9 to 5 Wellness
Do you have the knowledge you need to help your organization get the best return on the time and capital invested in employee wellbeing? Are you a busy professional or C-suite leader looking to introduce wellbeing program at your work?
Discover the art and science of helping organizations grow their most important resource, their people. In this podcast we discuss how organizations can utilize the potential of wellbeing programs to deliver high return on investment (ROI) to employers. We talk about the radical impact that holistic employee wellbeing programs can have on overall quality of work and productivity. We will be sharing insights on investing in human capital. Such as:
🌟 What has helped their organizations gain a competitive advantage?
🌟 How they see the future of employee wellbeing?
🌟 Misunderstandings that are out in the corporate market today
🌟 Advice to other leaders to create a happier, healthier, and more productive workplace
Our guests are C-suite leaders, and wellness innovators across the value chain: HR managers, wellness champions, community wellbeing ambassadors, service vendors, and wellness consultants.
9 to 5 Wellness
Sleepless- Your Brain and Body On Sleep
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My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!
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Hello and welcome to episode number 103 of the Nine to Five Wellness Podcast. I'm coming to you live today from Sacramento, California. I'm visiting my family. It was my birthday yesterday and I started the Nine to Five Wellness podcast exactly two years ago. On my birthday, so it's also our podcast, second anniversary. So I was like, I'm gonna celebrate with my family by scheduling a trip to California at this time.
And today I'm going to talk to you about the vicious cycle of sleep deprivation and how it impacts our health. The reason why I'm going so deep on the topic of sleep is because we are a sleep deprived society. So today we are gonna dive deep into the anatomy of sleep and the impact of sleep on our brain and body.
Did you know that we spend one third of our lives sleeping, but. Guess what? We don't fully understand the mechanism of sleep and the impact it has on our health. That's why before the 1960s, most people believed sleep was a passive activity during which body and brain were dormant. And honestly, I've lived my life with this mindset for most of my younger years, like till I turned 30.
That's when I started getting serious about distance running and training for races, and then I felt the impact of sleep on my training. So then I started clocking in seven to eight hours of sleep on a regular basis. I learned that sleep is a period during which my brain is engaged in a number of activities, which makes my cognitive functions better during the day, and it also helps me recover physically. If you've ever pulled an all-nighter or maybe just had a string of nights with only four or five hours of sleep, you know what I'm talking about. You feel foggy, irritable, maybe a little shaky. You tell yourself, I'll catch up on the weekend, but what if I told you that in just 24 hours of being awake, your cognitive impairment is similar to having a blood alcohol content of 0.1% that's higher than the legal driving limit.
No, you can't make up for lost sleep on the weekends.
So today in this episode, we are going to talk about the shocking long-term and immediate ways that lack of sleep impacts your body, from your brain cells to your heart. First, I wanna discuss the two main systems that control your sleep. The first system, which you might have heard about is your circadian rhythm, which is controlled by a biological clock located in your brain.
This clock is sensitive to light cues ramping up production of the hormone melatonin at night because it gets dark at night. Then the production of melatonin switches off when it senses light, which is mostly with sunrise.
Now, the blue light impacts light cues of our circadian rhythm but because we are dependent on modern technology, blue light from our device screens in the evening suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin, tricking your brain into thinking it's still daytime, which delays sleep onset and disrupts your natural circadian rhythm. This confusion makes you feel more alert and awake, making it harder for you to fall asleep even though you're tired.
The second main system is sleep drive. When you are tired, your body craves sleep. It's like getting hungry for food throughout the day. Your desire for sleep builds and when it reaches a certain point, you need to sleep. However, a major difference between sleep and hunger is that. Your body can't force you to eat when you're hungry, but when you're tired, it can put you to sleep , even when you're sitting at your desk or behind the wheel of a car. I actually went through a very sleep deprived stage recently. I used to get so drowsy driving back from work that I had to pull over off the highway and take a 30 to 40 minute nap before driving back home.
The last few weeks I've been catching up on my sleep and I feel so much better now. So I have firsthand experience with a very strong sleep drive, and I wanna tell you, it doesn't feel good when you're going through sleep deprivation at that extent.
When you're fatigued or exhausted, your body will find a way for you to sleep. Research shows that your body can even sometimes engage in microsleep episodes of a few seconds while your eyes are open.
Can you imagine the consequences if you have a Microsleep episode behind the wheel? I track my sleep on my Garmin watch, and if I nap for more than 30 minutes later in the day, it warns me that your nap was too late. It's going to impact your sleep quality. So as I was researching for this episode, I learned that literature suggests, that naps later in the day can throw off your night's sleep by decreasing your body's natural sleep drive. Let's talk about circadian rhythm in more detail. You might find this surprising because I found it so surprising that research has found that there are genes that shape your sleep clock.
What? I couldn't even imagine that there are genes that control our sleep.
How did they find this? Researchers tried to remove this gene called wide awake from fruit flies. Those flies experienced problems falling asleep and staying asleep. A similar sleep gene exists in humans as well.
There are core plot genes like PR two c, Y one PER, three Cs, NK 1D, and timeless gene, which regulate the 24 hour feedback, which regulate the 24 hour feedback loop of clock proteins in our body. A couple of those proteins are clock and BMAL one that control our daily rhythms.
Genes are also responsible for caffeine metabolism like cY PA one, two gene. That dictates how fast you clear caffeine, slow metabolizers, feel caffeine longer, delaying sleep while fast metabolizers, clear it quickly, potentially leading to early waking. I know for sure that I'm a fast metabolizer of caffeine because, I drink a lot of it. I drink like four to five cups of coffee every day. I'm totally addicted to it. It's okay. Caffeine is good for health and longevity. Now genetic variations can alter core clock proteins. Shifting your sleep wake cycle and making you more or less adaptable to environmental changes like jet lag or shift work.
Although you might think that throughout the night all sleep is equal, but it's not. Throughout the time that you're asleep, your brain will cycle repeatedly through two different types of sleeps. REM sleep, which stands for rapid eye Movement sleep, and non REM sleep. Now the first part of the cycle is non REM sleep.
It is composed of four different stages. The first stage is between being awake and falling asleep. The second is light sleep. When your heart rate and breathing regulate and body temperature drops, the third and fourth stages are deep sleep.
Although scientists believed that REM sleep was the most important sleep phase for learning and memory, but new research shows that non REM sleep is equally important for these tasks.
Since it's the more restful and restorative phase of sleep, there is one characteristic of REM sleep that differentiates it, and I wanna bring it up over here. As you cycle into REM sleep, your eyes move rapidly behind closed lids and brainwaves are similar to those,
during wakefulness. And your body becomes temporarily paralyzed as you dream. The cycle then repeats itself, but with each cycle, you spend less time in the deeper stages, which are the third and fourth stage of sleep and more time in REM sleep. On a typical night, you'll cycle through these stages four or five times.
Let's take a look at the anatomy of sleep. So we are gonna take a dive into the command center of our bodies, the brain, specifically how a few small structures deep inside your brain manage to flip the on and off switches for sleep and wake fullness. It's a complex system, but don't worry.
I got you. Let's break it down into few key players, which I call the Brain's Sleep Team. First up, we have the hypothalamus. Think of this as the main control center, like a tiny air traffic controller for sleep and wakefulness. It's about the size of a peanut and it sits deep in your brain. Inside the hypothalamus is a crucial little clusters of cells called the super charismatic nucleus, or SCN for short. This is your master clock. It takes cues directly from your eyes about how much light is there. The SCN helps keep your daily rhythm or circadian rhythm on track if this gets damaged, people sleep at all sorts of random times because they can't sense the light dark cycle properly. There's a related, interesting fact here too that I wanna share with you, that most blind people can still sense some light, which helps regulate their sleep cycle.
Next. Let's move to the brainstem. This part controls the actual transition between being awake and asleep. Cells in the brainstem and hypothalamus produce a chemical messenger called gaba. GABA acts like a dimmer switch, reducing the activity in these areas to help you drift off. The brainstem also has a special role during dreaming or your REM sleep cycle. It sends signals to your muscles. Basically pressing the pause button on movement so you don't act out your dreams while you're asleep. Now let's talk about the thalamus. The thalamus is like a sensory relay station. It sends information from your senses, what you see, what you hear, what you feel up to the brain's outer layer, the cerebral cortex where memory and thinking happens
when you're in most stages of sleep, the thalamus gets quiet, helping you tune out the outside world. But during REM sleep, it gets busy. The thalamus becomes active again. Sending all sorts of images and sounds to the cortex, creating the vivid dreams we experience. Finally, we have the pineal gland, the melatonin maker. This tiny gland receives signals from the SCN and starts pumping out the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is what helps you feel sleepy when the lights go down. So. There it is a coordinated team of structures, working behind the scenes every single night.
Understanding these processes helps us appreciate the complexity of a good night's sleep. Now let's talk about the key systems impacted by sleep. Sleep is essential for the brain's health. Acting as a vital system for repair, memory consolidation, and waste removal via the glymphatic system, while improving cognitive functions like focus, learning, and emotional regulation, insufficient sleep impairs these processes, and it's not only your brain that is impacted by sleep.
Sleep affects almost every type of tissue and system in your body from the brain, heart, and lungs to metabolism, immune function, mood and disease Resistance research shows that a chronic lack of sleep or getting poor quality sleep increases the risk of health problems like high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, and obesity. That's why good sleep is important for longevity. Now, let's take a closer look at how these systems are impacted. Let's start with the most obvious impact, the brain fog and mental toll that sleep deprivation takes. When you don't get enough sleep, your body is unable to form new pathways between nerve cells that help you process and retain new information. If you've been having trouble concentrating or remembering where you put your keys, this is likely why, but it goes deeper.
During sleep, your brain performs housekeeping, clearing out waste, specifically beta amyloid proteins that are linked to Alzheimer's disease. When you don't sleep, those toxins build up. One night of bad sleep can increase these toxins, and chronic lack of sleep can age your brain three to five years. It also impacts your emotional regulation. A study found that after 35 hours of sleep deprivation, your amygdala, the part of the brain that handles fear and emotions reacts to negative stimuli by over 60%, more than usual . This means you're more emotional, more anxious, and less able to handle stress. It's a vicious cycle. Anxiety keeps you awake and being awake makes you more anxious. In essence, sleep allows the brain to clean, house, organize information and recharge, making it as crucial as food and water for overall brain function and long-term health.
Okay, so you may be like, so my brain is tired. I'm used to that, but what about the rest of me? Lack of sleep does not just make you tired. It makes you sick while you sleep. Your immune system produces cytokines. These are substances that fight infection and bacteria. If you're constantly cutting your sleep short, you're limiting your body's defense mechanisms. You're much more likely to get sick if you're exposed to a cold or virus. Let's talk about your heart. Chronic lack of sleep is associated with high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. Studies have shown that even a single night of poor sleep can spike your blood pressure. When you don't sleep, your body stays in a fight or flight mode, keeping your stress hormones like cortisol elevated. And finally, let's talk weight. If you sleep less than five hours a night, you have a 50% higher risk of obesity.
So you ask why? Because your body stops properly regulating the hormones that control hunger, the hormone ghrelin. That makes you feel hungry and leptin that tells you when you're full poor sleep boosts ghrelin. I reduces leptin leading to intense cravings, particularly for sugar and carbs.
And the third thing that I wanna touch upon in terms of your health and longevity. As it's dependent on your sleep is the danger zone. I'm talking about accidents, which is perhaps the most immediate danger of sleep loss, which is perhaps the most acute impact of sleep loss. Fatigue lowers your motor control, much like alcohol does. Studies of truck drivers have shown that those with insomnia are nearly twice as likely to have an accident. Furthermore, lack of sleep can lead to microsleep, which are the tiny bursts of sleep seconds long where your brain shuts down even while your eyes are open, if that happens while you're driving, the consequences can be fatal in the long term, chronic untreated, low quality sleep is associated with a shorter lifespan contributing to chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, even some cancers such as colorectal cancer.
So what can you do? The answer seems simple, but it's hard to do in our busy lives. Prioritize seven to nine hours of sleep. Here are some quick tips to do that. Be consistent. Keep the same sleep schedule even on weekends. Create rituals. Develop a wind down routine like a warm bath, reading a book to tell your brain it's time to sleep.
Third, no blue light. Yes. Put your phones away an hour before bedtime. The light from the screens interferes with your body's melatonin production. Optimize your bedroom or your sleep environment. Keep it cool, dark and quiet. If you are struggling with insomnia three or more nights a week for over three months, it's time to speak to a healthcare provider as that is considered chronic.
So to wrap up this episode, I wanna emphasize that sleep isn't a luxury. It's not wasted time. It's the time your body uses to repair your heart. Clear your brain, and stabilize your mood. Thank you so much for listening to the Nine to Five Wellness podcast today.
Remember, you cannot cheat your body of sleep without paying a high price.
Tonight, try to get to bed a little earlier than before. Until next time, sleep dreams.
