Wonder Drug Sleep decreases Cancer Risk, Obesity (and improves sex!)

What if there was a product that could decrease obesity, improve cognitive function and memory, regulate hormone levels, increase sexual drive and performance and prolong the length and improve the quality of your life? Would you be interested in purchasing such a thing?

What if I had some to give away? I know that as a Tips of the Scale listener, you must be someone interested in health and longevity and today I’m proud to announce our backing of a fabulous new wonder drug on the market. The best part about it? It’s free and you have nearly unlimited supply of it already in your house. Today I’m going to tell you about it at the low low price of one click.

It’s called Sleep.

Whenever I get people asking me how to lose weight or people stuck in a plateau, I always ask the same three questions:

• What are you eating?
• What are you doing for exercise?
• How’s your sleep?

The first two are probably obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people are eating nothing but garbage and exercising and shocked when they aren’t losing weight. Or others who have been eating the same way for a while, benefitted from some weight loss and then have never considered some exercise to break through a plateau. But sleep is a rare consideration for health and longevity and yet I would say it’s almost as important.

“Losing weight is 85% what you put in your mouth.”

I see quotes like this all the time. My personal opinion is that weight loss success breaks into consistency in these categories:

Can you lose weight without sleep or exercise? Absolutely. You could also drive across the country going 2/3 of the speed your car is capable of driving, or you could drive the way God intended: so fast that the Highway Patrol can’t catch you.

So now that we’ve announced our partnership with the wonder-drug, SLEEP, I’d tell you a little about sleep and to introduce you to its amazing benefits. As with all pharmaceutical advertisements, we will end our article with some side effects rapidly stated so you can’t hear them.

Do I really need to sleep? “I’M NOT TIRED”.

As a father, I hear this one all the time.

Seriously though, our bodies have an internal clock inside them that require our bodies to rest through sleep. Throughout the day, we experience various levels of stress and challenges and our bodies have evolved to respond to these through hormonal releases. These hormone releases have been shown through studies to not just occur in response to the stresses but on a timed release suggesting the existence of a circadium clock. Think of this circadium clock as a 16 hour awake candle that upon burning out, needs you to go to sleep so the Sleep Fairy can bring you a new one to burn for the next day. While the Sleep Fairy is imaginary, this is not: (studies show that disruption of this pattern (getting enough sleep) results in cancer and increased risk of coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.)[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24863387]

TLDR: 

So you’re telling me I could get diseases. I’m going to die anyway one day. What is the big hairy deal in the short term. Let’s talk about a few things.

Sleep Turns you into the guy from the Oatmeal commercial

POP QUIZ HOT SHOT. Take a group of healthy young men and women and give them an all expense paid trip to a science lab. Feed them healthy and let them have normal sleep for four days. Take blood readings. Then take four days and only let them sleep for 4.5 hours. How do their bodies react?

Their insulin sensitivity was 16% lower after just 4 days of poor sleep. The situation is twice as dire for those who are already obese because their fat cells insulin sensitivity were a whopping 30% lower. If you don’t know what insulin sensitivity is, understand this: these numbers were consistent with levels in obese and already diabetic patients. Meaning these people went from healthy to diabetic in 4 days of bad sleep. The researcher commented this way:

“This is the equivalent of metabolically aging someone 10 to 20 years just from four nights of partial sleep restriction. Fat cells need sleep, and when they don’t get enough sleep, they become metabolically groggy.”

Let’s make the glass half full: he just said getting sleep will make you 10–20 years younger. Put that in your compact and apply it ladies. For those that still have excess weight (like those attempting a fat loss protocol), not getting sufficient sleep makes insulin resistance greater and losing fat even more difficult.

Less Sleep makes you more Stoopid

In another study, they took a look at patients who were experience short term sleep deprivation (like the kind you experience when cramming for a major exam) as well as long term sleep deprivation (the kind you get once you’re working and having kids, HAPPY FATHER’S DAY BTW). This study actually took a look at four groups:

• 3 hours a night
• 5 hours a night
• 7 hours a night
• 9 hours a night

Throughout the study, they continued to give these groups tests determining their mental function. For the 3 hour group, they found that throughout the test, every day they continued to get worse on a steady basis. If you’re getting 3 hours of sleep a day, chances are you get worse every single day.

If you’re like most Americans, you get 5–7 hours of sleep per night. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously advised a bunch of graduating seniors to “sleep faster” than 8 hours. Well the good news is that if you listened to Arnold, you will perform worse for two days and then it won’t continue to get worse, you’ll just perform at a crappier level than the people who didn’t listen to Arnold and got sufficient sleep.

Other benefits to not listening to Arnold include not getting involved with the worst Batman project of all time.

Not only did they find that sleep lowered cognitive ability and mental health, it also decreased motivation. If you’re someone who already struggles with motivation to eat healthy and stick with an exercise program, not getting sufficient sleep will only increase your potential for failure.

ATTENTION GENTLEMEN AND THE PEOPLE THAT LOVE THEM: SLEEP MAKES SEXY TIME BETTER

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why did we not talk about this up front? I mean cancer, stupidity and diabetes suck, but sex sells. Good question. I wish I had gotten enough sleep to think of that sooner.

This study again took healthy men and let them sleep enough then put them on a 5 hour a night sleep schedule. Guess what they found.

They experienced testosterone reductions in the average of 10–15%. These healthy men managed to age 15 years in eight days of poor sleep.

Gentlemen, in case you haven’t gotten the memo, testosterone is vital to your body and as you age into your mid 30s, it starts to decrease 1–2% per year. Testosterone replacement is all the rage these days (pun intended). Lower testosterone results in:

• reduced ability to grow muscle.
• decreased bone density.
• decreased sex drive.
• decreased reproductive ability.

And guess when sleep deprived male’s testosterone levels were lowest in this study? Between 2–10pm. Or as I like to call it, SEXY TIME. If you aren’t getting sleep, your hormones are lowest when you need them most.

Ok, ok, I get it. What do I do?

So how much sleep should you get? The CDC says between 7–8, the study cited earlier saw increased cognitive ability at 9 but some studies showed decreased lifespan in people sleeping more than 8. Everyone is different, but the sweet spot definitely appears to be around 7.5 hours per day.

Setting aside that many hours can be difficult. Also some people struggle to fall asleep at night. I’m not the poster child for this but I’ll give you a few suggestions that work for me (when I do them):

• Keep artificial lighting out of your bedroom at night. Turn off the lights and avoid television and screens in your bed. Artificial lighting can mess with your Vitamin D levels preventing you from sleeping soundly. A recent study found that artificial blue lighting made patients decrease sleepiness and experience increased hunger and insulin resistance.
• Develop a sleepytime routine. As a kid, perhaps your parents read you a story every night. This kind of routine is a stimulus-response thing that will help your mind and body know you are shutting down for the night. Perhaps you have some sleepytime tea or read a book today. Whatever it is, just do it
• If you aren’t praying or meditating, I seriously suggest this. For me this helps calm me and take away the stresses of the day.
• Avoid checking email and text messages at night. Sometimes we receive a message we can’t do anything about and yet we stress about it all night.
• Avoid drinking to excess and eating too late at night.

Like anything else with your health, the most important advice I can give you is stop giving into excuses and just make it happen. Get your 7–8 hours. You’ll live longer and better.

Are you getting enough sleep? What stands in the way? Let me know in the comments how you make sleep a priority in your life. Until next time, I’m going to go get some sleep right now.