How much sleep should I get?
Eat, sleep, repeat. Getting shut eye is a fundamental element of our daily routine. But how many of us know why we actually need sleep? Or how many hours sleep we really need? Or just how important it is?
According to new research, sleep has a stronger association with a person’s wellbeing than almost anything else in their lives.
Polling carried out by the National Centre for Social Research, found that the most rested people score 15 points higher on the happiness index than those who struggled with their sleep. However, increasing household income from £12,500 to £50,000 results in an increase of just two points.
This news may or may not come as a surprise. As a society, we’re obsessed with the amount of sleep we get (or don’t get, depending on your viewpoint), and anyone who has experienced sleep deprivation will know from first hand experience that sleep really is essential to wellbeing.
Dr Guy Meadows, Clinical Director of The Sleep School — an organisation that helps insomniacs, stressed workers and new parents — has dedicated his career to helping people sleep better, naturally. “A good night’s sleep is responsible for our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing” he says.
Poor sleep disrupts the appetite and satiety hormones Leptin and Ghrelin, causing us to crave more sugary food, eat more and gain weight.
Regularly sleeping less than 6 hours sleep per night increases our risk of catching the common cold by 4.5 times, as well as increasing the time taken to recover.
Poor sleep is associated with an increased risk of stroke and heart attacks. The reasons for this include an increased risk of high blood pressure, elevated blood inflammatory markers and poor dietary and lifestyle factors.
Poor sleep increases our blood sugar levels, similar to that seen in diabetes. Poor sleep appears to alter the function of insulin, leading to an insulin resistance type effect resulting in high blood sugar.
Sleep plays a vital role in the repair and regeneration of all cells including skin cells. Sleep deprivation reduces the time available for skin repair, as well as increasing the stress hormone cortisol accelerating cell aging.
Initial sleep research suggests that sleep deprivation makes us more likely to expect a positive outcome causing us to take greater risks.
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A bidirectional relationship exists between poor sleep and poor mental health. It is well documented that poor sleep is a symptom of depression and anxiety. However, research also suggests that persistent insomnia can increase an individual’s risk of depression and anxiety occurring or recurring.
Five days of poor sleep (e.g. 6 hours versus 8 hours) is reported to have the same negative impact on cognitive performance as two whole nights without sleep. Higher order executive functions such as problem solving, focus and attention and memory recall are all dramatically reduced.
Poor sleep shifts us from our “modern rational” prefrontal cortex into our “primitive threat detecting” amygdala. Research suggests that in this state we view the world around and ourselves more negatively. This lowers mood, trust and makes it harder for us to form new or maintain old relationships.
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When we sleep the lymphatic system opens small channels in the brain to flush out neuro-toxins built up during the day. It is speculated that poor sleep may lead to a deterioration in this system and the consequent build-up of toxins may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s.
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Stick to a routine that allows your body to relax and unwind before you go to bed. This can include dimming the lights, putting anything mentally stimulating like TVs, tablets and phones out of sight and picking up a book or magazine instead. Lying in bed relaxing conserves energy
It may sound like advice for first-time mothers but picking a bedtime and doing your best to stick to it is beneficial for adults as well as new-borns.
Limiting caffeine and alcohol after 2 pm will help you wind down and improve the quality of your sleep. The amino acid tryptophan promotes the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. Up your intake of chicken, turkey, milk and dairy to boost your tryptophan levels.
Your bedroom should be cool, quiet and dark. It can help to make your bedroom free of distractions that may stimulate your mind like a TV, a computer, a tablet or a phone.
Sleep recommendations
But the truth is somewhat less palatable. Both refined and unrefined sugars have much the same effect on the body. While refined table sugar (sucrose) is dealt with by the pancreas (which produces insulin), unrefined fruit sugars are processed by the liver. Despite this biochemical difference, our bodies react to unrefined, natural sweeteners in much same way as a spoonful of the white stuff — with a blood sugar spike. This encourages the liver to produce glucose, and high blood glucose levels ultimately cause the body to store fat and gain weight.
Studies have shown that when eaten to excess, products containing fructose contribute to obesity, heart problems and liver disease just like products containing granulated sugar. Other research has shown that fructose actually drains minerals from your body.
And not for nothing are alternative sugars also implicated in weight gain and tooth decay; they also perpetuate your palette’s taste for sweet things — because many are actually sweeter than sugar. The theory is that consumers will therefore eat less of it — but who really does?
Recent statistics from the British Nutrition Foundation reveal that 96 per cent of us don’t know how much sweet stuff we should be consuming every day (for the record, the government recommends no more than 30g of added sugar a day, which is about seven teaspoons) but on average, British adults eat and drink double that.
A couple of years ago, sales of honey exceeded those of jam in Waitrose supermarkets, a change attributed to a perception that honey makes for a healthier spread. Indeed, market research company Mintel estimated that honey sales totalled a staggering £112m in 2013, meaning Brits ate our way through 20.3 million kilos of the stuff. But is honey really better for us than white granulated sugar?
While honey is often thought of as a “natural” form of sugar, how much refining is done to the contents of the jars you find on the shelf at your local supermarket?
While the raw, unrefined varieties of honey available from farms and some health food stores do contain some health-boosting trace minerals — niacin, riboflavin, thiamine and vitamin B6 — those elements make up around two per cent of honey’s total content. Hardly a viable source, when you know that more than half of the product is pure fructose (fruit sugar).
In terms of our blood sugar, because honey is 55 per cent fructose, it is in reality of little more benefit to our bodies than eating granulated sugar.
While honey is marginally lower on the glycaemic index (58) than sugar (65) — which means it is absorbed into the body at a slightly slower rate — the main difference between the two is in the image. Honey appears to be more natural.
Yet honey is also higher in calories than table sugar. A tablespoon of commercial natural honey contains 64 calories whereas a tablespoon of sugar contains around 48 calories.
Agave
A favourite sweetener of cleaneating bloggers, as well as Bake Off alumna Mary Berry — she recommended it in her “reduced sugar” carrot cake recipe — agave nectar is made from a fluid extracted from blue agave, a native Mexican plant that is also used to make tequila. The juice is filtered, heated and concentrated, meaning it is highly processed, and marketed as a “nectar”. While agave has a lower GI rating than honey (19), up to 90 per cent of it is fructose, and consuming it instead of sugar provides no major health benefits. It’s high in calories too, at 60 per tablespoon.
Brown rice syrup
The latest foodstuff to be hailed by health bloggers as “nature’s sweetener”. Unlike honey and agave, brown rice syrup is fructose free. Unfortunately, it is 100 per cent glucose — 40 per cent higher than table sugar, so consumption leads to a massive blood sugar spike. Additionally, it’s processed. Brown rice syrup is made from fermented cooked brown rice boiled into syrup that completely removes any nutrients, leaving behind only glucose. Not only is this empty calories (75 per tbsp), but it’s also the highest scoring sweetener on the GI index (98).
If you are looking for an alternative sweetener that doesn’t have a negative impact on the body’s blood sugar, try stevia, a new-generation sweetener made from the leaf of a plant, stevia rebaudiana, a South American herb 300 times sweeter than sugar. With no calories and no effect on the blood sugar, it’s a great alternative to sugar, although by the spoonful many find its taste rather bitter.
However, sugar manufacturers such as Silver Spoon have recently begun formulating some of their granulated sugars with a proportion of stevia, meaning you get the sugary taste with a third of the calories.
Stevia