Shorter Sleep, Shorter Life

When it comes to health, there’s a lot of hearsay out there these days. World-renowned scientists, health experts, doctors and researchers disagree about fundamental aspects of human health; implications of exercise, diet and other lifestyle factors are hotly contested (see podcast debate between Dr. Chris Kresser and Dr. Joel Kahn on the topic of meat consumption: source ), making it nearly impossible for the average person to determine what is healthy and how to live.

As science has advanced, the internet has become an effective channel for disseminating information to the masses. For decades, people relied on scientific journals, newspaper articles, books and magazines to stay up-to-date. Today, podcasts, blogs, and web content are even more accessible than their predecessors. Dr. Jordan Peterson compares podcasting to the Gutenberg revolution(printing press); newspapers require that consumers know how to read, while podcasts can be consumed by anyone with a computer or smart phone while working, exercising or commuting.

Dr. Matthew Walker, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Cal Berkeley shares some recent (and not so recent) revelations regarding sleep. Today I am sharing some of the major takeaways from the discussion. Find the full podcast here: Joe Rogan Experience #1109 – Matthew Walker

Negative Effects of Lack of Sleep

• • • We need 7-9 hours a night
      • Impairment in the brain can be measured below 7 hours a night
    • There is a small fraction of <1% of the population, that has a certain gene that allows them to survive on 5 hours of sleep
      • You are more likely to be struck by lighting than have this gene
      • The gene promotes wakefulness chemistry in the brain
    • The shorter your sleep on average, the shorter your life
      • Short sleep predicts all cause mortality
    • Wakefulness, compared to sleep, is low level brain damage. Sleep offers a repair mechanism for this.
      • During deep sleep at night, there is a sewage system in the brain that cleanses the brain of all the metabolic toxins that have accumulated throughout the day
    • If you’re getting 6 hours of sleep or less, your time to physical exhaustion drops by up to 30%
      • Lactic acid builds up quicker the less you sleep
      • The ability of your lungs to expire CO2 and inhale oxygen decreases
    • A higher injury risk
      • One study showed a 60% increase in probability of injury comparing people who get 9 hours of sleep a night, to those who get 5
      • Your stability muscles fail earlier when not getting enough sleep
    • One of those toxins is beta amyloid – which is responsible for the underlying mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease
      • The less you sleep – the more this plaque builds up
    • Insufficient sleep is the most significant lifestyle factor for determining whether or not you’ll develop Alzheimer’s Disease
      • Insufficient sleep is linked to bowl, prostate, and breast cancer
    • The WHO has decided to classify any form of nighttime shift work as a probable carcinogen
      • Shift workers have higher rates obesity, diabetes, and cancer
    • Leptin and ghrelin
      • Both control appetite and weight
      • Leptin tells our brain we’re full
      • Ghrelin does the opposite, it’s the hunger hormone
      • With less sleep, leptin gets suppressed, and ghrelin gets ramped up
    • People sleeping 4-5 hours a night will on average eat 200-300 extra calories each day (70,000 extra calories each year which translates into 10-15 lbs. of body mass)
      • You also eat more of the wrong things
      • Lack of sleep if a critical factor of the obesity epidemic
      • 1 out of every 2 adults in America are not getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep
      • 1 out of 3 people are trying to survive on 6 hours or less of sleep
    • The average American adult is sleeping 6 hours and 31 minutes during the week (it used to be 7.9 hours in 1942)
      • “The number of people who can survive on 6 hours of sleep or less, rounded to a whole number, and expressed as a percentage of the population is 0”
    • “You don’t know you’re sleep deprived, when you’re sleep deprived”
      • Under slept employees will take on fewer work challenges, are more likely to slack off in groups, and are less likely to come up with creative solutions
      • Less sleep does not equal more productivity

Light and Sleep

• • • “We are a dark deprived society in this modern era” – this lack of darkness is destroying out quality of sleep
      • Incandescent light bulbs suppress melatonin
      • Screen usage on top, suppresses it even further
    • One hour of phone screen use will delay the onset of melatonin production by about 3 hours
      • Your peak melatonin levels will also be 50% less
    • All of this adds up to less REM sleep

Sleeping in Foreign Environments

• • • One half of your brain won’t sleep as deeply as the other, when sleeping in a foreign environment, like a hotel room
    • There are two types of sleep
      • REM Sleep
      • Non-REM Sleep (of which there are 4 stages, stages 1-4)
        • In stages 3 and 4, that’s where a lot of body replenishment takes place
        • These are the stages of sleep that one half of your brain will resist going into when you’re sleeping in a foreign environment

Benefits of Sleep

• • • Sleep doesn’t improve the places where we’re already good in terms of motor skills, sleep is intelligent – it finds friction points or motor skill deficits, and smooths them out/improves them
      • This is very common with musicians – one day they aren’t able to nail a piece, and the next day they can
    • During dream sleep, we take old information, and combine it with new information we’ve learned, and form new connections/associations
      • For this reason, we might often find new solutions to previously unsolvable problems after a good sleep
      • Thomas Edison used sleep as a vital tool for creativity
      • “Sleep is the greatest legal performance enhancing drug that most people are probably neglecting”

For those sleeping 5-6 hours a night, these findings are not convenient. While many claim they only need 6 hours to function, the science says otherwise. It may take months or years for sleep deprivation to result in serious health consequences. In addition, the adaptability of the human body compensates for lack of sleep and prevents individuals from noticing negative effects. Rather than sleep less, people should find ways of increasing their productivity through cutting out time-wasting activities such as late-night phone use and television. The less you sleep, the shorter your life will be.

But don’t take my word for it… investigate Dr. Walker’s claims at SleepDiplomat.com