Prioritizing Sleep

The average human spends one-third of their life in bed. For a human who lives to be 100 years old, that equates to about 675,000 hours of sleep or 28,125 days.

For as long as we can remember, we are told that we need 8 hours of sleep per night. By our naivety, most of us failed to ever ask “Why?”. As we got older, 8 hours a night became arbitrary. Modern life has become more complex and filled with an tireless amount of activities to do everyday. It makes sense that as a society we have slowly began chipping away at the amount of time we spend sleeping.

Sleep is a universal behavior observed among the animal kingdom. Without exception, every animal species known to date spends a portion of their day sleeping. Animals have two innate behaviors: reproduction and survival. Engaging in a risky activity such as sleep for one-third of the day seems counter-intuitive to survival. Over millennia the need for sleep has not only stuck, but become even more important as brain complexity has advanced. Some people think they have outsmarted the process of millions of years of evolution by operating with only a few hours of sleep per night. Self-induced sleep deprivation and poor sleep hygiene is affecting both the total amount of sleep and the quality of sleep we are getting. A decline in sleep efficiency is a contributing factor to the rapid onset of serious diseases that are having a direct impact on health-span. Not getting enough sleep on a regular basis is a major roadblock as it pertains to the objective of sustaining life.

ATP is commonly referred to as the body’s energy currency. ATP is short for adenosine triphosphate. Every time the body moves, it undergoes a chemical reaction that removes one of the phosphate groups from the adenosine molecule. This is the fundamental process of living and what allows species to interact with the world. Through the process of creating energy, adenosine molecules get released into the blood stream eventually finding their way to an open receptor that binds together in the brain. As these adenosine receptors become saturated, this creates a “sleep pressure,” which is more commonly referred to as sleepiness.

The brain needs roughly 30 minutes of sleep to clear 1 hour of adenosine build up from the day. If we are awake for 16 hours of the day, that means our brain needs 8 hours to clear the adenosine receptors. Caffeine has a similar molecular structure to that of adenosine and competitively binds to the adenosine receptors in the brain. This is the mechanism that caffeine uses to keep us awake because it is slowing the build up of sleep pressure. Over time, the caffeine gets metabolized, which then frees up the adenosine receptors it was attached to.  Adenosine binds to these newly freed receptors, creating a sudden onset of sleepiness.  This process is most commonly known as a “caffeine crash.”

When it comes to living your happiest and healthiest life, sleep is a magic elixir for ensuring delightful contentedness. We believe in helping our clients instill proper sleep hygiene practices and encourage them to get adequate amounts of sleep every night. Sleep deprivation is having negative effects on society, and more effort needs to be put toward amending this intensifying issue. Understanding the importance of obtaining high quality sleep will enable one to maintain high energy levels, a strong immune system and a healthy metabolism. Poor sleep, on the other hand, can make you more susceptible to developing chronic illnesses, forgetful, less able to learn and retain information, and unnecessarily grouchy. Inadequate rest has been associated with depression, obesity and other mood disorders. It will also make you age faster, according to Matthew Walker, author of “Why We Sleep: Science of Sleep & Dream”.