Sleep and its association with chronic diseases

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The price to pay for poor sleep or restless sleep is greater than many people think. Indeed, prolonged sleep disturbance is sometimes a potential cause of chronic illness or can have profound consequences for general health. So, ensuring good quality sleep is an important step in preventing a number of chronic diseases.

1. What role does sleep play in health?

Insufficient sleep can have profound everyday and potentially long-lasting consequences on mental health and well-being.
Everyone is conscious of the relationship between sleep and ability to function during the day. Everyone has experienced feelings of fatigue, a bad mood, or a lack of concentration that often leads to a sleepless night or restless sleep.
What many people don't realize, however, is that sleep deprivation - especially long-term cases of sleep disturbances - is linked to health consequences, including chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high blood pressure. High blood pressure and heart disease or these conditions can lead to a shorter life expectancy. In addition, other additional studies show that getting more than nine hours of sleep is also associated with poorer health.

2. Studies on the link between sleep duration and chronic diseases

There are three main types of research that help to understand the link between sleep habits and the risk of developing chronic diseases. The first type is called a sleep deprivation study that involves depriving healthy study volunteers of sleep and examining any short-term physiological changes that might be causing the illness. Such studies have pointed to a range of potential harms of sleep deprivation often associated with increased stress, such as increased blood pressure, impaired blood sugar control, and increased inflammation.
The second type of research is called a cross-sectional epidemiological study that involves the examination of questionnaires that provide information on habitual sleep duration and the existence of a particular disease or group of diseases in a large population at a time. For example, both a decrease and an increase in sleep time, as reported on the questionnaire, are associated with hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. However, cross-sectional studies cannot explain how too little or too much sleep leads to disease because people may have medical conditions that affect sleep, not sleep habits that cause the disease to occur or worsen. more important.
The third and most convincing type of study that persistent sleep disturbances are associated with the development of a variety of diseases comes from long-term monitoring of sleep habits and disease patterns in individuals initially healthy (ie, longitudinal epidemiological study). Although it is not yet known whether modifying a person's sleep can reduce the risk of eventual disease development or reduce the severity of an ongoing illness, results from epidemiological studies are not yet known. Longitudinal epidemiology is beginning to suggest this is possible.
Obesity
Prolonged sleep disorder or insufficient sleep is associated with a high likelihood of weight gain, which in turn leads to overweight and obesity.
Several studies have shown a link between poor sleep, insufficient sleep and weight gain. For example, people who typically slept less than six hours per night were found to be more likely to have a higher-than-average body mass index (BMI), and those who slept eight hours had the lowest BMIs. Sleep is currently considered a potential risk factor for obesity, along with the two most commonly identified risk factors, inactivity and overeating. At the same time, studies of the mechanisms involved in the regulation of metabolism and appetite help explain the link between sleep and obesity.

During sleep, the body secretes hormones that help control appetite, energy metabolism, and glucose processing. Too little sleep disturbs the balance of these and other hormones. For example, poor or restless sleep often leads to an increase in the production of cortisol, known as the "stress hormone". Poor sleep is also associated with increased insulin secretion after meals. Insulin is a hormone that regulates glucose processing and promotes fat storage; Higher insulin levels are associated with weight gain, a risk factor for diabetes.
Insufficient sleep has also been linked to lower blood levels of leptin, a hormone that tells the brain that the body has enough food, as well as higher levels of ghrelin, a biochemical that stimulates appetite . As a result, poor sleep can lead to cravings later in the night even though the body has been loaded with calories before. Additionally, not getting enough sleep can make the body too tired to burn off these extra calories with exercise and other forms of movement in general.
Diabetes
Researchers have found that not getting enough sleep can lead to type 2 diabetes by affecting the way the body processes glucose, the high-energy carbohydrate that cells use to make blood. fuel. One study in a group of healthy people who were cut off from sleep by 8 to 4 hours per night processed glucose more slowly than when they were allowed to sleep for 12 hours. Many epidemiological studies have also shown that adults who often sleep less than five hours per night have a much higher risk of getting or developing diabetes.
In addition, researchers have identified a link between obstructive sleep apnea - a disorder in which difficulty breathing during sleep leads to frequent arousal - and the progression of control disorders. glucose control similar to that occurring in diabetes.
Heart disease and hypertension
Not getting enough sleep in the short term can also cause reflex hypertension. Indeed, studies have found that one night of inadequate sleep in people who already have high blood pressure can raise blood pressure throughout the next day. This effect may begin to explain the correlation between poor sleep quality and cardiovascular disease and stroke. For example, one study found that sleeping too little (less than six hours) or too much (more than nine hours) increased the risk of coronary heart disease in women.
There is increasing evidence of a link between obstructive sleep apnea and heart disease. People with apnea often wake up several times a night because their airways are closed during sleep. In addition to these sleep disturbances, people with apnea experience a brief rise in blood pressure upon awakening. Over time, this can lead to increased blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, when sleep apnea is treated, blood pressure can drop.

Mood disorders
A sleepless night can make people irritable and moody the next day. Therefore, prolonged sleep disturbance inevitably leads to negative consequences on mood.
Specifically, chronic sleep problems have been linked to depression, anxiety, and mental distress. In one study, subjects who slept four and a half hours a night reported feeling more stressed, sad, angry, and mentally exhausted. In another study, people who slept 4 hours a night had lower levels of optimism and sociability after a day of inadequate sleep. All of these self-reported symptoms improved significantly when subjects returned to their normal sleep schedules.
Immune function
Everyone feels sleepy when sick, it's natural to need rest. Substances made by the immune system to help fight infections also cause fatigue.
One theory is that the immune system evolves into "sedation factors" because inactivity and plenty of sleep confer immune-boosting benefits. Accordingly, people who sleep more in the face of infections are better able to fight off infections than those who sleep less. In fact, animal research shows that animals that get deeper sleep after a microbial infection test have a higher chance of survival.
Alcoholism
Despite its mild sedative effect, alcohol is a factor in poor sleep quality.
Studies have shown that alcohol use is more common among people who don't sleep well. There are 2 reasons to explain this. First, alcohol acts as a mild sedative and is often used as an adjunct to sleep disturbances. Second, the sedative effects of alcohol are only temporary. When alcohol is processed by the body for several hours, the ingredient begins to stimulate parts of the brain that cause excitement, in many cases causing awakening and difficulty falling asleep later at night.
In summary, as chronic diseases are increasingly common in the population and play an important role in premature mortality and morbidity, persistent sleep disorders need more attention. Because when you don't sleep well or have restless sleep, a person can increase their chances of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and depression. Therefore, sleep quality should be considered a criterion in holistic health care.

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References: healthysleep.med.harvard.edu, cdc.gov