Sleep Awareness Month

 

Did you get enough sleep last night? If you’re like me (and approximately 84 million Americans), the answer is “no”. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 33% of Americans get less than 7 hours of sleep each night, and that among them are 50-70 million who suffer from some kind of sleep disorder.  March is National Sleep Awareness Month, and this week on the podcast, we’re talking about our struggles with getting enough sleep and some of the things we do to combat it.

I’m a night owl. I always have been. But more importantly, my body seems to operate on a longer cycle than the standard 24-hour day. I don’t know why, but my body’s clock is determined to go into a pattern of staying up until 2:00 am, sleeping until 10:00 or 11:00, and then stretching it out even later over the following days. No matter what I try to get onto a more “normal” schedule, one unintentional late night, and my body defaults back to this same pattern of trying to squeeze a few more hours into each day. And even when I really try to reset by going to bed earlier, I can’t make myself fall asleep until it’s “time.” Even though I will go through all my regular bedtime routines early, I will have to read for hours just to feel sleepy. Mostly, I have given up trying. I seem to operate okay this way, and studies have shown that you can catch up on missed sleep*, so I never really believed all the hype about going to bed early. Especially since I get 6-9 hours of sleep most nights.  But so many medical professionals insist that this kind of schedule is actually bad for me, so it makes me wonder.

I was listening to NPR while driving recently when I caught an interview with Lynn Peeples discussing her book, The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms. In the interview, she talked about “morning sunlight” and how it affects the circadian rhythm, but what caught my attention was her mention of people having varied circadian lengths. While many people do operate on a 24-hour circadian rhythm, many have shorter cycles, making them more inclined to be early risers, while others have longer cycles and are more prone to be night owls, like me. She also points out mounting evidence that some people may actually be predisposed to function better at night.

But what about Vitamin D? Studies have shown that certain gene mutations make it more difficult for the body to create vitamin D from sunlight. As I’ve mentioned previously, insufficient vitamin D levels seem to play an important part in certain cancers and other health issues. By sleeping in, I actually miss out on my best opportunities to get that all-important sunlight, further hindering my body’s ability to make enough. Does that mean that my sleep habits may have played a factor in my breast cancer? Peeples shares that studies are now connecting disrupted circadian rhythms with such health issues as obesity, cardio-metabolic diseases, cancer, and even dementia.

Whether or not my body’s natural clock is longer and my genetics dictate that I function better at night, some important factors still determine whether my sleep schedule is healthy. It may be time to think about getting a little more morning sun to help get my sleep habits back on track.