According to the study, men who sleeps about 4-5 hours a night will have same testosterone level as those who are 10 years older than him. Similar effect will happen to women's reproductive system.
Sleep also affect our memory. Sleep has been know to help store memory so after you learn or study, you should have good night sleep to help your brain retain those information. Sleep is also important to prepare for your learning. Sleep deprivation lower the hippocampus activity, which is part of brain responsible of memory and learning, by 40% which will also lead to premature aging of the brain and dementia.
We have something called daylight saving time where we lose an hour of sleep in spring and gain in a fall. Statistics has shown that heart attack is higher by 24% in spring time and 24% lower in a fall. Similar data has been found for car crashes and suicide rate. With just 1 night of 4 hours of sleep, the immune system activity can drop by 70%.
Our body requires 7-8 hours of sleep and it should not be negotiable. Unlike body fat where we can store energy for later usage, sleep cannot be stored or recovered over the weekend by sleeping longer hour. We do not have that kind of system in our body. What you can do is to work on improving your quality and quantity of sleep from today so you body and brain will be working at optimal capacity.
Anxiety is one of the reasons why people have a sleep deprivation. Anxiety interferes with your sleep by not being able to shut down sympathetic nervous system or fight-or-flight system. Sympathetic nervous system can be turned on because of stressful event or consumption of caffeine.
Stressful events can keep your mind alert if you do not manage the sympathetic nervous system to shut down. First thing you should do is finding the root cause of stressful event or anxiety. Then, to shut down your sympathetic nervous system, it is good practice to work on deep breathing, reading books, or listening to calming music.
Caffeine effects can last for quite long time. Caffeine has half-life of 6 hours and quarter-life of 12 hours. Which means, when you have caffeine at noon, the caffeine is still lingering in your brain at midnight. Even if you are type of person who can have coffee at night and still can fall a sleep, the caffeine can decrease your deep sleep by 20%. Similar affect will happen with alcohol and marijuana.
Another thing you can do when you cannot fall a sleep is don't wait in the bed to get sleepy. If you cannot sleep and start tossing and turning in your bed, hoping that you get some sleep, is actually creating a condition in your brain that the bed is a place for awake and not sleep. Therefore, it is better to get out of the bed and read or listen to music instead of staying in your bed. Good example is you don't sit in front of your table until you get hungry. So you should treat the sleep the same.
Keeping your room temperature low will also help you sleep easier. When body temperature drops, you will be stimulating the sleep mechanism. 65 degree Fahrenheit or 18 degree Celsius will be the ideal temperature.
Lastly, regularity is very important. Regardless of weekday and weekend, you should have set schedule of sleep and awake time everyday.
Sleep may seem very useless part of your life. When you look at it, you are not hunting for food, not finding mate, not reproducing, not caring for family and so on from evolutionary standpoint. However, 8 hours of sleep is a vital part of our life for our body to be more productive to perform things that we are no doing while we are sleeping.
From strength and fitness standpoint, if you are in need of managing your stress hormone and insulin, you will need to prioritize improving your sleep quality and quantity.
Kota Shimada
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