Lack of Sleep Increases Early Mortality Rates

Sleep Duration is Important to Your Longevity!

We are all trying to move ahead in today’s fast paced world, looking for more work hours, and taking on second jobs just to keep up. Society pressures us into stressful lifestyles that don’t leave a lot of time for us to rest. Sleep is something most of us don’t really think about. We just go to bed and sleep as much as we can for the next day. This can actually be harming our bodies. Sleep is the body’s natural restoration period, the time when it rejuvenates and repairs itself. Lack of sleep (Sleep deprivation) diminishes our cellular energy by not allowing any downtime for the body to recuperate.

According to recent scientific research, “People who get less than six hours sleep per night have an increased risk of dying prematurely.” The findings of the study were published in the Sleep Journal.

Lack of sleep has been shown to affect the body’s immune function, hormone secretion, and physical and mental stamina. Scientists have performed sleep studies and determined that losing sleep can also cause weight gain. Decreased sleep creates a spike in ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, and a reduction in leptin, which signals satiety. This makes your body think it is hungry when it actually just needs more sleep.

The effects of losing sleep on our bodily systems leads to increased stress. This added stress over time causes our body’s to work harder and our cells to burn out faster, resulting in earlier mortality. At the same time, stress can affect our health and our sleep in diverse ways. It is important to create a relaxation time before going to bed so your body and mind can wind down. Laying down fully relaxed will help you fall asleep faster as well as relieve your mind of extra worry that may cause you to have bad dreams or abnormal sleep cycles.

Although Lack of Sleep is a semi-voluntary action by most people, others suffer from certain sleeping disorders that make it nearly impossible for them to get the recommended amount of sleep they need. Sleeping disorders such as Insomnia cause difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep through the night. Sleep apnea causes  disturbed sleep where your mind thinks it’s asleep and your body generates stress signals and difficulty breathing which wakes you up all night long. Narcolepsy can cause excessive sleep at random intervals. This does not allow your body to fully rest as it is confused with sleep cycles and wake cycles.

There are many natural products that can help with the effects sleep disorders. Valerian root can help your body relax and become more susceptible to sleep. Melatonin can help your mind become calm and stop racing thoughts that can cause sleep terrors and unwanted sleep stress. So if you have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep you may want to try a natural sleep aid before getting on prescription sleep medicines that can have adverse side effects.

American Nutrition offers High Quality Natural Sleep Aids to Support Healthy Sleep Duration.

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Fish oil may flow in the fountain of youth

The Spanish Explorer Ponce De Leon spent countless years looking for the fountain of youth. The answer wasn’t the water but what was swimming in it. Yet another study shows that fish oil may be a key to longer life.

Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil may slow the ageing process by slowing the rate that telomeres shorten. Telomeres are the structures at the end of a chromosome that affect cell stability and replication. A growing body of research shows that the longer the telomeres, the longer the life of cells, which ultimately means slower ageing.

“Telomere length is an emerging marker for determining biological age, and many scientists are interested in understanding the impact of influences such as age, exercise, oxidative stress, diseases like diabetes and heart disease, and how interventions like dietary supplements, statins and omega-3 fatty acids impact length,” said the study, which was lead by Dr. Ramin Farzaneh-Far, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “We are excited to identify omega-3 fatty acids as a potentially protective factor that may slow down telomere shortening,” he said.

Previous research indicates heart patients with a higher intake of Omega-3s as have higher survival rates. Now researchers may know why. The new telomere Omega-3 research validates this and other studies on the importance of Omega-3 with regards to life expectancy. A study published in the April 2009 edition of PLoS Medicine, an online journal, showed that Omega-3 deficiencies may contribute to as many as 97,000 deaths annually.

“We know that daily doses of Omega-3 EPA/DHA can help with many conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, and we’re committed to increasing consumer awareness about the drastic Omega-3 EPA/DHA deficiency in the Western diet. However, these recent studies validate that Omega-3 EPA/DHA is more than just part of a healthy diet … it’s a matter of life and death,” said Lori Colvert, Ocean Nutrition Canada’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications.

For the telomere study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers evaluated 608 patients with stable heart disease (from the Heart and Soul Study from September 2000 and December 2002) and followed up on their status for a median period of six years.

Researchers evaluated participants for Omega-3 fatty acid levels at the start and throughout the study. They also isolated DNA from the blood and evaluated the length of the telomere of the leukocyte, a type of blood cell. Telomeres in patients with the lowest Omega-3 levels shortened 2.6 times faster than patients with the highest levels of Omega-3s. The study only looked at blood levels of Omega-3s, not dosage.

Cardiologists note that this study was the first to look at telomere length over time. The question remains whether the study results apply to healthy people because the researchers only looked at patients with heart disease. Though according to Farzaneh-Far, telomeres shorten in everyone, so Omega-3s could indeed benefit most people.

By Kimberly Lord Stewart @ functionalingredientsmag.com
For more on telomeres, see Nobel Prize News
For more information on Omega-3 fatty acids please visit our website at www.AmericanNutrition.com