Revolutionary New Health Treatment! It Really Is The Elixir Of Health.

If you were told that there is a revolutionary new treatment created in the science lab that will make you live longer whilst enhancing your memory and creativity, enhancing your appearance whilst keeping you slim and in control of food cravings, would you be interested? Add to that this wonderful treatment will protect you from cancer and dementia as well as preventing colds and the flu. You would have a lower risk of heart attacks and stroke and diabetes. You will even feel happier, less depressed and less anxious. Would you be interested? What would you pay? Could you even believe it?

I’ll let you in on a little secret and that is you can start this treatment yourself, tonight. It’s free too.

Go to bed. Sleep for 8 hours. No less. Repeat the next night. And the next.

Sleep is a fundamental need of humans. It is up there with diet and exercise. Actually scrap that, it is the utter foundation of being a human and supports good diet and good exercise, for to take away sleep, even just a little bit, is to impact our health so deeply, but quietly until one day, down the line a bit further, the body has had enough and something goes drastically wrong.

Every tissue, organ, system and cell is influenced positively by sleep and negatively by a loss of sleep. Eventually a chronic loss of sleep will affect your DNA. Nothing escapes the damage as the major physiological systems of the human body – the cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, reproductive - and the mental aspects are impacted.

There is a really sneaky habit going on in homes around the Western world particularly and that involves some weird idea that sleep is not necessary. Well 17,000 scientific documents that have been well scrutinised will tell you that you might know your body, but you have got it wrong and you are generally sleep walking in your ignorance.

The shorter you sleep, the shorter your life.

The leading cause of disease and death in developed nations like heart disease, obesity, dementia, diabetes and cancer have all been scientifically linked to lack of sleep.

How A Lack Of Sleep Works On The Heart And Circulatory System:

· Unhealthy sleep will give you an unhealthy heart. 4,000 Japanese men were tracked for 14 years and those sleeping six hours or less were 400-500 times more likely to have a cardiac arrest. (They accounted for smoking, body mass and physical activity).

· If you are 45 years or older, and sleeping less than 6 hours a night, you are 200 % more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke in your lifetime, than if you slept 7-8 hours a night.

Does this tell you how important sleep is during your midlife? During your whole life?

The results of a sleep deficit boils down to blood pressure. Your heart will pump faster and increase the ‘resting’ blood pressure within your veins. There is also an increase in volume being pumped through the veins. This higher pressure and increased volume starts to wear away at the linings of those blood vessels which, in trying to heal, creates plaques (atherosclerosis or calcification) and clots, especially in the vessels supplying the heart itself. Then one day, a plug of that plaque or clot comes away, causing a blockage. Or maybe the vein pops instead. Heart attack (or stroke if it happens in the brain).

The part of the nervous system we have that looks after our fight/flight response is the sympathetic nervous system. It can mobilise into action within seconds as it’s job is to help you survive threats to your physical life. The problem is when this system is left in mobilisation mode all of the time, not being given the chance to calm down. It can then be the killer instead.

Almost every experiment that looks at the impact of deficient sleep on the body has noticed a sympathetic nervous system that is overactive. This means that not enough sleep will leave the body stuck in a state of fight or flight. Imagine that happening for years. Like a revving car engine, just revving. Not particularly doing anything or going anywhere, just on a high alert.

So because the stress hormone cortisol is triggered to be released, the blood vessels are constricted further, and the blood pressure goes even higher - also the job of cortisol and a response to the sympathetic nervous system on activation.

Add to that is human growth hormone – a night time healer and repairer which has a surge during the night. The production of that hormone is shut off so the vessel linings (endothelium) are not repaired. They are further damaged and weakened.

The result is like a bonfire ready to explode.

So what does sleep do, when you get ENOUGH of it?

When the body gets to a state of Non Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep, the calming system opposite to the sympathetic system, the parasympathetic system swings into action, calming the sympathetic system and keeping the 'calm' going all night. (It is much slower to get started, and needs a chance to get started). This deep sleep prevents that physiological stress escalation – the heart is slower, vessels expanded and being mended, blood pressure and volume reduced. It is your very own natural blood pressure management system. And chances of heart attacks and strokes are greatly reduced.

Here is an interesting fact: In the switch to daylight savings, an hour of sleep is lost and there is a spike in heart attacks the next day. And when the clocks go back, an hour of sleep is gained and there is a dip in the rate of heart attacks the next day. The rates of car accidents also increase the day after daylight saving and reduce when the clocks go back. Such is the massive effect of losing even an hour of sleep - something that we easily trivialise.

Getting more regular sleep is one of the easiest things to change in your lifestyle and could well have the greatest impact in how you get to enjoy (or not) your advancing years and the health you are in for them. There are other benefits which I will be writing about, as it is not just your circulatory system that is gaining healthy benefits for 'indulging' in more sleep.

It is your choice at the end of the day. Get 8 hours sleep. Regularly, every night.