Another Jeff Sleep Rant, With Research
I just stopped an oncoming cold in its tracks, after not having had one for well over a year. (I used to get two or three a year minimum, some of them doozies.) My technique is the same one I used to avoid colds this past year, and although it's simple you're not going to like it: I stopped "doing." And I slept. Lots.
The approaching cold was payback for a mistake I made. Having been in Chicago a great deal this spring and summer, I got back early in October and set about catching up. I started and finished a 200-page Carl and Jerry book in two weeks. I wrote several thousand words on a "practice novel" that-egad!-I may even finish. I built some catwalks up in the attic that allowed me to mount a three-band discone under the peak. All this in addition to my usual paying projects. The result? I stayed up too late, threw off an enormous amount of energy, and just ran myself down. So last night I went to bed at 9 PM. And I will do so again tonight. Tomorrow, the cold will be gone.
In addition to that, I took sleepless "naps" mid-afternoon today and yesterday-I don't expect to sleep, but I get horizontal and try to relax. But while trying not to think, I got this thought...could the runup in cancer rates these days track lost sleep? I remember reading somewhere that when people from traditional/rural societies enter modern Western life, their cancer rates rise and soon match our own. Everybody points at diet. But I wonder if simply sleeping less and doing too much is the real culprit.
Most of you have heard my longstanding suspicion that, after factoring out diet and genetics, weight gain tracks sleep deprivation. (Freshman fifteen? Dorm life? Connect the dots?) Sleep, in fact, is the uninvited guest at the health care debates. I find it telling and inwardly amusing that several people have gotten growlingly, almost screamingly angry at me for suggesting that they might be healthier (in several respects) if they just shut down all systems at 9 PM and got more sleep. I grumbled about sleep's necessity myself for many years, but eventually I realized that you can't escape it. I have since built my life around sleep. I budget time for sleep first, and everything else has to stand in line. When I sleep, I'm healthy. When I don't sleep, I get colds and infections. When I really don't sleep, I gain weight. The causes and effects seem pretty clear to me by now. Your mileage may vary, but our engines are for the most part the same design. (I'll freely admit that I'm a bit of a crank about this, but my father died of cancer and I'm trying to give myself every advantage that I can.)
There is, of course, a strong genetic component to most health issues, and obviously we need more research, but let me quote some existing research that I've stumbled on over time. Not all of it is brand new, but it adds up:
- "The analysis of a nationally representative sample of nearly 10,000 adults found that those between the ages of 32 and 49 who sleep less than seven hours a night are significantly more likely to be obese."
- "We suspect that chronic sleep loss may not only hasten the onset, but could also increase the severity of age-related ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and memory loss."
- "We found lack of sleep is not only linked to a greater chance of developing high blood pressure but is also linked to increased death from cardiovascular causes."
- "People who habitually slept for 5 hours were found to have 15% more ghrelin than those who slept for 8 hours. They were also found to have 15% less leptin. These hormonal changes may cause increased feelings of hunger, leading to a foraging in the fridge for food."
- "Sleep deprivation is now recognized as an increasingly common condition inherent to modern society, and one that in many ways, is detrimental to certain physiological systems, namely, immune function."
- "In a study involving 9,000 people between 1982 and 1984 (NHANES I), researchers found that people who averaged six hours of sleep per night were 27 percent more likely to be overweight than their seven-to-nine hour counterparts; and those averaging five hours of sleep per night were 73 percent more likely to be overweight."
- "'Sleep loss increases an individual's vulnerability to infectious diseases,' said Dr. Bruce C. Corser, MD, medical director of the Sleep Management Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio. 'Even a mild disruption in sleep can reduce the body's immune response and lower your natural resistance against illnesses such as the flu.'"
- "Moreover, a statistic put out by NYU’s Sleep Disorders Center last March claims that 90 percent of college students suffer from sleep deprivation. And whether myth or not, the infamous freshman fifteen concerns many college students. Could more sleep be the solution?"
How many links do you want? Sleep is not optional. I'll bet we could cut billions from the national health care budget by persuading everyone to knock off whatever they're doing at nine, be in bed by ten, and sleep until six. (Or be in bed by eleven and sleep until seven, work permitting. Not everybody is a morning person.) Instead, we're blasting away until 1 ayem while outlawing fast food in south LA. Small wonder that we're a nation of staggering wrecks.