Aging and Sleep

Have you ever noticed that when you are worried and unable to sleep, you lose weight, out of sorts, and get irritable? That is because in the “first stage of sleep, your body releases a growth hormone which stimulates protein synthesis, breaks down fat that supplies energy for tissue repair, and stimulates cell division.”*

Sleep has a way of restoring our body systems to repair our immune systems and moderates stress while giving us longer lives.

Eve Van Cauter, PhD, medicine professor at University of Chicago, has shown that effects of sleep deprivation “mimic many of the hallmarks of aging.” Sleep affect our hormone balance, inflammation of joints, tissue repair, immune systems, and she argues that “sleep loss hastens age-related ailments such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and memory decline.”*

One thing is clear, and that is we cannot short change on sleep, for without it, our health, happiness, and even our life span depends on it.

Deep, deep sleep, is hard to achieve, but when you do have it, you will know the feeling, for it is unlike anything you have ever experienced. An unexpected deep sleep happened one blessed afternoon sailing down the river Nile. That was an unforgettable experience!
Good luck and wishing you sweet dreams!

Please share your blissful sleep if you have any whether on mountain tops, or anywhere you happened to be!

*Kermit Pattison, Sleep & Aging, Experience Life, May 2015.