#129 Sleep the Neglected Healer

Siim Land (0:00)

Sleep deprivation and poor sleeping patterns are becoming more and more predominant in our society. It's often shrugged off or even viewed as lack of discipline. Unfortunately, this kind of heroism has numerous short and long-term consequences on health and performance. In this episode of the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast, I'm going to talk about the critical importance of sleep on your health, what are the short and long-term consequences of sleep deprivation, and what are the basics of sleep optimization.

This is taken from my just released Total Sleep Optimization Video Course that covers all of this but a lot more. You can learn about circadian rhythms, chronobiology, how the brain works during sleep, chronotypes, sleep genetics, time-restricted eating, treating shift work, sleeping disorders, polyphasic sleeping, and a lot more. So if you are interested, then check out the link for it in the show notes at siimland.com forward slash sleep.

But now, fasten your seatbelts or put on your blue blockers, depending when and where you are listening this from, because we are going to go into the world of poor sleep.

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Do you want to know what it is?

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Body Mind Empowerment.

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Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

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Everything the body needs.

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Control your mind.

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You spend nearly one third of your life being asleep. From the perspective of evolution, it's quite a paradoxical phenomenon. Although sleep has many restorative benefits on the body, it's still somewhat of a gambit.

In nature, while you're sleeping, you're putting yourself in risk of being eaten, getting killed or missing out on some feeding opportunities. The fact that virtually all animals have some sort of a sleep-wakefulness cycle shows how important it must have been for organisms to develop this process. It's hypothesized that over the course of human evolution, our sleeping patterns changed alongside us developing higher intelligence. Lesser apes and other life forms sleep primarily in earlier stages of sleep because of being forced to wake up more frequently. Some animals, like humans, began to sleep in more protected and concealed places, which allows for deeper and longer sleep.

In part, the reason why we have so big brains is because of our ability to sleep longer and recover faster than other animals. The longest scientifically documented period of wakefulness is held by Randy Gardner, who intentionally went without sleep and no stimulants for 264 hours, which is about 11 days.

Gardner was said to have no long-term consequences after the fact, although he did experience severely fragmented thinking, slurred speech, paranoia, confusion and short-term memory loss.

Most people tend to forget about the principle of recovery or simply are ignorant about it. Unless you're constantly doing something and running around, then you're procrastinating, right? Well, that's wrong. Slogans like work hard, play hard, sleep is for the weak and I'll sleep when I'm dead are very widespread and thought of as part of hustling hard. Actually, it's quite nonsense and stupid because people don't realize how such a mindset may actually lead to an earlier death. At least that's what research shows. Sleep recharges our batteries and allows us to keep going. It's more than just empty time lying in bed. The brain undergoes intense neurological activities such as memory consolidation, neurochemical cleansing and cognitive maintenance, muscle recovery and enhancement. Here are the negative side effects of sleep deprivation on your body and physique. First, it's going to cause serious health problems such as increased blood pressure, higher stress hormones, greater risk of diabetes, heart attacks and irregular heartbeat. Even one night of poor recovery can make your blood sugar levels equal to that of a type 2 diabetic. People with insomnia have a 90% chance of suffering any other health condition. It also causes DNA damage. Just 4 nights of sleeping about 4.5 hours reduce people's insulin sensitivity by 16% and make fat cells 30% more insulin sensitive. This means your body will have a much harder time metabolizing carbohydrates and is more prone to store them as fat. Talk about diabetes.

Increased risk of fibromyalgia, which is a medical condition of chronic widespread pain and heightened pain response to pressure. You'll also have muscle aches and constant soreness. And of course, headaches.

It also gives you nystagmus, which is rapid involuntary rhythmic eye movement. That's quite uncomfortable. Tweezing eyes are a sign of too much stress and may lead to myopia or partial blindness.

Sleep deprivation makes your body more susceptible to gaining weight, partly because of insulin resistance and high cortisol, but also because of digestive issues, bloating and craving for junk food. Poor sleep drains your willpower and decreases self-control. Sleep deprived people are more prone to overeating calories because the body is in need of energy.