Skimp on sleep, shorten your life

Experts warn habitually short cycle can impair immune system

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – If you get the right amount of ZZZs at night, you will not only feel better, think better, eat better and drive better, you may actually live longer, sleep experts say.

And while there’s still plenty that scientists don’t know about sleep and its restorative power, recent evidence shows that not getting the 7 to 9 hours of sleep recommended for healthy adults each night has serious health consequences.

“You basically die at an earlier age,” said Dr. Thomas Kilkenny, director of the Institute of Sleep Medicine at Staten Island University Hospital, citing a higher risk of stroke, diabetes and cardiovascular disease among people who voluntarily or involuntarily sleep less than the recommended amount of time.

A habitually short sleep cycle impairs the immune system, and also elevates blood glucose levels, leading to the development of diabetes, said Dr. Irina Petrenko, a staff member at New York’s Richmond University Medical Center who has a sleep medicine practice in Brooklyn.

“Our ability to fight infection is impaired,” she said. What many don’t realize, she said, is sleep also affects weight gain.

As we sleep, levels of the hormone leptin are elevated, telling our bodies we’re full, she explained. “Low levels make our brain think we don’t have enough energy, so our brain tells us we’re hungry,” she said. “It increases our desire to snack while we’re awake. We’ll be craving something sweet. If you’ve just had a few episodes of insomnia, you’ll be reaching for the coffee with sugar and the cookie.”

The body balances leptin with another hormone, ghrelin, she said. Ghrelin tells the body it’s hungry, and it decreases during sleep. “It has a significant impact on our weight control because during the daytime you could have a very healthy diet, but without sleep, our immune system slows down, we gain weight and we have cravings for sweets.”

Cholesterol goes up when sleep levels are low, she said, noting laboratory studies performed on mice. “Sleep-deprived mice had larger cholesterol plaques in their arteries and high levels of inflammation in their blood vessels,” she said.

Memory, concentration and spontaneous thought also suffer when we sleep too little, studies have shown.

“People burn the candle at both ends, unfortunately, in the U.S. culture of working hard, and burning the midnight oil is actually looked upon as heroic,” Kilkenny said.

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