In this episode of Next Act Ninjas, host Rachael Van Pelt delves into the critical role of sleep in promoting health and longevity. Discover why sleep is far from an "epic waste of time" and learn how it can significantly slow down the aging process and enhance overall well-being. Explore the science behind sleep, its impact on our body's repair systems, cognitive functions, and the bi-directional relationship between sleep and our daily habits. Gain practical strategies for optimizing sleep hygiene, understanding sleep disorders, and achieving high-quality Deep and REM sleep. Join us to unlock the secrets to better sleep and a healthier, longer life.
Chapters
00:00 Sleep is Foundational to Health Longevity
02:03 Sleep Deprivation Impairs Cognition and Shortens Lifespan
03:26 Poor Sleep Counters the Benefits Diet and Exercise
04:50 The Bi-directional Relationship Between Sleep and Mood
05:46 Sleep Quality is Even More Important than Quantity
06:59 Lack of Good Sleep Ages Us Prematurely
08:29 Improving Sleep Slows Biological Aging and Dementia
09:17 Strategies for Optimizing Sleep Quality
15:00 Addressing Underlying Medical Issues or Medications that Impair Sleep
17:05 Train Your Body to Become a Champion Sleeper
Welcome back to Next Act Ninjas, the #1 podcast for flourishing after 50. I'm your host, Rachael Van Pelt, and today I'm tackling a topic that's absolutely crucial for your health longevity, sleep. Many people view sleep as an epic waste of time. There's this machismo idea in our culture, I think, that sleep is somehow slothful or lazy or just plain unproductive. And yet, sleep is absolutely foundational to our existence and lack of sleep ages us prematurely. So I want to uncover why sleep is so essential to slowing down the aging process and enhancing our overall health.
From a physiologic standpoint, sleep is anything but a waste of time. It's a period when our metabolic rate slows down to conserve energy and our body undergoes extensive repair and healing overnight. While we sleep, our metabolic rate, our endocrine system, our immune systems readjust to meet the demands of the previous day. It's much like replenishing a bank account after we've gone on a spending spree. It's a time our body goes through some checks and balances. Now our bodies operate on a 24-hour clock or a circadian rhythm that needs to be reset every night.
We used to think this clock's rhythm was entirely controlled by our brain. But now science shows us that nearly every cell in the body has its own internal clock, which is why sleep impacts our physiology so much. The rhythms of these clock genes affect everything from our hormone levels to metabolism to how our immune system fights off infection. And environmental signals like temperature or light and dark or diet and exercise impact their rhythm as well. Things like jet lag, shift work, medications, and aging also shift these cellular clocks, though the 24-hour rhythm of the clocks never stops. And sleep is crucial to these rhythms, but it's also critical to our survival.
If you deprive someone of sleep for just 24 to 48 hours, it's more detrimental to them than starving them of food and water. It's why militaries use sleep deprivation as a method of torture and for getting prisoners to comply. Sleep deprivation significantly impairs cognitive function and overall well-being, and it does it almost instantaneously. In fact, just staying awake for 18 to 20 hours is going to impact your cognitive ability as much as if you were legally drunk. Our culture often glorifies the idea of not needing sleep.
We say things like, "I'll sleep when I'm dead". However, chronic sleep deprivation can significantly shorten our lifespan. It increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, strokes, many types of cancers, dementia, especially Alzheimer's disease. The impact on health happens fast too. Just one week of poor sleep adversely affects a huge number of genes that regulate your immune function, tumor suppression, inflammation, vascular function, glucose control.
And lack of sleep counters any positive health changes you may be trying to make during the day. For example, when people are dieting to lose weight and they're not getting good sleep, studies show that they lose more muscle than fat. Typically when you diet to lose weight, about 30% of the weight you lose is muscle mass. If you're sleep deprived, that number goes up to 70%. So here you are, you're working hard to lose 10 pounds, but you're not sleeping well. So now you lose seven pounds of muscle instead of three pounds of muscle. You lose only three pounds of fat instead of seven pounds of fat. It's awful. You've totally shot yourself in the foot. That muscle loss is going to ensure you regain the weight almost immediately because your metabolic rate is linked to your muscle mass. Worse, those same studies show that you're also going to crave more sugar. You're going to eat more calories because that lack of sleep negatively impacts your hunger and satiety hormones, ghrelin and leptin. Lack of sleep also reduces your strength and fitness gains if you're doing an exercise program. In short, if you're not getting enough sleep while you're making those healthy lifestyle changes, you are working against yourself.
The effects aren't just physical either, they're mental. Lack of sleep impacts our memory and mood. I mean, we all know being tired makes us moody and irritable, but it also impacts our mental clarity, our motivation to exercise, control over our food choices and so forth. Conversely, when you get sufficient sleep, your mood improves, activity improves, food choices improve, productivity and creativity improve. In other words, the effects of sleep are bi-directional, meaning when we improve our sleep, our mood improves. When mood improves, we sleep better. When we sleep better, we make better food choices. When we eat better, our sleep improves. When we sleep better, we have more energy to exercise. When we exercise more, our sleep improves. It's all interwoven together, isn't it? It's integrated physiology at its best.
I think it's also important to highlight that sleep quality is more important even than quantity. The overall quality of your sleep depends on how much time you spend in Deep sleep and REM sleep. Deep sleep is that restorative phase where the body repairs tissues, builds bone and muscle, strengthens the immune system. Whereas REM sleep or dream sleep is critical for cognitive function. Dreaming acts as an emotional first aid or soothing therapy. It promotes memory, creativity, problem solving, insight. Dreaming alchemizes your physical, mental, emotional information. When we are deprived of Deep and REM sleep, our mortality risk goes up even more than if we aren't getting enough sleep. In other words, you could be in bed sleeping eight hours a night, but if I kept waking you up repeatedly and you were only drifting in and out of light sleep and never getting into Deep or REM sleep, your body and brain will not get adequate restoration. It's going to deteriorate over time.
As we age, it's common to see shifts in our circadian rhythm. As we age, it's common to see shifts in our circadian rhythm, as well as reductions in sleep quantity and quality. Sleep disturbances such as insomnia, sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, those things are common. But that poor sleep also accelerates biological aging. It contributes to the shortening of telomeres. That's those protective caps on the ends of our chromosomes that when they shorten, are associated with shorter lifespan, higher risk of chronic disease. Sleep deprivation also increases insulin resistance, oxidative stress, inflammation, all of which are key drivers of cellular aging and most age-related chronic diseases. And the effects of poor sleep on the brain and cognitive function are even worse. We get inflammation of the central nervous system, we get impaired waste removal, and more plaque formation in the brain. That's what contributes to the dementia. Our neurons just begin to degenerate, which contributes to depression, delirium, eventually dementia. Later down the road, those chronic sleep disturbances can also become a major cause of frailty and falls and early nursing home placement. It's this vicious negative feedback cycle where lack of sleep ages us and aging worsens our sleep.
If we improve sleep, on the other hand, we can slow that biological aging. High quality Deep sleep and REM sleep enhances the repair of DNA. It reduces oxidative stress. It improves insulin sensitivity, reduces inflammation. It supports production of growth hormone, which plays a vital role in tissue repair and muscle growth. Good sleep helps maintain the integrity of all of our biological systems. It promotes longevity. It reduces the risk of those age-related diseases and cognitive decline I just talked about. Bottom line, getting on top of your sleep is critical if you want to prevent disease, if you want to preserve your brain function, if you want to stay independent. So why don't we tackle a few strategies that you can implement right away?
First and foremost, always start by optimizing your routine and your environment. This is also known as improving your sleep hygiene. Our central clock and our cellular clocks thrive on regularity. So consistency is your friend here. Consistency is the most effective way to improve your sleep quality. You always want to start with a consistent sleep schedule. You want to establish a regular bedtime, a regular wake up time. Go to bed at the exact same time, as close as you can anyway, every night. Wake up at the same time every morning, including weekends. And make sure that you have a consistent wind-down routine, a consistent wake-up routine in the morning. Gradually prepare for sleep at night by dimming the lights an hour before bed. That helps to trigger melatonin production. Try calming activities like reading, meditating, listening to soothing music. There are a lot of great sleep meditations now on places like YouTube and Spotify these days. I highly recommend those. Always avoid stimulants, late night snacking, screen time one to two hours before bed. And don't forget to optimize your environment. Eliminate anything in your room that distracts you from sleep. That includes TV in the bedroom, pets in the bedroom, any kind of lights, noise, and try to keep your room temperature around 62 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 degrees Centigrade. That's the ideal room temperature for a good night's sleep.
But it's not just what you do at night either. How you wake up in the morning is just as important. Ideally, you want to get some natural sunlight first thing when you wake up. Morning sunlight exposure improves sleep quality. And it does it through a variety of mechanisms. It does it through because it helps synchronize your circadian rhythms. It signals your body to stop producing melatonin and start producing cortisol. It boosts your serotonin and vitamin D and it impacts your hunger and satiety hormones, leptin and ghrelin. So that morning sunlight is an important signal to your body. It not only improves how you feel throughout the day, but also how you sleep at night.
And what you do the rest of the day matters as well. Regular exercise, especially high intensity exercise or strength training, promotes better sleep, by regulating your body temperature, it helps to reduce anxiety and depression, and it adjusts your circadian rhythms. It also impacts the oxidative stress and insulin sensitivity and inflammation we talked about. Napping is a whole other subject. Napping is a little trickier. If you need a power nap, go ahead and take it, but you have to keep it short. Ideally, only 15 to 30 minutes and early in the afternoon, at least eight hours before your usual bedtime. This is going to help prevent grogginess and won't interfere with your nighttime sleep. But you want to watch out for the need for frequent napping. If you feel like you need to nap all the time, that could be a signal of a problem and it can lead to just worse sleep during the night and poor sleep quality. If you have insomnia, I would avoid napping altogether as it's just going to make things worse.
Now, if you regularly wake up in the middle of the night and you have difficulty falling back to sleep, there are a few things that you can try. First, do your best just to prevent waking up in the first place if you can. Eliminate things in your environment that tend to wake you up, like a pet, a phone that's on your bedside table, other devices in the room, that sort of thing. Eliminate alcohol or caffeine from your routine before bed. Avoid over hydrating before bed. You know, if you drink too much water right before bedtime and you're waking up with a full bladder, you might want to cut down on that. But once you're awake and if you're unable to fall back to sleep, there are some strategies that you can do. I think one of the most effective strategies is called paradoxical intention. Instead of trying to fall asleep, try to stay awake.
Focus on something like Deep breathing or meditation or progressive relaxation. That's where you tense and relax each muscle in your body, starting from your head and working down towards your toes. If your mind starts to wander towards thinking, you know, that monkey mind gets turned on, all you have to do is gently bring your attention back to your breathing or your meditation or the muscle relaxation that you were doing.
One of my favorite things to try and works really well for me is staying awake doing a simple task like counting back from 100 by sevens or reciting the alphabet backwards (in your mind, of course). These strategies give you something to focus on that is just hard enough to take your mind off rumination and worry about the future, but not so hard that it keeps you awake for a long period of time.
Some people are going to tell you to get up and go do something else like reading and then come back to bed. I don't recommend that because it's far more disruptive to your circadian rhythms and it tends to train your body to fully wake up in the middle of the night when what you really want to train is to fall back asleep faster.
But if after trying all of these things, you continue to experience difficulty falling asleep, waking up frequently in the middle of the night, or you keep waking up early and earlier in the morning, you may need to do a deeper dive on your health. Obviously, the occasional sleep disruption is totally normal, but if it's happening most nights of the week, you might have an underlying medical condition that needs to be addressed. It can just be a red flag. Sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, depression, anxiety, menopausal symptoms, they're all common causes of insomnia. If you suspect poor health is the root cause, you're going to want to talk to your doctor. Sometimes going to a sleep lab and undergoing some testing is necessary. It's important that you identify and treat any underlying medical conditions such as thyroid dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic pain, because all of these things are intimately tied with insomnia.
That being said, sometimes it's the medications that are used to treat these underlying conditions that are actually causing the insomnia. So be sure to review any medications that you're taking with your doctor. Many frequently prescribed medications are known to impair sleep. Your doctor can tell you if there are good alternatives that might have less impact on your sleep or if you can make a simple adjustment like taking the medication in the morning instead of the evening. But
I highly recommend avoiding any kind of sleep medications, any kind of sleep aids, including the over-the-counter things if you can. While they can help you sleep more hours, they rarely improve sleep quality and they often make matters much worse, increasing daytime grogginess and chronic disease risk. Consider sleep meds only after you rule out other medical issues and you've implemented lifestyle changes, and only if nothing works.
Training your body to sleep deeply most nights of the week takes some time and attention, just like cleaning up your diet or building your fitness. Keep a sleep log for a month. I highly recommend that. That'll help you understand when you sleep well and when you don't. Many smart watches today track REM sleep and Deep sleep. They're not perfect, but they will give you an idea what works and what doesn't, and if you're improving over time. That's how I discovered menopause and red wine don't mix. After I hit menopause, just one glass of red wine with dinner was enough to decrease my REM sleep significantly. Doesn't seem fair, does it? But at least I know what price I'll pay for that glass of wine if I choose to drink it.
Whatever you do, be patient. Fixing poor sleep won't happen overnight (pun intended). Improving sleep is a holistic process that involves addressing your environment, daytime and nighttime behaviors, your underlying medical conditions, medications. But when you understand just how foundational sleep is to your health, think making sleep quality your goal becomes a no-brainer, doesn't it? Better sleep can significantly improve your health, slow down the aging process, and enhance your overall well-being. Remember, investing time in improving your sleep is going to pay off in the long run. It's going to lead to a healthier, happier Next Act. Just remember, what you train is what you get. So train to become a champion sleeper, not an insomniac.
That's all I have for today. Thank you for joining me today on another episode of Next Act Ninjas. I hope you find these insights helpful in your journey towards a longer, healthier life. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast and share with other longevity-minded folks in your tribe, because together we're all going to achieve more.
Until next time, live well, love more, age less, my friends.