“Methought I heard a voice say, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’ — the innocent sleep Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care…”
Shakespeare was, mayhaps, a scientist ahead of his time. Thousands of sleep studies have been conducted around the globe with one clear discovery: you really do need seven to nine hours every night to maintain not only your current health but to protect your future health. Sleep debt is cumulative and not bankable. Lost hours cannot be offset on weekends or off season.
TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE
What sleep researchers have known for a long time is (deep) sleep is the time when brain cleanses itself — takes out the garbage. This allows synapses to be ready for new inputs. In the past few years, however, another more troubling discovery been uncovered.
Some of the compounds the brain clears out are beta-amyloids, which are a pathway for Alzheimer’s disease. Unspoken or not, this sad ending is one of our own longstanding background fears. When there are medicines available to prevent this ending, we will clamor for them. Meanwhile, one of the best measures of defense — sleep — is unappreciated.
There is more unsettling news. Less than seven hours of sleep has a serious impact on our immune system. Getting insufficient sleep in the week before an immunization lowers the desired production of antibodies, rendering the vaccination far less effective. Scientists have established this phenomenon for the flu vaccines and are studying whether it holds true for COVID-19.
Those consequences are reasonably easy to study and measure, but it is also clear lack of sleep has a significant impact on our mental health as well. The pandemic has given doctors a perverse opportunity to see the changes in our behavior and emotions when we sudden-ly are not commuting, working remotely and have fewer outside time demands to compete with sleep time. Morning larks and night owls have been able to adjust to their own biological clocks, (which is imprinted at conception) benefiting their work and leisure.
GET TO BED
For farmers who think bragging about late hours is manly, they might consider more sleep increases testosterone levels. Insufficient sleep can also produce a reaction similar to the munchies, legendary with pot smokers.
There is good news too — it’s never too late. Even in middle age, adjusting sleep priorities can help prevent the onset of dementia by as much as 10 years.
Simply being awake should be thought of as low-level biochemical brain damage that timely and regular sleep alone can remedy. Get to bed. Save your brain and knit up your cares.
John Phipps, a farmer from Chrisman, Ill., is the on-farm “U.S. Farm Report” commentator.
