One-third of U.S. adults get less than the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Adults have even become bedtime procrastinators enjoying leisure activities like scrolling social media and socializing with friends before bedtime. Inadequate sleep can cause havoc on your mental and physical health including the increased risk of cardiometabolic disease and all-cause mortality. So, how do you get a good night’s sleep?
Sleep & Your Physical Health
As you sleep, your body is working hard to repair and replenish you for the next day. Disruption in your sleep such as timing, duration, and efficiency can lead you to feeling less restored when you wake up to even more severe conditions in your health.
Weight Gain & Obesity
Your circadian rhythm helps regulate your body’s hormone production for appetite and digestion. A circadian rhythm is the physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a daily 24-hour cycle. When you don’t get adequate sleep, it leads to an increase in ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hormone that elevates the appetite. It makes you feel hungrier when you are awake. Also, you tend to crave carbohydrates more when you are tired. Your body is searching for a quick fuel source to give it energy. Lacking the energy to fuel your mind and your body after a night without proper sleep, you also may skip your exercise routine. All these things lead to weight gain and eventually obesity.
Sleep Apnea
Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) causes pauses in your breathing during sleep due to a blocked or collapsed airway. Blood oxygen decreases as a result. This cycle of breathing and not breathing affects your sleep quality and can cause snoring. It also triggers a release of stress hormones to raise your heart rate. The increases of hormones increase the risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and arrhythmias. 58% of moderate to severe OSA is due to obesity.
Type 2 Diabetes
Not getting a good night’s sleep can decrease your tolerance for glucose and cause insulin resistance. Along with obesity (see above), this increases your risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
Blood Pressure
Getting adequate sleep allows the body to produce a healthy number of cytokines that help with the inflammatory response in your body. Not getting proper sleep may reduce cytokine levels and how your body reacts to bacteria, toxins, and other foreign substances that can do damage to your body. Poor sleep lowers the response to vaccines and increases the risk for infectious diseases. It can also affect other areas of the body like your gut health. Too much inflammation in your body can cause cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, arthritis, and depression.
Sleep & Your Mental Health
Most of you have experienced what a bad night of sleep can do to your mental well-being. It can lead to you being grouchy and less tolerant. Also, sleep deprivation can make it difficult for you to focus and to remember things.
Lack of sleep increases the risk for poor decision making. Long term sleep deprivation can cause a decrease in the function of dopamine receptors. Dopamine receptors regulate decision making and impulse control.
Depression & Anxiety
Lack of proper sleep can also be a signal that there is something more serious going on with your mental health. Health professionals use sleep issues as part of a criteria when diagnosing mental health conditions. Sleep issues are a common side effect of depression and anxiety. Many people who have depression have trouble falling asleep and frequently wake up throughout the night. They also sleep longer than normal.
Two subcategories of depression that affect sleep are Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and postpartum depression. SAD is a type of reoccurring depression that is linked to seasonal changes. People can experience social withdrawal, gaining weight, and sleeping longer than usual. This type of disorder is thought to be caused by the disruption of your internal clock or circadian rhythm. Postpartum depression is when a woman continues to have mood changes after two weeks of giving birth. Inadequate sleep can contribute to postpartum depression and be a symptom.
Similar to depression, anxiety and lack of proper sleep usually happen reciprocally. Sleep issues lead to increased anxiety and anxiety worsens sleep issues. Many people with anxiety experience frequent nightmares and have trouble sleeping when they are stressed.
Dementia
When you sleep, your body is at work. Throughout the day, amyloid proteins pile up. The brain shrinks while you are in deep sleep and the cerebrospinal fluid mixes with the interstitial fluid (fluid between cells) and moves through the brain. The brain gets washed while you are in deep sleep! Why is this important? Amyloid proteins are linked to Alzheimer’s disease. These proteins may predict the rate of cognitive decline. The quality of your sleep early in your life may increase the risk of developing dementia.
Tips to Create a Good Night’s Sleep
Adapt these habits to get a better quality of sleep:
- Stick to a schedule. Go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning. This helps to reinforce your circadian rhythm which helps you sleep better.
- Avoid late night meals (2 hours before bedtime for your food to digest) and excessive liquids before bedtime. Limiting your intake of liquids before bed reduces the need to get up to use the bathroom at night.
- Avoid caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine stays in your system for a relatively long time and may interfere with the quality of your sleep many hours after you have it. Alcohol usually makes people sleepy at first. But, when alcohol’s effects start to wear off, the body spends more time in light sleep. Light sleep may lead to you waking up more and having fewer hours sleeping. Alcohol can lead to more severe snoring and lower blood oxygen levels after drinking.
- Lower the lights. Limit your exposure to bright lights, especially blue light, which interferes with melatonin production. Melatonin is a hormone that helps you go to sleep. It is produced in the pineal gland which regulates your circadian rhythm.
- Create a relaxing sleep environment. Have your bedroom be dark, quiet, and cool. Only use your bed for sleeping and sex. This gives your brain the signal that it is time for sleep. Don’t scroll, watch tv, work, etc. in your bed.
- Don’t lay in bed awake. If you can’t fall asleep or wake up in the night and can’t fall back asleep within 20 minutes, get out of bed. Find a relaxing activity to do until you are tired. (meditation, listening to relaxing music, stretching)
- Follow a soothing bedtime routine. Start a relaxing, quiet activity 30-60 minutes before bedtime. Examples include reading, taking a warm bath, listening to music, a meditation to relax your thoughts, or a simple breathing technique to slow down the mind and body.
- Establish healthy daytime habits. -Eat a healthy diet. -Be physically active. Physically demanding activities, like exercise, increase the pressure to sleep that builds throughout your day. This is called homeostatic sleep drive. Sleeping resets your sleep drive, which starts again when you wake up the next day. A study found that mind-body exercises like yoga and tai chi were most effective at improving sleep, but you can also include aerobic exercises and strength training into your routine as well. Physical exercise increases the body’s need for restorative sleep to repair your muscles and energy. When you exercise outside, your circadian rhythm improves which can help improve your sleep cycle. -Avoid naps after 3pm.
Get started on establishing your healthy bedtime habits by trying this short yoga sequence for bedtime. You can even do it in your pajamas and then hop into bed!
Much love & health,
Carrie
Resources:
Carlson MS, S. (2023, September 11). The thief of (bed)time: Examination of the daily associations between bedtime procrastination and multidimensional sleep health. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.sleephealthjournal.org/article/S2352-7218(23)00171-7/fulltext
Breus, Dr. M. (2024, January 19). Sleep and Mental Health. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://sleepdoctor.com/mental-health/
Breus, Dr. M. (2024, January 19). Exercise and Sleep. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://sleepdoctor.com/exercise/
