Sleep problems, such as waking up too early, not being able to fall asleep or not being able to stay asleep, are at near epidemic levels.   A good night’s sleep is an essential requirement for being healthy, regardless of your age. You can do everything else right, eat nutritious meals, exercise, manage stress, but if you aren’t getting high-quality sleep, you simply won’t be healthy.

Sleep & Circadian Rhythms

Your individual circadian rhythm regulates activity throughout your body, from your brain, to your lungs and heart, to your liver, to your skeletal muscles. Your internal clock keeps all your organs and systems running smoothly.  Sleep is essential just by the way you feel when you don’t get enough of it. But sleep is also very complex, and sleep deprivation can impact your body in a number of ways.

Brain Chemistry:  Lack of sleep may cause your brain to stop producing new cells. Lack of sleep can also harm your brain due to elevated levels of corticosterone, the stress hormone associated with road rage.  When your body is under stress, it releases hormones that increase your heart rate and blood pressure. Your muscles get tense, your digestive processes stop, and certain brain centers are triggered, which alter your brain chemistry.  Left unchecked, this stress response can eventually lead to a variety of health problems including  Headaches,  Indigestion,  Insomnia, Increased anxiety, Depression and  High blood pressure.

Memory Retention:  Your circadian clock, or internal body clock, controls your daily cycle of sleep and wakefulness by alternately inhibiting and exciting different parts of your brain through regulation of the release of certain neurotransmitters. The part of your brain known as the hippocampus must be excited in order for the things you learn to be organized in such a way that you’ll remember them later.  Your circadian system, therefore, must be in optimal condition in order for you to learn new information and remember it.  .

Cancer Prevention:  How well you sleep can seriously alter the balance of hormones in your body. This can then disrupt your sleep/wake cycle and a disrupted circadian rhythm may influence cancer progression through shifts in hormones like melatonin, which your brain makes during sleep.  Melatonin is an antioxidant that helps to suppress harmful free radicals in your body and slows the production of estrogen, which can activate cancer. When your circadian rhythm is disrupted, your body may produce less melatonin and therefore may have less ability to fight cancer.

Weight & Diabetes:  Sleep deprivation can alter your levels of thyroid and stress hormones, which play a part in everything from your memory and immune system to your heart and metabolism.  People who sleep less than seven hours a night tend to have a higher body mass index (BMI) than people who sleep more. This could be because sleep deprivation alters metabolism. Leptin, the hormone that signals satiety, falls while ghrelin, which signals hunger, rises -- and this boosts your appetite.  Additionally, when too little sleep reduces levels of leptin and possibly causes you to gain weight , you could then develop diabetes.

Regardless of your age, the best way to keep your circadian clock functioning properly is to make sure you’re getting the necessary amount of  high quality sleep, during those hours when your body expects to be sleeping. The right amount for you is based on your individual sleep requirements and not on a one-size-fits-all prescribed number of hours.