Why is it that we have a need to wear on our sleeves how little we sleep, as if it's a badge of honor?
People who don't sleep are physically hurting themselves in ways that diet and exercise can't always repair.
The large and famous nurses' study showed that women working night shifts had a greater incidence of breast cancer than those working during the day.
Accumulating research is connecting poor sleep with weight gain, insulin resistance, and diabetes.
What is it about sleep that is so crucial?
Melatonin. It's our body's most powerful antioxidant. It literally acts like a scrubbing bubble when we sleep, scouring that inflammatory damage from a day's worth of living, thinking, and stressing, leaving the brain and nervous system clean and ready to go the next day.
When we cut ourselves short on sleep, we don't give melatonin a chance to do its job.
We age ourselves much more quickly than we do when sleep is something we prioritize.
First thing you need to do to change things, is change your attitude about sleep.
You are not a better person because you deprive yourself of it.
You can't make up for what you lost during the week, over the weekend. Once it's lost, it's lost.
You may not be able to overcome the damaging effects of too little sleep with better eating and more exercise. In fact, it may be harder to achieve this while sleep deprived, because you are more likely to accelerate aging even more with the caffeine and sugar you're using to get through the day.
Want to get your weight under control? Reduce your cancer risk? Improve your fertility?
Sleep. It's that simple.