It’s taken me longer than expected to get to this one. Sorry for the delay. I promise pillar four won’t be as far away.
As a reminder, there are four pillars in this series of posts:
There is overwhelming evidence that proper sleep is just as important, if not more than almost anything else when it comes to health.
Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day—Mother Nature’s best effort yet at contra-death.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
by Matthew Walker
Did you know there’s a fatal type of insomnia? What about a 24% increase in reported heart attacks in the US, every year on Monday after the 1-hour change of the clocks for Daylight Saving Time (caused by the loss of that 1 hour of sleep)? There are also more car accidents at this time as well.
Operating on less than five hours of sleep, your risk of a car crash increases threefold. Get behind the wheel of a car when having slept just four hours or less the night before and you are 11.5 times more likely to be involved in a car accident
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
by Matthew Walker
Numerous data points and studies indicate the importance of sleep. For example, there is a significant decrease in the effectiveness of vaccines for people averaging less than 6 hours of sleep per night (most notably the week before the vaccine) compared to those getting seven or more. So I’ll be making sure I get at least seven hours of sleep per night for a week before getting my flu shot this year!
Sleep, along with exercise, affects mood, cognition, and our basic abilities to function. Chronic sleep deprivation (less than seven hours per night) results in:
- Impaired memory
- Lack of alertness
- Increased risk of heart attack, stroke, seizures, mortality
- High blood pressure
- Headaches
- Increased appetite leading to weight gain
- And many other not so great things…
… studies have confirmed that poor sleep is one of the most underappreciated
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
factors contributing to cognitive and medical ill health in the elderly, including issues of diabetes, depression, chronic pain, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.
by Matthew Walker
Also, according to this study, after losing just one hour of sleep, it takes your body four days to recover. And the effects of too little or poor sleep accumulate over time.
Ten days of six hours of sleep a night was all it took to become as impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
by Matthew Walker
If all of this hasn’t convinced you, perhaps the correlation between sleep and income might be more persuasive?
Those who sleep more earn more money, on average, as economists Matthew Gibson and Jeffrey Shrader discovered when analyzing workers and their pay across the United States.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
by Matthew Walker
I used to be very guilty of not sleeping enough. I’m inclined to be up later in the evening, and I struggle to get to bed or sleep before 11 pm. Often, it’s closer to midnight or 1 am. This doesn’t work well when you need to be up (and alert and dressed, etc.) for meetings at 7 am. Now that I don’t have meetings before 8 am, this has become easier, and I’ve been more consistent with my sleep. I am also trying to break my habit of staying up extra late on the weekends and sleeping in, which leads to me staying up later during the week.
If you’re interested in more about sleep and why it’s so important, I highly recommend reading Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.
