Many people do not get enough sleep at night because they are “too busy” doing other things. Getting enough sleep is vitally important to maintaining good health and helping you heal if you have health problems. It is also an important factor in preventing future health problems.

Facts about sleep

More and more scientific research is emerging showing the importance of sleep and how detrimental sleep deprivation is to health. Recent research has found that people who habitually sleep less than seven hours a night are 21-26% more likely to die from any cause than people who habitually sleep more than eight hours a night.

All animals sleep. There are no animals that do not sleep. Biologically, that means that sleep is just as important as breathing and eating.

Recently, there has been fascinating research on the brain that has discovered more about how the brain works and what it does at night. I was amazed when I read it. When we are active during the day, working, exercising and doing our daily activities, we use our brain functions a lot. This causes a build-up of toxins and chemical by-products that occur naturally as part of that process. When we sleep at night, the brain actually pumps through a nightly “wash cycle”, like a dishwasher, that removes those toxins and by-products accumulated during the day. Just stop and think about it for a moment. What happens if you don’t wash your dishes well? A lot of dirt accumulates. Now think about what is happening in your brain. What do you think happens when a lot of toxins and dirt accumulate in the brain? Will it have an impact on brain function and health? Absolutely. If you don’t get enough sleep at night, the wash cycle doesn’t work properly.

Decades of sleep research shows that eight hours of sleep per night is the magic number. Children and adolescents need a little more.

The Chinese Medicine Perspective

In Chinese Medicine, we want to balance yin and yang in the body to restore and maintain health. Yang energy provides heat, fire, and functional activity in the body. The day is yang time. It is warm, light and it is the time when we are busy with our daily activities. Many of us end up acting “too yang,” that is, go, go, go all the time, without enough “downtime” or time to rest and rejuvenate the body (and mind and spirit, for that matter).

Yin energy is the refreshing, moisturizing and nourishing energy of the body. Night is yin time, when it is cooler, darkest and quietest. During yin time, our body naturally needs to be calm and rest, in order to recover from the activities of the day. What happens when you stay up too late, do too much, and don’t get enough rest? You work too hard, burn off yin energy, and feel tired. Yin / night / rest time is as important as yang / active time! Unfortunately, all of our great technology to make us more efficient, instead of giving us more free time, has made us do a lot more things in less time. We are always trying to do something else that we can do before we go to bed.

If you think getting more done is more important than sleeping, consider the research mentioned above. And research has shown that those who don’t get enough sleep (less than 8 hours) gain weight, and there is an increase in heart attacks in those who don’t get enough sleep.

How to control your sleep

As you can see, eight hours of sleep a night is really important. Tonight, consider whether you really need to do one or two more things before bed. Do you really need to stay up and watch the end of the movie or finish reading the book tonight? Plan your time at night, as well as during the day. What time do you need to go to bed to get eight hours of sleep? If you start watching the TV show or movie, will it end in enough time for you to go to bed at your scheduled bedtime? Set an alarm, if necessary, to tell you to stop what you are doing and get ready for bed. It’s a matter of creating good habits and training your body when it’s time to stop and sleep. Never work in bed.

Also, consider whether you are doing too much. What can you cut or say “no” to? It’s easy to do too much. It happens to everyone at some point. Take charge of your life and balance your work and rest time to maintain good health. And of course, if you have any difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep at night, acupuncture and Chinese herbs work great for insomnia.