Understanding the Language of Silence - Sleep, Sleep Behavior and Sleep Disorders. Dr. Amrit Lal

hours more sleep per night than usual, they have less sensitivity to pain after just a few days – “an effect equal to taking 60 milligram of the painkiller codeine.”

      Some studies links inadequate sleep with obesity – a major public health concern in the United States. Not only at night the sleep-deprived individuals have more time to eat and drink by way of midnight snacks, but levels of hormone, leptin, which tells the brain enough food has been consumed, are lower while the level of ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, are higher in the sleep-deprived individuals.. In other words, sleep deprivation is associated with decreased ‘leptin’ levels and elevated ‘ghrelin’ levels, an imbalance between the two results in increased appetite. So little more sleep may result in a little less compulsive eating. A little more sleep thus always helps when it comes to individual health. At the same time, activity to process body glucose is affected, which may ultimately lead to type 2 diabetes because sleep regulates sugar metabolism.

      Sleep is a heightened anabolic state (constructive metabolism), accentuating the growth and rejuvenation of the immune system, nervous, skeletal and muscularly systems to ward-off a variety of infections and ensures total well-being of the individual. It is nature’s best medicine when most of the healing takes place; both physical and psychological. Both heart rate and blood pressure are at optimum level and body has a chance to rest and regenerate. Inadequate sleep releases less of the “pleasure” hormone or serotonin for adequate comfort level of an individual. To compensate for this deficiency human body tries to increase serotonin levels by craving for foods like sugar or addictive substances like tobacco or coffee.

      We all have God-given ability to fall asleep anywhere. Sleep is a good, normal and important part of life. The saying, “Sleep is a golden chain that ties health and body together” is truer today than any time in the past because of the ever-increasing strains of modernity. Sleep not only energizes the mind and body, but has a tremendous recuperative action. This is to say that during the periodic suspensions of consciousness (which sleep is), the power of the mind and body is fully restored.

      A full night sleep is essential for body to function at its best and to keep hormones in balance. A restful sleep increases strength, happiness, vitality and intellect and lays a solid base for the day’s work ahead by ensuring the optimal functioning of both body and brain. As a Spanish writer said, “Sleep is the best cure for walking trouble,” or to quote the ancient Greek dramatist, Sophocles, “Sleep is the only medicine that gives ease.” Apart from its recuperative power, sleep conserves energy and allows us to recoup it fast when it gets consumed in waking activity. Almost all healing, including wound-healing, has been shown to be positively influenced by sleep. In addition, as said earlier, sleep raises threshold of pain. It helps cognitive faculties – “A fresh mind learns best” goes an old saying.

      AN ACCEPTED NORM

      A person may have slept for quite some time but may still feel un-rested, un-refreshed and listless, which may reflect through his poor performance during the course of the day. If this condition continues unabated for some time, he could be heading towards nervous breakdown. Sleep-deprived people have a hard time getting the amount of sleep they need for whatever reasons. Some research studies suggest that sleep deprivation raises production of inflammatory chemicals in the body which increase propensity for heart attacks and strokes.

      HORMONES – GOOD AND BAD

      Sleep deprivation at night brings in its van increased daytime sleepiness, may cause mental confusion, cognitive impairment and other adverse consequences associated with inadequate sleep. It may interfere with one’s ability to handle day-to-day high-paced stresses of modernity and affect one’s ability to cope with chronic conditions. Those not sleeping well have a risk of gaining more weight because sleeplessness causes stress hormones to spike. They are thus at a greater risk of obesity which is a fore-runner of diabetes 2. If your sleep is collapsing, you are going to have spike in stress hormone – epinephrine. This causes both blood pressure and heart rate to go up with little chance for rest to your physiology and a higher chance for heart attack in the morning.

      Postmenopausal women with breast cancer who routinely sleep less than 6 hours a night may be twice as likely to have more aggressive breast cancer compared with those who sleep longer hours, concludes a new study at Case Western University, Cleveland, Ohio US.

      Stress hormone or cortisol, is secreted in the last half hour of the sleep. This explains why most patients of angina pectoris (a spasmodic choking pain the chest) take place in the wee hours of the morning. The same is true of another serious heart problem, myocardial infarction (heart attack caused by “death” of a part of the heart muscle) whose attacks peak between 5A.M. and 9.A.M. when a person waking up or is half awake. Again, when a patient is recovering from a heart attack the quality of sleep is poor and there is an increased number of arousals with delayed recovery time.

      In 2012, the British Medical Journal reported a survey of 68,000 subjects in England and found that people with even mild depression have 29 percent increased risk of dying from cardio vascular disease and also 29 percent increased risk of dying from non-cancerous disorders. It may reiterated that people who are depressed are also likely to be candidates for hypertension, diabetes and obesity according to experts.

      Among the hormones secreted during sleep, Cytokines, plays an important role in fighting infections, in particular, cold and flu. In a study of 153 men and women, Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University found that those who slept less than 7 hours a night were three times more likely to develop symptoms of cold when exposed to a cold-causing virus than those who slept eight or more hours.

      SLEEPING IS NOT A SIN

      “One-third of life going in sleep!” which many Gurus of modern management abhor as waste because enough “sleeping will be done in the grave.” But sleeping is not a sin or a waste of time.. An adequate amount of sleep is as essential as air we breathe and water we drink. Sleep-deprived people don’t perform well and get hurt more easily. Their threshold of pain during sleep deprivation goes down, apart from the fact that inadequate sleep can calcify coronary arteries and raise level of inflammatory factors linked to heart disease. Even a single night of inadequate sleep can cause daylong spike in blood pressure in people with hypertension.

      Under normal circumstances, people in good health (physical, mental and social) tend to sleep well; whereas those in ill health suffer from many sleep maladies. Even a minimal loss of sleep can have deleterious impact on a person’s mind, energy and ability to handle day-to-day stresses of modernity and virtually saps the quality of life and leads to systemic diseases. Yet many people voluntarily or perforce give up sleep to make room for work shifts and for travel or leisure and late nighttime partying and thereby pay by way damage done to their health.

      A new study at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland shows that those who slept fewer hours and spent less time in REM sleep, had more visible signs of aging such as crow-feet, fine lines, pigmentation and reduced skin elasticity, and a sleep expert, Raymond Hall, provides a number of tips to mobilize sleep as “fountain of youth.”

      BI-DIRECTIONAL LINK

      There is a bi-directional relationship between a health condition and sleep disorder. People with poor health or chronic medical and psychiatric conditions have more sleep problems. And those with sleep disorders have a greater share of health and psychiatric issues.

      Older individuals often suffer from multiple health conditions (co-morbidity). According to a National Sleep Foundation survey in the United States, of adults aged 65 years and above, “those with more medical conditions, including cardiac and pulmonary disease and depression, reported significantly more sleep complaints.” Studies examining the prevalence of sleep disturbances in patients with chronic medical diseases have reported that 31% of arthritis and 66% of chronic pain patients report difficulty falling asleep, while 81% of chronic pain, and 33% of diabetes patients report difficulty staying asleep. Chronic sleep loss may accelerate type 2 diabetes. Research establishes that just one week of sleep loss altered secretion