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According to Matthew Walker, one of the world’s leading experts on sleep, routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night weakens immune system and increases the risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not one will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Moderate reductions in sleep for one week disrupts blood sugar levels.
Short sleeping increases the likelihood of coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, causing cardiovascular disease, stroke and congestive heart failure. Sleep disruption contributes to all major psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety.
Sleep enriches a diversity of functions within the brain, including ability to learn, memorise and make logical decisions. It also recalibrates emotional brain circuits, allowing the social and psychological challenges of the next day with cool-headed composure.
Dreaming provides a unique set of benefits like soothing painful memories, inspiring creativity, fighting malignancy, preventing infection and warding off all manner of illnesses. Sleep reforms the body’s metabolic state by fine-tuning the balance of insulin and circulating glucose. It regulates appetite, controls body weight by encouraging healthy food selection rather than impulsive choices.
A recent study by Dr David Gozal, from the University of Chicago, showed that sleep-deprived mice suffered a 200 per cent increase in the speed and size of cancer growth, relative to those mice who were well-rested.
Worse, when Dr Gozal performed postmortem examinations on the mice, he discovered that the tumours were far more aggressive in those who were sleep-deficient. Their cancer had metastasised, spreading to surrounding organs, tissue and bone.