during
what are known as sleep stages 1 and 2, the skeletal muscles relax, causing the
"hypnotic jerk" or "nodding" experience. When nodding off
is not resisted or interrupted, the theta waves soon turn into even slower
"delta" waves of the third and fourth stages of deeper sleep. During
these stages, rapid-eye-movement {REM} sleep, dreams, and actual muscle paralysis
take place. If, for some reason, muscle paralysis does not occur, the vividness
of the dream state will physically draw the dreamer into an active state of
sleepwalking or, worse yet, intense physical activity that will further break
down exhausted muscle tissues already in need of repair.
During
undisturbed sleep or slow-wave sleep, the plasma growth hormone (human growth
hormone - somatropin - ) in humans is found to be at its highest levels. If the
sleep stage process is interrupted, complete repair of soft tissues is
impossible due to the resulting decrease or absence of human growth hormone -
somatropin - .
Quiet
Please - My Muscles Are Rebuilding!
Noise
pollution has been shown to have a dramatic effect on a person's optimal sleep.
Aircraft noise endured by those living in homes near airports can reach a level
of 55 to 75 decibels inside the homes. Significant noise such as this has been
observed to raise the adrenaline and noradrenaline levels of all those sampled
during sleep, an effect which is detrimental to achieving normal, healthy,
recuperative sleep.
Exposure
to high levels of noise during the day can also interfere with getting a sound
night's sleep. Daytime noise pollution of 80 decibels or more tends to elevate
both heart and respiration rates, which may further disrupt full-stage,
recuperative sleep.
Balancing
Macronutrient Intake With A Precise Ratio of Micronutrients
Another
component of ensuring a good night's sleep is to maintain a balanced ratio of
macro- and micronutrients. What we eat and drink has a remarkable influence
upon our sleep. Relatively small amounts of alcohol, as little as 0.8 grams per
kilogram body weight, will suppress plasma growth hormone values as much as 75%
when consumed just prior to sleep.
The
bottom line is that when sleep is altered (reduced or extended), performance
and mood are both affected. Altered sleep time by delaying, extending, or
advancing each phase of slumber by a 3-hour time span. Achieving that elusive
perfect night's sleep, then, would seem to depend upon enjoying a low-key day
in a stress-free environment followed by seeking sleep at a routine time in a
quiet, totally dark room.
By Johnson Omomadia
