Every neighborhood sound and moan and groan of normal house settling feels like thunder in your ears. Your mind keeps racing, or your legs get restless. You might be too hot or too cold, toss and turn desperate for that elusive comfort. Or you wake up in the middle of the night, perhaps for a bathroom break, and can't fall back to sleep. Well, you're not alone.
Sleep Loss Ages Your Brain
According to a 2018 review in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, about 50% of the 205 million people over age 60 complain about difficulty falling or staying asleep.
Sleep loss leaves you feeling grumpy, causes brain fog or lack of focus, memory hiccups, and can make you depressed. Your coordination is affected, making you vulnerable to more falls and accidents. And it accelerates premature aging.
You see, it's during sleep that your body detoxes, removing cellular waste from your brain and other systems. Without this removal of built-up toxins, your systems "clog up," and efficiency drops. This "gunk" can obstruct message signaling in your brain. If sleep loss continues and becomes chronic, it can lead to haywire beta-amyloid plaques and tau tangles that cause Alzheimer's disease.
Sleep Loss Ages Your Body
The "waste gunk" triggers widespread inflammation because your body identifies it as harmful foreign invaders. And that on-going inflammation is a beeline to disease. But that's not all. It's during sleep that your body switches into repair and regenerate mode, and blood flow increases to your skin. That's when wound healing and new cells are created to replace old, failing tissue. It repairs DNA from UV damage, reducing age spots and wrinkles.3 It also helps muscles recover from daily use.
Without at least 7-8 hours of deep restoring sleep, your body ages faster. It can't rebuild fresh collagen, so your skin thins, pales, gets dull, more wrinkles form, and your skin sags. Your eyelids droop, swell, and dark undereye circles appear. A 2017 study found that just two days of sleep loss reduced the perceived attractiveness, health, and trustworthiness of the participants.
Sleep Loss Leads to Disease
But the effects of sleep loss aren't just skin deep. The inflammation could affect your mobility by attacking your joints, causing pain, stiffness, and swelling. Sleep deprivation alters the liver's metabolism. Studies show losing just 6 hours of sleep reduces the liver's ability to produce glucose and process insulin. It increases your risk for metabolic diseases, fatty liver, and diabetes.5 It could also weaken your immunity, leaving you vulnerable to colds, the flu, and other viruses.6
It increases your risk for high blood pressure. And it can alter the balance of hormones that tell your body you've eaten enough food, so you tend to gain extra inches and pounds. It can tank your sex drive for both men and women. A review of 16 studies in 2010 that followed 1,382,999 adults for 4-25 years revealed that too little sleep increases your risk for early death.7
Plan of Action for Deep, Blissful Sleep
Just because you're getting older, it doesn't mean you don't have to sleep as much. Actually, the opposite is true. As you age, you need your sleep more than when you were a teenager. Taking extra steps to create a healthier sleep environment includes a routine that will help balance your broken sleep clock.
