But we all know that sleep is
essential for our well being,
but can lack of sleep put us
at a greater risk for cancer?
Well, absolutely,
says Web MD's chief medical officer,
Doctor John White. A lot of
people don't take sleep seriously.
In fact, there's that phrase
I'll sleep when I'm dead,
but what's happening to our bodies
and our brains when we sleep?
I think it's partly 'cause we do it
every day. How important can it be?
Well, we'll catch up on it later,
but sleep is more than
just turning the brain off.
It really isn't that at all.
There's lots of activity going on in
the brain just in different areas, you know.
And some people liking it too.
It's your antivirus protection
on on your computer, that's.
Working in the background or
it's your dishwasher at night,
it's really allowing the lymphatic
system that part of the body
that gets rid of toxins to have
it's time to do its job and it
doesn't really do that when we're
very active during the day,
it's very sleep is so important,
but we don't take it seriously.
I
love that analogy of it's
like my Norton security scan,
that's such a genius analogy.
I know that there.
From your book that there is a
relationship between sleeping
cancer, we explain that
this is something that we've learned
really over the last few years because
cancer really is a disease of inflammation.
And when you don't get enough sleep,
you have inflammation throughout
your body and we saw this,
particularly in people that do shift
work that have these unusual hours.
They're working at night,
and then it's very hard
to sleep during the day.
And we saw an increased incidence of
breast cancer and some countries have
actually reimbursed women that have gotten
breast cancer that did shift work and again,
sleep is about that circadian
rhythm that we've heard about.
That goes up and down.
And it's related to different hormones.
Cortisol and melatonin that
play a role in our cancer risk.
So if you don't get those under
control through good sleep,
you're not going to get your cancer risk.
Under good control,
is there any way to repair that after
the damage, or is the damage done?
It's all about the daily choices
that we make overtime and it's
about getting quality sleep.
That doesn't mean that if you work late at
night that you can't get good quality sleep,
it just makes it harder and people don't
do it because God pick up your laundry.
You got to do grocery shopping.
Everything is not available 24 hours.
So what do you do?
You're like I'm going to take care of all
of these tasks and then before you know it,
it's 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon
and you haven't gone. To sleep.
And then we've learned with evolution
that it's really about cleaning out your
overall body and your immune system.
What's the first thing you do
when you get sick?
You don't feel, well,
you sleep. You go to sleep, 'cause why?
You instinctively know that you
need sleep to help fight infection,
and we've seen that in terms of
white blood cells coming, you know,
to to your defense, there is natural.
Killer cells that we want to utilize.
You did talk about three main ways
that sleep impacts the cancer risk.
Let's touch on those.
Sure, the big one is weight gain.
When we don't sleep well,
we typically gain weight.
Some of it is because we're stressed
and we're not able to get to sleep.
So what do we do late at night tend to eat,
or whenever eating carrots and hummus,
we're eating chips and ice cream,
so we're going to put on weight.
The other big issue is in terms
of our immune function as.
It is we just talked about
the role of cortisol,
the role of melatonin.
They got all messed up and that
impacts the ability of your body
to fight infection to fight this
inflammation and then it's really
about changing cell behavior and cancer
cells really need a place to live.
They need a home and there's this
scientific principle that if they don't
have a home then they can't survive.
They can't literally put down roots,
blood vessels,
it's something called.
Angiogenesis.
They build their own blood supply,
lack of sleep actually helps them do
those things that you don't want to do.
So when you sleep,
you're actually able to have those normal
functions of yourself and you don't sleep.
It's hard to keep doing them.
Sleep really is one of the main risk
factors that you can control to
take control of your cancer risk.
That's huge. How much sleep
would you say that we need
now? I'm going to tell you
there there is a genetic.
Predisposition where some people can
function on five hours of sleep at night.
But they're the exception.
Very rare in terms of this phenotype,
and I know people like to boast
or I can function on, you know,
four hours of sleep, five hours of sleep.
Nobody wants to do that.
What you really need is somewhere
between 7:00 to 9:00 hours of sleep.
You're tired when you wake up,
that's your body telling you you need sleep.
You know what you could do if you have time.
Since we're all home a lot,
it's it's called a sleep vacation.
It's not really a vacation.
But it's something when you don't
have to get up at a certain time.
You do that for about four
or five days in a row.
No alarm clock,
no need to get up at a certain time.
See what time you naturally awake in the
morning and how many hours you slept.
That's your body telling you how
many hours of sleep can eat.
And for most people,
8090%.
Plus it's somewhere between
7:00 to 9:00 hours.
Alright, you heard it there.
The goal people 7 to 9 hours.
I love all that practical
advice from Doctor White.