8 Reasons to Sleep Before You’re Dead

Key Takeaways

Getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night facilitates:

Fat loss
Muscle Gain
Optimal Hormone Production
Improved Memory
Disease Prevention
Robust Immunity

Full Story

The popular phrase “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” can be heard from a wide array of people; from the shotgunning college student to the workaholic wall street executive, many love to wear their sleep deprivation as a badge of honor.

This all too common sentiment frequently provides just the push you need to ignore your body’s cues for more sleep and stay late at the party or set that 5:00am alarm to work out. Sleeping in is associated with complacency, while staying up late is associated with hard work.

You are too busy, too important, and have too much fun to make time for sleep. You compress your sleeping window further and further in a misguided attempt to avoid sacrificing any of our precious life for boring ol’ sleep.

You may argue that less sleep means more time for productivity and fun. Thus, being in a state of chronic sleep deprivation must allow you to get the most out of your days and live life to the fullest. On the contrary, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is a peculiar phrase because sleep loss is directly correlated with all-cause mortality (1).

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life and the sooner you will finally have that opportunity to catch up on those Z’s. With less sleep, you’re also much more likely to be in a worse mood, get sick, and be less productive than those that get the recommended 7-9 hours per night.

By prioritizing sleep you are not being lazy and dull, but instead making an investment that will pay off in spades through improved body composition, better cognition, and, above all else, a longer and healthier lifespan.

Top 8 Reasons To Sleep Before You’re Dead

1. Reduce Cravings

After a poor night’s sleep, you are much more likely to reach for a donut than an apple. During sleep the body releases and regulates a number of hormones, specifically ghrelin and leptin, that impact one’s perceived sense of hunger.

Ghrelin, the “hunger hormone”, makes you crave calorically dense, highly processed foods, while Leptin, the “satiety hormone”, allows you to feel satisfied and keeps you from piling more Oreos on your plate. As there is an association between short sleep duration and increased ghrelin and decreased leptin, sleeping less than 8 hours per night is associated with a higher BMI (2).

2. Boost Testosterone

Ghrelin and Leptin are not the only hormones impacted by sleep. Testosterone production is significantly altered by sleep quantity and quality.

Optimal levels of testosterone are essential for muscle building, fat burning, and overall wellness and vitality. In just one week of sleep deprivation (5 hours sleep/night), testosterone levels plummet by 10-15% in healthy young men (4).

3. Feel Happier

Have you ever wondered why toddlers get extra cranky if they miss their nap? It’s because sleep loss is associated with irritability and decreased emotional regulation.

Poor quality sleep, and especially inadequate REM sleep time, also makes one feel more anxious, more emotionally volatile, and more susceptible to drug and alcohol addiction (5).

4. Improve Memory and Cognition

It is not an uncommon occurrence on college campuses for students to pull an all-nighter to study only to fail to recall a single fact the next day. This unwise strategy of trading valuable sleep for extra time hitting the books only leads to frustration and failed exams.

Sleep is the period in which the brain consolidates memories and allows you to retain the knowledge gained from studying throughout the course of that day (6). To ace your next exam or project, put down the pen and pick up the pillow.

5. Prevent Alzheimer’s and Other Chronic Diseases

Alzheimer’s disease, depression, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer are all associated with long-term sleep deprivation (7).

Specific to cognitive decline, inadequate sleep results in the build up of Beta-Amyloid, the protein associated with the development of Alzheimer’s Disease (8). During sleep, your body puts your brain through a carwash of cerebrospinal fluid that clears out harmful metabolic waste products accumulated throughout the course of the day.

Quality sleep alone is not the remedy to every chronic health condition, but it is certainly an effective adjunct therapy for many of the deadliest diseases in the U.S.

6. Appear More Attractive

Dark bags under swollen, reddened eyes is the physical manifestation of sleep deprivation and sickness. Bright, clear eyes, on the other hand, convey restfulness and vigor. After two nights of inadequate sleep, subjects in this study were perceived by raters as less attractive and less healthy compared to a control group that had gotten an adequate amount of sleep (10).

Moreover, the raters were much less likely to even interact with those in the sleep deprivation group compared to the control. Thus, if you want to be more attractive to the opposite sex or improve your social life, getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night is an effective, simple, and free strategy that you can implement tonight.

7. Improve Body Composition

Forget tea cleanses and starvation diets, quality sleep is your secret weapon to optimize body composition. This study showed that in a caloric deficit, the participants that sleep 8.5 hours/night lost more fat and retained significantly more muscle compared to those that slept 5.5 hours/night (11).

Because calories were equated between the two groups in the study, the findings suggest that sleep has a direct impact on body composition that goes beyond the resultant increase in caloric intake due to fluctuations in leptin and ghrelin after a poor night’s sleep.

8. Improve Immunity

8 hours of sleep a night keeps the doctor out of sight! In just four days of sleeping less than eight hours per night, the number of natural killer T cells (immune cells!) in your body deceases significantly. Adequate sleep is an effective way to ensure your immune system stays strong because natural killer T cells defend your body from foreign invaders and keep you from getting sick (13).

Additionally, sleep deprivation is associated with increased levels of proinflammatory Cytokines Il-6 and TNF-alpha. Chronic inflammation puts the body on constant high alert, eventually damaging healthy tissue and contributing to the development of a number of diseases including cancer, heart disease, and metabolic disease (14). To better protect your body from the common cold to Type 2 diabetes, prioritize quality sleep.

Wrap Up

I know, you’d rather scroll TikTok, eat ice cream, or watch Game of Thrones. Sleep can’t possible compare to the thousands other options we have to full our free time.

I don’t blame you. If you value short term pleasure over long term health and well-being, more power to you! Seriously, no judgement at all. But now that you are armed with the evidence of how sleep directly impacts your…

Fat loss

Muscle Gain
Optimal Hormone Production
Improved Memory
Disease Prevention
Robust Immunity

…you have the ability an informed decision. Sleep tight, my friends.

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