Sleep Your Way to Strength

health

Apr 30

Sleep is vital. I never used to believe that when I was younger because I worked a lot, I went to school a lot, and I was fine — or so I thought — sleeping 4-5 hours a night for decades. There was work to be done, I can sleep in my grave. However, now that I am older, and more brittle, and maybe just a wee bit wiser, I accept the importance of sleep now as non-negotiable.

Sleep is not just about regeneration, but it is also about cleaning out all the brain junk stored up from the day. We dream to remove the cruft of us.

There’s an old saying in the Kettlebell world — “weights don’t build strength; sleep builds strength” — and I wholeheartedly believe that now, and now we have even deeper, and more dangerous proof, that not getting enough sleep when you are older is a gamble of dementia against a promise:

Now, a large new study reports some of the most persuasive findings yet to suggest that people who don’t get enough sleep in their 50s and 60s may be more likely to develop dementia when they are older.
The research, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, has limitations but also several strengths. It followed nearly 8,000 people in Britain for about 25 years, beginning when they were 50 years old. It found that those who consistently reported sleeping six hours or less on an average weeknight were about 30 percent more likely than people who regularly got seven hours sleep (defined as “normal” sleep in the study) to be diagnosed with dementia nearly three decades later.

It’s a terrifying notion that not getting enough sleep when you are younger can lead to dementia later in life — it’s the same conundrum skin cancer proves: What maybe begins in your youth, but must always end in your old age?

We must always be patently aware of what threats are lurking out there against us, and when those dangers are identified, and specified, we are obligated to take action to heal, and do better. It is never too soon to realize a woozy, early, mistake has been made, and a correction must be later put into permanent, emergency, action.

Here’s a direct quote from the study — Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia — that serves as your ultimate warning:

There is a widely acknowledged association between sleep and cognitive function, primarily due to the role of sleep in learning and memory, synaptic plasticity, and waste clearance from the brain.

Down deep we know, but often refuse to admit, that the best time to heal yesterday, is not tomorrow, but today.

Lift strong right now, my Kettlebell friend; and sleep well tonight! Your future self deserves the care!