Think You're Getting Good Sleep? Think Again. Sleep Is Like a Box of Donuts.

"Miss out on deep sleep a few times and you're inviting a health disaster because you are effectively crippling a major detoxification pathway known as the Glymphatic System".

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Quality sleep will soon be recognized as being as important as diet (or exercise) for optimal health. Science proves it with a flurry of recent discoveries. Conventional wisdom has always known it. Poor sleep can ruin a good diet as surely as eating an indigestible meal and drinking caffeine right before bed can ruin good sleep. Some people do "all the right things", i.e. eat well, exercise, practice mindfullness, and still fail to meet their health and well-being goals because poor quality sleep is undermining their efforts. Why don't we make the connection? Why don't we go the extra mile and improve our sleep? It isn't a lack of motivation or intelligence. It is that we are bad judges the quality of our own sleep, science has shown this over and over. We think we're getting good sleep but we are not.

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Sleep is Like A Box of Donuts?

Our bodies are fantastically intelligent but can be fooled. I use food as an example to help people better understand sleep. When asked if we are satisfied with a meal, we will answer "yes" because the satisfaction we feel comes from a hormonal response (a chemical message sent to our brain telling us we've eaten). Being that our bodies have built-in back-up systems, I was not surprised by the recent discovery that there are also stretch receptors in our intestines which send additional information to the brain, confirming and reinforcing the chemical message that we can stop eating. We feel "satisfied" because our brain has concluded, using the best information available, that we have satisfied the need to eat.

Eat an entire box of donuts as a meal and we do feel satisfied but the "satisfaction" tells us little or nothing about the quality of the meal or the potential impact of overloading on sugar, hydrogenated oils, preservatives, and such. Nor does our "satisfaction" jibe with the fact that the donuts may be missing essential nutrients like protein, vitamins, and fiber. We're not likely to connect the consequences (fatigue, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, constipation, irritability, etc) with the donuts unless we've been educated and know how to evaluate the food (by looking at the nutritional information label, for example).

Sleep, like food, is a biological imperitive. We can be fooled to feel satisfied when we get some sleep, even if the quality is poor. We associate fatigue with poor sleep, but we don't associate other consequences such as dreaded diseases, problems with learning and memory, impulsive and aggressive behaviors, and so on. Sleep doesn't come with a nutritional information label, nor does it come with a warning label.

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Sleep Hunger

Sleep hunger, as I like to call it, (a.k.a. "sleep pressure") is quieted by poor quality sleep in much the same way that a box of donuts will satisfy food hunger. There is a chemical reduction of adenosine that tells our brains we've slept but it doesn't tell us that the sleep was poor quality, what I call Non-Productive Sleep. Non-Productive Sleep is missing one or more essential "nutrients". Each stage of normal sleep serves a different and essential role in our health and well-being and most of us are not reaching one or more of these stages. Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have raised an urgent alarm to call attention to this dangerous epidemic.

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One Example Of How We Fool Ourselves and Why We Should Forgive Ourselves.

Many people induce sleep by self-medicating with a glass of wine, smoking some weed, or by taking a Benadryl. Yes, any of those can help initiate sleep and, if you have insomnia, you'll feel relieved in the same way a starving person is relieved if we give them a box of donuts. Laying awake in bed with insomnia is torturous. Sleep deprivation is quite literally a form of torture used on prisoners of war. Seen in this light, it is completely understandable and forgiveable that anyone would resort to self-medicating. If the strategy is effective then behavior is reinforced and soon becomes a habit. This is the dangerous condition in which I find many people.

Why is it dangerous? According to the newest and best science, alcohol, marijuana, or Benadryl before bed will interfere with achieving deep sleep, including Delta Wave sleep. Delta Wave sleep is when the brain performs a nightly detoxification, washing out the toxins that steadily collect there every day. Some toxins are endogenous (waste products created within our body) including beta-amyloid which is widely believed to cause Alzheimer's. Other toxins are environmental and these have increased tremendously in the past 20 years. Some are carcinogens (cancer causing), some are endocrine disruptors (think thyroid disease, low testosterone, estrogen imbalance), neurotoxins (nerve tissue destruction), and pesticides (long linked to Parkinson's). Miss out on deep sleep a few times and you're inviting a health disaster because you are effectively crippling a major detoxification pathway known as the Glymphatic System. Exposure to certain artificial lighting will also prevent deep sleep, as can a number of other things, all of which can be corrected, but only by taking a multi-systems approach, i.e. by looking at the big picture. In these situations we need to address internal chemistry, external lighting, and habitual behaviors.

How long does it take for the adverse health effects of missing your Delta Wave sleep take? I will be answering that question in another article. Hint: NOT VERY LONG.

Erik Spahn, MA, OT/L

Integrative Sleep Coach

©2019 by Erik Spahn, All Rights Reserved.