When You Sleep Affects Your Health

When you are younger, it seems like the only side effect of not sleeping enough is that you feel tired the next day. To combat the tiredness, we tend to consume more food and caffeinated drinks, and by the end of the night, what we've consumed makes it much more difficult to wind our bodies down for sleep. Bad sleeping habits are easy to develop and for many, are extremely difficult to correct. For our health, however, it is vital that we give our bodies adequate time to recharge, in order to prevent many serious diseases and health complications.

Planning out a quiet, relaxed evening with no distractions or interruptions is nearly impossible for most of us. We pack too much into our days, we stay up late stressing about unfinished work, and we get into a bad health cycle. When we are young, we might let studying, or staying out with friends keep us up. When we're older, we might bring out work home with us, or perhaps young children create the interruptions. But experts say we need to get smart about our sleep. There are actually certain times that are better for sleeping than other times. Your body will reap greater benefit if you can put your worries away and rest.

The absolute minimum amount of sleep you need is 3 hours, but very few people are actually able to function on so little sleep every night (1). And there's a reason we sleep at night besides the quietude of darkness: our body temperatures are coolest from just after midnight until around 4pm (1). Our biological clock, or the suprachiasmatic nucleus (6), also play a factor, indicating sleepiness for most from around midnight until as late as 7am, and again in the early afternoon, from around 1pm until as late as 4pm (2). By not sleeping at the times our bodies tell us to sleep, we negatively impact our health, because our sleep is not as deep, and is more likely to be fragmented.

We can adjust our biological clocks to want us to sleep at any time, but the best time is at night (3, 6). Light, especially daylight but even something as minor as the light from the computer screen, wakes us up and keeps our bodies and minds engaged. When it gets dark, the body usually produces increased amounts of melatonin, which induces drowsiness (6). And going to bed too late can lead to a host of problems even for the fittest among us (5). Going to bed after midnight can predispose us to developing a host of ailments, such as prediabetes, atherosclerosis, heart disease, and weight gain. We also tend to look bad when we don't listen to our bodies and sleep when we're told, and we shorten our lives (6).

Simply getting 7-9 hours of sleep isn't necessarily healthy. It's important to listen to our bodies, maintain a regular bedtime before midnight every night, and wake up at a regular time every morning. If we need to sleep during the day and work at night, experts recommend sleeping in as dark an environment as we can create, maintaining a regular schedule, scheduling naps during the work shift whenever possible, and working in a brightly lit environment simulating daylight. But our bodies do their best repair work at night, so create a routine to wrap the day up a little earlier: by midnight we should already be snoozing peacefully.

1. http://www.math.tamu.edu/~kahlig/help/cramming.html
2. http://www.medicinenet.com/sleep/page2.htm#tocf
3. http://blogs.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/2009/04/secrets-of-sound-sleepers.html
4. http://blogs.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/2009/05/short-sleeper-are-you-fooling-yourself.html
5. http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20090330/late-bedtimes-linked-to-heart-disease
6. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/understanding_sleep.htm