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How did this 15-year-old kid’s hip break? This type of thing is usually reserved for people much older. It’s not the case that elderly people tend to fall and break their hips; it’s that they tend to break their hips and then fall.
Fast-forward through about a dozen small injuries after that, and I was finally diagnosed with degenerative bone disease and degenerative disc disease at 20 years old.
Two and a half years went by, and I gained about 50 pounds.
I researched like a madman and looked into what my bones and the discs in my spine were actually made of and what it took for them to be healthy. I started studying health instead of disease, and I was shocked at what I found. Things like sulfur-bearing amino acids, polysaccharides, magnesium, silica, and even vitamin C were critical to my tissue health. I wasn’t getting any of those things on my fast food–based diet.
The closest I came was some fancy pasteurized orange juice and milk that was “fortified” with vitamin C or calcium. That means they were added back to it in a synthetic form because the high heat processing destroys a lot of the nutrients that would normally be in
S
leep is the secret sauce. There isn’t one facet of your mental, emotional, or physical performance that’s not affected by the quality of your sleep.
The consequences of sleep deprivation aren’t pretty either. Try immune system failure, diabetes, cancer, obesity, depression, and memory loss,
Other studies show that sleep deprivation encourages cancer, Alzheimer’s, depression, and even heart disease.
A study reported by the World Health Organization tracked the results of 657 men over a 14-year period. They found that men with poor sleep quality were also twice as likely to have a heart attack and up to 4 times more likely to have a stroke during the study period.
60 percent of people in the United States say that they have difficulties sleeping every night (or at least every other night).
I have some really strong fat genes that won’t allow me to fit into my skinny jeans!
We also know that the food we eat can drastically change the way we look and feel. There’s a whole flourishing field of science called nutrigenomics that’s looking at the way every single bite of food you eat is impacting your genetic expression.
When you don’t sleep well, you get slower, less creative, and more stressed, and you underperform.
Basically, you’re utilizing only a fraction of what you’re capable of.
being awake is catabolic (breaks you down) and being asleep is anabolic (builds you up). Sleep is known to be an elevated anabolic state, heightening the growth and rejuvenation of the immune, skeletal, and muscular systems. Basically, sleep rebuilds you and keeps you youthful.
High-quality sleep fortifies your immune system, balances your hormones, boosts your metabolism, increases your physical energy, and improves the function of your brain.
Your parietal lobe and the prefrontal cortex actually lose 12 to 14 percent of their glucose when you don’t sleep. These are the areas of the brain we most need for thinking, for distinguishing between ideas, for social control, and for being able to tell the difference between right and wrong.
study published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that poor sleep quality was equal to binge drinking and marijuana use in determining academic performance. The study reported that college students who were poor sleepers were much more likely to earn worse grades and even drop out of classes than their healthy sleeping peers.
By forgoing your sleep, you can absolutely do more work, but the quality and effectiveness of your work will be sacrificed. A study published in The Lancet that looked at a group of physicians proved that sleep-deprived individuals took 14 percent longer to complete a task and made 20 percent more errors than individuals who were well rested.
Your body has what is essentially a cellular waste management system called the lymphatic system. It’s responsible for eliminating metabolic waste and toxins to keep you healthy. However, the lymphatic system does not include your brain. This is because your brain is a closed system controlled by the blood-brain barrier, which decides what can go through and what cannot.
Scientists have found that the brain actually has its own unique waste disposal system, similar to that of the lymphatic system. It’s called the glymphatic system
This waste removal literally makes room for new growth and development. Removing and recycling dead cells, tossing out toxins, and shuttling out waste is critical to brain function.
During sleep, the glymphatic system becomes 10 times more active than during wakefulness. Simultaneously, your brain cells are reduced in size by about 60 percent while you’re asleep to make waste removal even more efficient.
an inability of your brain to remove harmful waste products is believed to be one of the foundational causes of Alzheimer’s disease.
Agreat night’s sleep begins the moment you wake up in the morning.
Your circadian timing system is regulated by the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a small group of nerve cells found in the hypothalamus in your brain. The hypothalamus is considered to be the master gland of your body’s hormonal system. It controls your body’s hunger, thirst, fatigue, body temperature, and sleep cycles by acting as a master clock.
Too little light exposure during the day and too much artificial light exposure in the evening will negatively impact your ability to sleep well at night.
Serotonin is commonly known to help bring about feelings of happiness and well-being. Many antidepressant drugs are centered on the function of serotonin because of its incredible effect on mood and cognition.
Approximately 95 percent of your body’s serotonin is located in your gastrointestinal tract, which comes as a surprise to most people. Serotonin production doesn’t just magically happen on its own. It’s influenced by your diet, it’s influenced by your activity level, and it’s also influenced by the amount of natural sunlight you get.
Typical indoor lighting is 100 times less bright than outdoor light on a sunny day. Even a cloudy day delivers 10 times more brightness than ordinary indoor lighting.
Not only is serotonin rooted in your belly, it is also located in blood platelets, your central nervous system, and even your skin.
human skin can produce serotonin and transform it into melatonin.
Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland and other tissues in your body that send signals to your cells to prepare you for sleep.
Melatonin isn’t really the “sleep hormone” because it doesn’t directly put you to sleep. But it can definitely be considered the “get good sleep hormone” because it improves your sleep quality by helping to create the optimal conditions in your body for getting amazing sleep.
more than 50 hormones the human body secretes and circulates,
The real goal isn’t to have as little cortisol as possible; it’s to have a healthy rhythm of cortisol production to get you the results you want, when you want them.
Cortisol gives you the energy and gusto to get up and move around. It enables you to be awake and alert. It contributes to your strength, focus, and vitality every day.
cortisol and melatonin have somewhat of an inverse relationship. Essentially, when cortisol is up, melatonin is down. When melatonin is up, cortisol is down.
daytime exposure to sunlight is so important is that it encourages the production of cortisol.
Your genes literally expect you to get exposure to sunlight in order to manage your sleep-wake cycles.
The body clock is most responsive to sunlight in the early morning, between 6:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
Getting direct sunlight outdoors for at least half an hour has been shown to produce the most benefit.
being able to take in natural light through your eyes is a part of the solution you can always utilize.
The sun has a plethora of wavelengths that impact our bodies, but the two you most need to know about are UVA and UVB. UV stands for ultraviolet, and these sun rays have long been known to influence our physiology. UVB is the most valuable for human health, as it’s the only wavelength that triggers your body to produce vitamin D.
UVB can’t make its way through glass very effectively, and it’s critical to help balance out the potentially harmful aspects of UVA.
We need both UVA and UVB, but unhealthy exposure to UVA is what predominantly increases the risk of skin cancer and photoaging of your skin.
You can find out what time of year and the optimal time of day to get your serving of UVB based on where you are in the world through the bonus Sleep Smarter resources at sleepsmarterbook.com/bonus.
If natural sunlight needs to make its way to your optical receptors for you to get the benefits you’ve learned about, then sunglasses can be like a 7-foot-tall NBA All-Star and block sunlight’s shot at getting to your eyes.
Sunglasses inhibit the natural exposure of light you need to assure healthy hormonal secretions and healthy sleep.
