In the arsenal of anti-aging medicine, getting enough good sleep is one of the most potent weapons. Health, beauty and mental focus—not to mention staying young—all depend on it

WORDS: Andrea Concepcion

Blame it on Thomas Edison. We live in a world where the natural rhythms of light and dark, a.k.a. day and night, no longer have the power
to set our patterns of sleep. In our light-filled world we sleep when we want, we rise with the power of alarm clocks, we power ourselves past exhaustion with coffee and energy drinks and carbohydrates, and we are tired a lot of the time. Most of us, anyway. According to the National Sleep Foundation’s 2011 poll, 63 percent of Americans are not getting enough sleep. Looking around, that seems conservative.

“Most people need about seven or eight hours of sleep per night. There are very few people who can get by with less. There are some who think they can, but what they are actually doing is aging at an accelerated rate,” says Andre Berger, MD, author of The Beverly Hills Anti-Aging Prescription.

The problem with all that lost sleep is a trio of nasty consequences. Lack of sufficient quality sleep leads to a slew of health problems, a drop in mental sharpness and the kind of accelerated aging that makes you look worn out.

For starters, sleep is essential for keeping your immune system fit. Who hasn’t caught a cold when they’re run down and exhausted? “Various nerve processes within the mind and body restore [themselves] during sleep,” explains Dr. William Kohler, medical director of the Florida Sleep Institute in Spring Hill, Fla. “The immune system is one of them. Without enough sleep it can’t reboot itself.”

There are also consequences for the cardiovascular system, including short-term effects on blood pressure and circulation. Longer-term it gets worse. In a study published in the European Heart Journal, researchers at the University of Warwick found that long-term sleep deprivation can cause heart attacks and stroke. Monitoring 500,000 participants across eight countries, including the U.S. and the UK, for up to 25 years, they showed that less than six hours of sleep per night correlated with a 48 percent higher chance of dying from heart disease and a 15 percent higher chance of dying from stroke. Another British study of 10,000 civil servants, released in 2007, showed that people who cut their sleep from seven to five hours a night nearly doubled their risk of death from all causes.

Beyond your physical health is your mental well-being. A lack of adequate sleep impairs mental performance in numerous ways, as any college student who has pulled the proverbial ‘all-nighter’ can tell you. Among the negative consequences are poor memory, reduced mental alertness, inability to concentrate, impaired reasoning and weaker performance in problem solving. Ultimately, chronic sleep loss results in clinical depression. “Sleep is a critical foundation for good health and for cognitive performance,” says Dr. Berger. “The scientific
literature is filled with scores of studies that show how getting insufficient sleep leads to reduced mental clarity.” Among the scarier studies are those correlating catastrophes and accidents with sleep deprivation.

A lack of sleep can also leave you aesthetically lacking. In a recent study, researchers in a sleep lab in Stockholm, Sweden compared patients who had a good night’s rest with patients who were sleep-deprived. The results? You guessed it. The sleep-deprived patients
looked less healthy, more tired and less attractive.

Physical features such as pale skin, dark circles, puffy eyes and non-rosy cheeks can be seen in as little as two days of sleep deprivation, says Michael Breus, Ph.D., WebMD’s Sleep Doctor and a psychologist board-certified in clinical sleep disorders. “Beauty sleep is not a myth, beauty sleep is for real,” Dr. Breus says.

Sleepless Nation

Why we don’t get enough sleep is the big question, and the answers are varied.

Being overweight is one of the big reasons for a lack of good sleep, especially since it’s closely linked to sleep apnea, a serious and life-threatening disorder that causes you to stop breathing during sleep because of blocked upper airways. Ironically, a lack of sleep can also lead to weight gain, as people consume additional calories to power themselves through the day.

Insomnia is another biggie, caused by many factors, including caffeine, medication, jet lag or, most commonly, too much stress and worry. It affects millions of Americans, causing low energy, sleepiness and poor functional performance during the day.

Perhaps the biggest culprit behind our epidemic lack of enough good sleep—or enough sleep, period—is our own bad behavior and lifestyle. We work too late, play too late and keep it all turned on too late. Lauren Hale, associate professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook (N.Y.) University School of Medicine says that electronic devices used before bed can make it harder to go to sleep at night. The light source from electronics can curb melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone. She hypothesizes that a psychological effect can occur because people watch television or stay on the computer longer than they intended.

So with so much at stake, what’s a tired person to do?

Sleep Solutions

Getting enough sleep has to become a conscious priority, says Dr. Berger, and the best way to get enough is to simply plan ahead. “I try to get people to spend time preparing for sleep, especially calming down, because if you calm down beforehand you are going to relieve some of the symptoms that otherwise keep you awake, or wake you up,” he says. Dr. Berger advises that you should create a simple ritual before sleep, such as taking a warm bath or settling in for some comfort reading before bed.

One of the biggest factors to a good quantity of sleep is the time people go to bed. “If people are not watching the clock before their bedtime, it’s going to be bad,” Dr. Breus says. According to Dr. Breus, things in the bedroom can prevent proper sleep, such as having a pet in bed with you or another person in the room snoring.

And if you want to have nice quality sleep, Dr. Breus suggests laying off the caffeine. It can have a half-life of 8 to 9 hours. Alcohol can also cause problems by preventing you from falling into a deep sleep. Also, take caution with certain medications. According to Dr. Breus, close to one-third of all medications have insomnia as a side effect.

Speaking of medication, think a sleeping pill will help? No, say the pundits. In anything but the short term, for medical emergencies or those who have genetic sleeping problems, sleeping pills do more harm than good and frequently lead to psychological addiction.

“By giving people sleeping pills, doctors are doing them a disservice because they could instead just teach them how to sleep better,” Dr. Breus says.