A Healthy Night’s Sleep
I love our amazing our bodies are and how they work with nature. Our bodies are for us and given the right input want to heal, reverse disease and function well.
Optimal sleep is vital for the brain and body and supports lots of different functions in our body:
Mental function, memory and mood
Immune function
Energy and motivation
Weight management
Regulation of blood pressure
Beauty
Lack of sleep increases risk of accidents and errors, it decreases learning, can cause headaches and impairs your ability to function well.
Sadly though sleep dysfunction is at epidemic levels. What is happening to cause this?
When we think of our great grandparents - they lived more closely aligned with nature. They ate from nature, spent more time in nature and slept with the cycle of nature - rested with the sunset and rose with the sunrise. Once the sun had set, their light was the soft red orange glow of a fire or candles.
Dim light triggers the pineal gland to secrete our sleep hormone - melatonin. Our ancestors were not exposed to the artificial blue light of TV, cellphones or laptops in the evenings. So if you are exposed to bright light until you go to bed you may experience that “wired and tired” feeling and it may take you an hour of darkness for melatonin production to kick in and enable you to fall asleep.
Melatonin is one of our master antioxidants - part of the clean up crew of free radical damage.
If you think about Disneyland overnight, lots happens to prepare the park for the next day, rubbish is removed, roads and bathrooms are cleaned, food is restocked and baked. The same thing happens in the human body - while we sleep many processes are occurring:
Studies have shown while you sleep the brain shrinks leaving space for lymphatic fluid to flush between cells and clean out toxins and build up of amalyoid plaque. Plaque build up has been implicated with brain fog, alzheimers and dementia. Sleep is neuroprotective.
Melatonin helps regulate the hunger and satiety hormones leptin and ghrelin, so lack of sleep may cause an imbalance in these hormones which may lead to weight gain.
Sleep deprivation may result in unscheduled secretion of insulin, increasing markers of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Melatonin helps to clear inflammation, so sleep deprivation may result in an increase in inflammatory markers.
Blood flow increases to the skin as we sleep to repair it, having an anti-aging effect.
Melatonin as an antioxidant is cancer protective.
Melatonin helps mop up oxidative stress molecules in the mitochondria of cells while we sleep.
Melatonin initiates sleep and maintains sleep to enable all of the above processes to allow your body to rest and repair.
There are 2 types of sleep:
Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep - which is when cleaning of the brain and body systems occurs.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep which is when dreaming occurs, and the brain files and consolidates the events and learnings of the day. This is also invention time, which is often why our best ideas come early in the morning.
Sleep studies have shown this breakdown:
NREM REM
9.00 pm - 10.30 pm 80% 20%
10.30 pm - 12.00 am 60% 40%
12.00 am - 1.30 am 50% 50%
1.30 am - 3.00 am 40% 60%
3.00 am - 5.00 am 20% 80%
As you can see the majority of the cleaning work occurs earlier in the night. There was wisdom in the old saying that “An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after midnight”. Maybe there is also wisdom in the old saying “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
You need quality deep sleep on most nights of the week for a healthy functioning brain, as one of your tools to help prevent age related dementia or Alzheimers.
Do you and your family sleep well? If not, and you would like support to enhance restorative and regenerative sleep book a wellness consultation with Sheryl through the contact page.