thank you very much
um well i would like to start with
testicles
men who sleep five hours a night have
significantly smaller testicles
than those who sleep seven hours or more
in addition men who routinely sleep just
four to five hours a night will have a
level of testosterone
which is that of someone 10 years their
senior
so a lack of sleep will age a man by a
decade
in terms of that critical aspect of
wellness
and we see equivalent impairments in
female
reproductive health caused by a lack of
sleep
this is the best news that i have for
you today
from this point it may only get worse
not only will i tell you about the
wonderfully good things that happen when
you get
sleep but the alarmingly bad things that
happen
when you don't get enough both for your
brain
and for your body um let me start with
the brain
and the functions of learning in memory
because what we've discovered over the
past 10 or so years
is that you need sleep after learning to
essentially hit the save button
on those new memories so that you don't
forget
but recently we discovered that you also
need sleep
before learning and now to actually
prepare your brain um almost like a dry
sponge
ready to initially soak up new
information
and without sleep the memory circuits of
the brain
essentially become waterlogged as it
were and you can't absorb new memories
so let me show you the data and here in
this study
we decided to test the hypothesis that
pulling the all-nighter was a good idea
so we took a group of individuals and we
assigned them to one of two experimental
groups
a sleep group and a sleep deprivation
group
now the sleep group they're going to get
a full eight hours
of slumber but the deprivation group
we're going to keep them awake
in the laboratory under full supervision
um
there's no naps or caffeine by the way
so it's miserable for everyone involved
and then the next day we're going to
place those participants inside
an mri scanner and we're going to have
them try and learn a whole list of new
facts
as we're taking snapshots of brain
activity
and then we're going to test them to see
how effective that learning has been
and that's what you're looking at here
on the vertical axis
and when you put those two groups head
to head what you find
is a quite significant 40 percent
deficit in the ability of the brain to
make new memories without sleep
i think this should be concerning
considering what we know is happening to
sleep
in our education populations right now
in fact to put that in context it would
be the difference in a child
acing an exam versus failing it
miserably
40 percent and we've gone on to discover
what goes wrong within your brain to
produce these types of learning
disabilities
and there's a structure that sits on the
left and the right side of your brain
called the hippocampus and you can think
of the hippocampus almost like the
informational inbox of your brain
it's very good at receiving new memory
files
and then holding on to them
and when you look at this structure in
those people who had
a full night of sleep we saw lots of
healthy
learning related activity yet in those
people who were sleep deprived
we actually couldn't find any
significant signal whatsoever
so it's almost as though sleep
deprivation had shut down your memory
inbox
and any new incoming files they were
just being bounced
you couldn't effectively commit new
experiences to memory
so that's the bad that can happen if i
were to take sleep away from you
but let me just come back to that
control group for a second
remember those folks that got a full
eight hours of sleep
well we can ask a very different
question what is it about the
physiological
quality of your sleep when you do get it
that restores and enhances your memory
and learning ability
each and every day and by placing
electrodes
all over the head what we've discovered
is that there are big
powerful brain waves that happen during
the very
deepest stages of sleep that have riding
on top of them
these spectacular bursts of electrical
activity
that we call sleep spindles and it's the
combined
quality of these deep sleep brain waves
that acts like a
file transfer mechanism at night
shifting memories from a short-term
vulnerable reservoir
to a more permanent long-term storage
site within the brain
and therefore protecting them making
them safe
and it is important that we understand
what during sleep
actually transacts these memory benefits
because there are real medical and
societal implications
and let me just tell you about one area
that we've moved this work
out into clinically which is the context
of aging and dementia
because it's of course no secret that as
we get older
our learning and memory abilities begin
to fade and decline
but what we've also discovered is that a
physiological signature
of aging is that your sleep gets worse
especially that deep quality of sleep
that i was just discussing
and only last year we finally published
evidence
that these two things they're not simply
co-occurring
they are significantly interrelated
and it suggests that the disruption of
deep sleep
is an underappreciated factor that is
contributing to cognitive decline or
memory decline
in aging and most recently we've
discovered
in alzheimer's disease as well
now i know this is remarkably depressing
news
um it's in the mail it's coming at you
but there's a potential silver lining
here
unlike many of the other factors that we
know are associated with aging
for example changes in the physical
structure of the brain
that's fiendishly difficult to treat
but that sleep is a missing piece in the
explanatory puzzle
of aging and alzheimer's is exciting
because we
may be able to do something about it
and one way that we are approaching this
at my sleep center
is not by using sleeping pills by the
way
unfortunately they are blunt instruments
that do not produce naturalistic sleep
instead we're actually developing a
method based on this
it's called direct current brain
stimulation
you insert a small amount of voltage
into the brain
so small you typically don't feel it but
it has a measurable impact
now if you apply this stimulation during
sleep in young healthy adults
as if you're sort of singing in time
with those deep sleep brain waves
not only can you amplify the size of
those deep sleep brain waves
but in doing so we can almost double the
amount of memory benefit that you get
from sleep
the question now is whether we can
translate this same
affordable potentially portable piece of
technology
into older adults and those with
dementia
can we restore back some healthy quality
of deep sleep
and in doing so can we salvage
aspects of their learning and memory
function
that is my real hope now that's one of
our
moonshot goals as it were
so that's an example of sleep for your
brain
but sleep is just as essential for your
body
and we've already spoken about sleep
loss and your reproductive system
or i could tell you about sleep loss and
your cardiovascular system
and that all it takes is one hour
because there is a global experiment
performed on 1.6
billion people across 70 countries
twice a year and it's called daylight
savings time
now in the spring when we lose one hour
of sleep
we see a subsequent 24 percent
increase in heart attacks that following
day
in the autumn when we gain an hour of
sleep we see a 21
reduction in heart attacks
isn't that incredible
and you see exactly the same profile for
car crashes road traffic accidents even
suicide rates
but as a deeper dive i want to focus on
this
sleep loss and your immune system
and here i'll introduce these delightful
blue
elements in the image they are called
natural
killer cells and you can think of
natural killer cells
almost like the secret service agents of
your immune system
and they are very good at identifying
dangerous
unwanted elements and eliminating them
in fact what they're doing here is
destroying a cancerous
tumor mass so what you wish for
is a virile set of these immune
assassins at all times
and tragically that's what you don't
have if you're not sleeping enough
so here in this experiment you're not
going to have your sleep deprived
for an entire night you're simply going
to have your sleep restricted
to four hours for one single night and
then we're going to look to see what's
the percent reduction in immune cell
activity that you suffer
and it's not small it's not 10 percent
it's not
20 percent there was a 70
drop in natural killer cell activity
that's a concerning state of immune
deficiency
and you can perhaps understand why we're
now finding significant links between
short sleep duration and your risk for
the development of numerous forms of
cancer
currently that list includes cancer of
the bowel cancer of the prostate
and cancer of the breast
in fact the link between a lack of sleep
and cancer
is now so strong that the world health
organization
has classified any form of nighttime
shift work
as a probable carcinogen
because of a disruption of your sleep
weight rhythms
so you may have heard of that old maxim
that you can sleep when you're dead
well i'm being quite serious now it is
mortally
unwise advice we know this from
epidemiological studies across millions
of individuals
there's a simple truth the shorter your
sleep
the shorter your life short sleep
predicts all cause mortality
and if increasing your risk for the
development of
cancer or even alzheimer's disease
we're not sufficiently disquieting
we have since discovered that a lack of
sleep will even erode
the very fabric of biological life
itself your dna genetic
code so here in this study
they took a group of healthy adults and
they limited them
to six hours of sleep a night for one
week
and then they measured the change in
their gene activity profile
relative to when those same individuals
were getting a full
eight hours of sleep a night and there
were two critical findings
first a sizable and significant 711
genes
were distorted in their activity caused
by a lack of sleep
the second result was that about half of
those genes were actually
increased in their activity the other
half were decreased
now those genes that were switched off
by a lack of sleep
were genes associated with your immune
system
so once again you can see that immune
deficiency
in contrast those genes that were
actually upregulated or
increased by way of a lack of sleep were
genes associated
with the promotion of tumors genes
associated with long-term chronic
inflammation
within the body and genes associated
with stress
and as a consequence cardiovascular
disease
there is simply no aspect of your
wellness
that can retreat at the sign of sleep
deprivation
and get away unscathed it's rather like
a broken water pipe in your home
sleep loss will leak down into every
nook and cranny
of your physiology even tampering with
the very
dna nucleic alphabet that spells out
your daily health narrative
and at this point you may be thinking oh
my goodness how do i start to get better
sleep what are your tips
for good sleep well beyond
avoiding the damaging and harmful impact
of
alcohol and caffeine on sleep and
if you're struggling with sleep at night
avoiding naps during the day
i have two pieces of advice for you the
first
is regularity go to bed at the same time
wake up at the same time no matter
whether it's the weekday or the weekend
regularity is king and it will anchor
your sleep
and improve the quantity and the quality
of that sleep
the second is keep it cool
your body needs to drop its core
temperature by about
two to three degrees fahrenheit to
initiate sleep
and then to stay asleep and it's the
reason you will always find it easier to
fall asleep in a room that's too cold
than too hot so aim for a bedroom
temperature of around 65 degrees or
about 18 degrees celsius that's going to
be
optimal for the sleep of most people
and then finally in taking a step back
then
what is the mission critical statement
here
well i think it may be this sleep
unfortunately is not an optional
lifestyle
luxury sleep is a non-negotiable
biological necessity
it is your life support system
and it is mother nature's best effort
yet
at immortality and the
decimation of sleep throughout
industrialized nations
is having a catastrophic impact on our
health
our wellness even the safety and the
education of our children
it's a silent sleep loss epidemic
and it is fast becoming one of the
greatest public health challenges that
we face
in the 21st century
i believe it is now time for us to
reclaim
our right to a full night of sleep
and without embarrassment or that
unfortunate
stigma of laziness and in doing so
we can be reunited with the most
powerful elixir of life
the swiss army knife of health as it
were
and with that soap box rant over i will
simply say
good night good luck and above all
i do hope you sleep well thank you very
much indeed
thank you
thank you so much no no no stay there
for a second
good job not running away though i
appreciate that so that was terrifying
you're welcome yes thank you thank you
um
since we can't catch up on sleep
what are we supposed to do what do we do
when we're like tossing and turning in
bed
late at night or doing shift work or or
whatever else
so you're right we can't catch up on
sleep sleep is not like the bank you
can't accumulate a debt
and then hope to pay it off at a later
point in time
i should also note the reason that it's
so catastrophic that
our health deteriorates so quickly first
is because human beings are the only
species that deliberately deprive
themselves of sleep
for no apparent reason and we're smart
and well and i make that point because
what it means
is that mother nature throughout the
course of evolution
has never had to face the challenge of
this thing called sleep deprivation
so she's never developed a safety net
and that's why when you under sleep
things just
sort of implode so quickly both within
the brain and the body so you just have
to prioritize okay so but
tossing and turning in bed what do i do
so if you are staying in bed
awake for too long you should get out of
bed and go to a different room and do
something different
the reason is because your brain will
very quickly associate your bedroom
with the place of wakefulness and you
need to break that association
so only return to bed when you are
sleepy and that way you will relearn the
association that you once had
which is your bed is the place of sleep
so the analogy would be
you'd never sit at the dinner table
waiting to get hungry
so why would you lie in bed waiting to
get sleepy
all right well thank you for that
wake-up call great job matt very welcome
thank you very much