Aging Well
Earlier this year, I started research for a series on anti-aging techniques.
The series will not start broadcasting until 2015, but the information is too important to wait, so I set up this section in my website, and I will be updating periodically.
1. TIME TO EMPTY YOUR BRAIN'S TRASH
FAILURE TO DO SO CAN CAUSE PREMATURE AGING
From an evolutionary viewpoint, sleep would seem to be rather dangerous --- takes time away from gathering food and puts you in a state where you are totally unprotected. So why would we end up with a body that wants to spend 8 hours of each day sleeping?
For a number of years, we have known that sleep played a major role in forming memories of what happened during the day, setting up new connections in the brain and getting rid of old ones that are no longer important. Nice stuff, but not worth a third of your life.
Recently, scientists have discovered that thinking during the day produces a series of “waste products” that need to be cleaned out each night and we need to be asleep during the cleaning process.
When you don’t get the sleep you need you end up doing irreparable damage to your brain including aging it prematurely.
One of the waste products is a chemical called beta-amyloid that has become associated with Alzheimer’s and its something you definitely want to clean out.
Between the tissue cells is an area that takes up about 20 percent of your brain and it’s filled with fluid. When you are asleep and not busy processing information, that fluid cleans out your brains waste.
These days, almost 70 million people in the United States suffer with some form of sleep disorder. When we don’t get enough sleep (8 to 9 hours each night) brain trash builds up.
That could result in an increase in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. We already know that sleep deprivation obstructs our ability to concentrate, to understand what is going on around us and to process information.
BOTTOM LINE:
Getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep each night allows your brain to clean out the trash that it creates during each day. That can help prevent the neurodegenerative damage associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and premature aging.
2. NOT GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP CAN INCREASE YOUR WEIGHT
Trying to keep to your proper weight is significant in your overall program for health and longevity. Anything we can do to help reach and keep our ideal weight (or as close as possible) is meaningful.
Recent research indicates that if you don’t get the amount of sleep you need (even for just one night) your brain develops a sudden desire for high fat and high sugar foods.
Subjects in a study that had not gotten a sufficient amount of sleep, experienced a distinct reduction of activity in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that considers the consequences of a decision. Not getting enough sleep causes a reduction in your ability to think clearly, and that results in your eating foods that increase your weight.
A study at the University of Colorado indicated that missing a few hours of sleep for just a few nights, back to back, resulted in an average weight gain of two pounds.
Scientists who are studying the issue believe that our brain can function at an optimum level for about 16 hours. At that point, it needs to go offline, sleep and reboot. If you go beyond 16 hours the brain networks starts to break down and become dysfunctional, and you start eating foods you should avoid.