Welcome to Straight Talk on Health. I’m your host Dr. Chet Zelasko. Straight Talk on Health is a joint production with WGVU in Grand Rapids MI. I examine the practical application of health information. Nutrition. Exercise. Diet. Supplementation. I look at the science behind them, and let you know whether it’s something to consider or not. You can check out other things that I do on my website Drchet.com and sign up for my free emails.
We’ve all been there—an occasional night when you just can’t get to sleep. Judging from the questions I get, a whole lot of you are worried about getting enough sleep. I’m not talking about chronic sleep issues, which may require working with physicians and sleep specialists (as Paula has done). I’m talking about people who can’t seem to get more than four or six hours of sleep per night.
My first question is always, “How do you feel? How’s your energy level? Are you tired all the time, or can you do all you need to do every day?” The answer to that question is critical. If the answer is something along the lines of “I feel fine—I just can’t sleep any longer than that.” My typical response is “Don’t worry about it, because that’s apparently all your body needs.”
The problem is that I didn’t have a good explanation beyond that. Turns out it may all be genetically determined. But the question remains: how do you know how much sleep your body needs? After all, we’ve all been told that we need at least eight hours per night. Or do we?
My mother-in-law Ruth had a particular aide in the nursing home who just loved her, and the feeling was mutual. Molly said she never got more than four hours of sleep per night; due to the nature of her job, she could come in at 4 a.m. and be on her way home by noon to spend time with her young children. In fact, her dad was the same way—never more than four hours, and they had all the juice they needed to do all they wanted to do.
That’s why I used to give the answer I gave before: “Don’t worry about it, because that’s apparently all your body needs.” But was there any science to support that? Turns out, there was. Let’s take a look at the science of sleep.
Thanks to an excellent article in Knowable online magazine by Marla Broadfoot, I had a direction to look for the science behind sleep. If you have the time, read the well written article with interviews with the researchers. What researchers? Two researchers in San Francisco have been researching sleep for about 15 years. The initial part of the research was to find people with different sleep patterns. They found a group that were early risers, but the group that caught their attention was the one they termed “short sleepers”; their research focused on that group for the most part.
The research didn’t stop there. Researching that term yields over 380 papers in PubMed alone. I reviewed the first 50 abstracts. To be blunt, there is a lack of clarity in the research; the primary reason seems to be because there’s no clear definition of what a short sleeper actually is. It can be someone who doesn’t get more than seven hours of sleep. They also mix in people with diagnosed insomnia and sleep apnea and associated conditions such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
What is clear is that when researching families with at least two generations of short sleepers, defined as four to six hours per night, there are at least seven gene mutations involved. Further, this group of short sleepers doesn’t seem to be at risk for any debilitating condition and spend the extra time doing more work or tasks.
Should you be concerned about how much sleep you get? Yes, if it interferes with your life and you walk around fatigued all the time. The occasional loss of sleep is expected, but habitual loss is the problem. The actual number of hours of sleep you need is the amount that allows you to recover, renew, and get on with the next day. Forget about how much sleep you’re supposed to get.
One of the researchers was quoted in Broadfoot’s article stating it this way: “Saying everyone should get eight hours of sleep every night is like saying everyone should be 5 feet 10 inches tall.” Can’t say it any better than that.
But I’m not quite done yet. I got a couple of questions about other types of sleep based on what I wrote about in my emails on the topic. Let’s take a look.
One person asked if sleeping over 10 or 12 hours per night is problematic. The answer is that it could indicate a problem if were done on a consistent basis. Sleep apnea can contribute to more time in bed because the person isn’t able to sustain rhythmic breathing; conditions that result are hypertension and other forms of heart disease. People with metabolic disorders who don’t produce enough energy can also spend more time attempting to sleep. Overall, that much sleep is less than desirable unless there’s a reason, such as a loss of sleep occasionally due to stress or travel.
The second was something called bi-phasic sleep patterns. This is legit; it’s a carryover from before the industrial revolution when lighting became more prevalent. Back in the time before regular lighting, people would go to sleep at sundown, sleep for several hours, get up in the middle of the night and do chores, check on animals, etc., then return to bed until sun-up. With the way the world is regulated these days, that doesn’t happen very much unless individuals are free to set their own schedules. Is that healthy and acceptable? I found nothing to suggest otherwise if it’s a natural pattern. If you find yourself temporarily caught in that pattern, such as with a newborn, don’t worry about it; this, too, shall pass, so adapt as well as you can for now. Avoid doing things that will make you more wakeful, such as watching something exciting on a bright screen or drinking coffee, so you can get back to sleep more smoothly.
I hope that clarifies sleep a little more for you. It seems like the correct duration is what fits you the best. If you have the mental and physical energy to do all you need to do, it’s probably fine.
If you remember the first episode this season, I set a goal of getting to my normal weight for height. One of the things I’ve done is stopped putting sugar in my coffee. Do I think that 30 grams of sugar a day—I drink a lot of coffee with a teaspoon in each cup—yielding 120 calories will have an impact on my weight. I can’t say for certain. I’ve always treated coffee as sort of a dessert even though it was just strong black coffee with a little sugar. Maybe I’ll compensate in some way. But that’s not why I quit. I got tired of my coffee cup sticking to the counter. The last straw was when I needed both hands to get it to move—one to stabilize it and the other to whack it. I’ll give you an update on my quest in the next edition as I record these several at a time so in reality, I just began.
Also in that episode, I used the expression think green. The idea was to set up the diet that focuses on green foods first as a foundation of the best diet for you health. If you wanted to know which vegetable is the best, pick anything from the cruciferous family: asparagus, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, kale, and many others. The reason is that it contains sulfides which are very beneficial components of the cruciferous family. Whether you’re a MSU fan or not, Go Green for the first thing you eat in your diet every day.
That’s it for this episode. If you like this podcast, please hit the like button and tell your friends and colleagues about it. Until next time, this is Dr. Chet Zelasko saying health is a choice. Choose wisely today and every day.
Reference: Marla Broadfoot. 2024. The Ones Who Need Little Sleep. www.knowablemagazine.org
