The Importance of Sleep

​The Easiest Way to Become a Younger, Healthier, Thinner You

Lack of sleep is one of the great age accelerators, prematurely aging your brain as well as your body. That's because as you age, the quality of your sleep deteriorates, even if you are getting the same amount of sleep as you always did. When the brain chemical, serotonin's, levels fall, you won't get as much REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is the deepest, most restorative sleep phase. Poor sleep affects every aspect of your health, including your:

1. Brain and nervous system: Poor sleep affects your thinking and response time, and creates attention disturbances and impaired memory. Irritability, anxiety, and depression are also linked to lack of deep sleep.
2. Cardiovascular system: The body senses sleep loss as a "stress-inducing" state, which raises levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which leave you bloated. These hormones also regulate blood pressure. When these hormone levels are chronically elevated, blood pressure becomes more difficult to control, leading to a higher risk for heart disease. Lack of sleep seems to affect women more than men.
3. Immune system: During times of elevated physical, emotional, and mental stress, such as illness or emotional upset, the mind and body need greater amounts of sleep to support healing. Your body and immune system do most of its repairs and rejuvenation while you sleep, so if you're not getting enough, you are limiting your body's natural ability to repair itself.

Sleep's Effect on Hunger

Have you ever had a restless night's sleep and felt famished in the morning? The cause of your hunger is actually too little sleep. Most of us have a sleep deficit (getting less than 7 hours per night or less than 49 hours per week). The result from being overtired is that your body and your brain are primed to make bad decisions.

When you wake up starving, you might reach for something easy and quick to eat, such as a breakfast of cereal, toast, or a bagel to provide an energy burst as well as satisfy your hunger. But literally feeding your energy needs this way will only slow you down. Your body will turn these directly into body fat. The next carb-heavy meal will do the same thing, and eventually you will train your body to store all carbs and never burn them. This leaves you more tired and ultimately heavier.

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Sleep's Effect on Ghrelin and Leptin:

Poor sleep can also affect your internal chemistry. Sleep directly influences two key hormones that regulate satiety and hunger: ghrelin and leptin. Elevated levels of ghrelin increase feelings of hunger, while leptin acts to suppress appetite. Interestingly, serotonin is vital to regulating the brain's response to both of these hormones. When you suffer from sleep deprivation (or a sleep deficit), your body's levels of leptin and ghrelin fall, creating that "hungry but never satisfied" feeling.

​To help balance your serotonin levels and regain your health, try my Younger (Thinner) You Diet. It's not necessarily a low-carb diet, but it does require you to choose more complex carbs that provide nutrition as well as the building blocks of serotonin. These carbs are slower to digest, so you feel full longer, and the body has more time to use them as fuel. That way, you're burning more and storing less. You are retraining your body, which will facilitate weight loss. And with more serotonin, you'll also get more sleep.

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