Light's Out - Dying for a Good Night's Sleep

T.S Wiley and Bent Formby, PhD are the authors of "Light's Out-Dying for a Good's Night Sleep". Their view is that, as a nation, Americans are sick because we don't get enough sleep. I want to take this post to highlight some points from this book that I really think are great. It isn't talking about sleep apnea - just sleep, or our lack-there-of. The book's focus is that our lack of sleep, not lack of exercise and poor diet, is what leads to heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer. The book is rather technical and you almost get a sense the authors think there is a goverment conspiracy behind the push for increased carbohydate intake in our nation. However, if you take some of what is presented with a grain-of-salt, the book does talk about hormones that are regulated in sleep which affect our appetite. It was a light-bulb moment for me. It was an understanding of most of my life of trying to loose weight! So here I go! I will try to give you the hormone connection to sleep and sugar in a nutshell.... "Light's Out" starts out with trying to convey an understanding of where humans have come from...cavemen/nomads scrounging for food. We would have summer, where food is abundant and humans would store up fat for winter, and then there was winnter. Winter was a time of sleeping, eating what little variety of food could be stored or hunted, and making babies. As we have progressed, we have taken those long winter naps our bodies long for from caveman days, and made it perpetual summer with our bright flourecent lights that are on all winter long. Because we have light (and TV and computers and sports events, etc) we stay up too late at night and have shortened our night's sleep to way less than the 9.5 hours that would be optimal for humans. The main hormones the book talkes about are cortisol, serotonin, melatonin, prolactin, leptin and insulin and how they function in the sleep cycle. Melatonin and prolactin are produced during sleep and are very important antioxidants. When we don't get enough sleep, these two hormones aren't allowed to function how they are supposed to and we loose out on their faboulous antioxidant properties. The authors stongly feel this leads to the manifestation of many different diseases. It's a complicated cycle, let's start with serotonin. Serotonin is a hormone that is released in respose to cortisol. Cortisol is also a hormone. It is high when we have too many stressors in our life. It doesn't have to be bad stress either (divorce, death of a loved one, moving, empty nest) it can just be the busy stress of coming home from work, quick eating supper, going to the kids basketball game, coming home for a quick shower. When Cortisol is high, serotonin is high. When we sleep our serotonin gets converted to melotonin during the night. Melotonin is good - it helps us fall asleep and stay asleep. If we have too much stress and therefore too much serotonin and don't sleep long enough at night so all that serotonin can gets turned into melotonin then we have left-over serotonin in the morning. If this chronically takes place, it can lead to high serotonin levels and depression. It helps to keep serotonin low by getting enough sleep. Melotonin helps us fall alseep and stay asleep. This is important because when we sleep, and not until we fall into a good sleep, prolactin is produced. Prolactin is an important hormone because it controls our daytime appetite. It affects the hormone leptin which regulates our carbhydrate cravings. If we go to bed too late, we cannot get all our prolactin produced in a short night and we continue to produce prolactin into the morning. This excess prolactin will suppress the hormone leptin. If we low levels of leptin - we crave carbohydrates!!! Our bodies think we are under stress and that we need to take in energy for a "fight-or-flight" response. Hormone cycles are difficult to understand, but can you see the picture I am trying to convey? We continually shorten our nights. We have work deadlines, children's activites, shopping to do, housekeeping to do and all this leads to more stress and longer days. Longer days mean shorter nights! Less sleep, more stress->high cortisol->high serotonin->not enough time to process all our serotonin into the antioxidants we need in melotonin. Less sleep-> delays the processing of the prolactin we need from during our sleeping hours into the morning hours->suppressed leptin->carbohydrate cravings->high intake of carbohydrates->excess carbohydrates decrease the effectiveness of insulin causing us to store our excess carbohydrates as fat.->high insulin levels->stress on our body->high cortisol.... One big cycle with a good's night sleep right in the middle!!Whew!!! That is a lot of info! This book definitely goes to the extreme of trying to get their point across, but I want you to take this with you today: Sleep is a good thing. Sleep is a biological need. It helped me to read the technical cycles of hormones in this book. I have tried to be more conscious of my bed-time since I read this book. If I need to be up later, I try to keep the lights low and the tv off, or the sound low. I try to not be at the computer or watching tv right before I go to bed, so my mind has a chance to slow down some and prepare for sleep. I sure don't get in 9.5 hours a night, but I try to shoot for 8. I still feel like I am recovering from so many years of lack of sleep due to the sleep apnea that 8-9 hours of sleep is great for me. Maybe I will not need quite so much after I have repaid some of my sleep debt. I can say this for sure : When I have a short night sleep or several in a row - I do find that I am looking in the cupboard for snacks. If I had a really long, restful night's sleep I can adhere to a lower carb lifestyle easier. I recommend this book to read. Just remember to not take everything they say to heart - the authors do tend to be a bit extreme!