Want to perform better tomorrow at anything you do? Then get a good night’s sleep tonight. “Sleep plays a critical role in restoration for humans; it is the housekeeping process for our physiology that allows us to restore and start the next day,” says sleep expert Sahil Chopra, MD, today’s guest on Healthy Longevity with Florence Comite MD.
Dr. Chopra is co-founder and chief medical officer for Empower Sleep, a virtual sleep care program that makes personalized multi-night sleep analysis and treatment accessible from home.
Nearly 40% of adults report falling asleep during the day without meaning to at least once a month. Also, an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic, or ongoing, sleep disorders, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“If people don’t sleep well, the likelihood of having cardiovascular disease … is higher, the possibility of cancer is six-fold higher,” says Chopra. “Growth hormone levels are lower; cortisol dysregulation is higher. Circadian rhythms, if they are misaligned, result in a compromised metabolic state. REM sleep plays a critical role in emotional stability.”
If you’re suffering from brain fog or nodding off at your desk after lunch, you’ll want to tune in to discover how to dramatically improve your health and health trajectory by improving your sleep habits.
You’ll learn:
* Sleep debt builds slowly, so you may not recognize what it’s doing to you.
* Why a one-night sleep study is not an effective way to diagnose a sleep disorder.
* Sleep trackers like Empower Sleep’s medical-grade ring and consumer models like the Oura Ring provide patients with real-time analysis of their sleep quality in their own bed without spending a restless night in a sleep lab wired to a machine.
* Poor sleep is a gut punch, affecting the gut microbiome by disrupting the GI tract’s normal nightly slow-down, which allows its epithelial lining to repair and recover.
* Lack of sleep compromises the immune system. Studies show that sleep-deprived people (getting four to six hours of sleep) don’t respond to vaccines as well as people who get adequate sleep (seven to eight hours).
