Americans are Popping Sleeping Pills in Record Numbers

Zolpidem (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

The first-ever federal health study about sleeping pill usage suggests that sleep is growing ever more elusive for Americans.1 According to the latest information, between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from sleep deprivation, with increasing numbers relying on prescription sleep aids.2

The CDC report, based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2005 to 2010), found that nearly nine million Americans take prescription sleeping pills in pursuit of good night’s rest.

Usage differences were found based on age, gender, race and ethnicity. The report listed the following key findings:

• About four percent of US adults age 20 and above use prescription sleep aids
• The percentage of adults using prescription sleep aids increases with age and education; more adult women (5 percent) used prescription sleep aids than adult men (3.1 percent)
• Non-Hispanic white adults were more likely to use sleep aids (4.7 percent) than non-Hispanic black adults (2.5 percent) and Mexican-American adults (2 percent)
• Prescription sleep aid use varied by sleep duration and was highest among adults who sleep less than five hours (6.0 percent) or more than nine hours (5.3 percent)
• One in six adults with a diagnosed sleep disorder and one in eight adults with trouble sleeping reported using sleep aids

The hardest hit group is the elderly—seven percent of individuals over the age of 80 are relying on prescription sleep aids, including hypnotic drugs (such as Ambien and Lunesta) and sedating antidepressants.

Are You Sleeping Better than Your Pay Grade?

According to a recent British report, the less education you have and the lower your income, the poorer you tend to sleep.3 The report also found that the less money a couple makes, the less they sleep together.

The British report found that sleep also varies by occupation. For example, if you work in the arts, you’re more likely to lie awake at night from worry or stress. But if you’re an attorney, you’re more likely to be successfully bagging your Zzzs.

These trends are quite concerning in light of the fact that the drugs prescribed for sleep come with a number of potentially serious risks—and they don’t work that well for sleep to begin with.

Sleeping pills generally only increase the amount of time you sleep by a matter of minutes (a measly 11), and can impair your functioning the next day by making you less alert. They can also have a rebound effect—meaning, once you stop taking them, you may suffer “withdrawal” symptoms worse than the initial insomnia.

Who Benefits from Sleeping Pills?

Sleeping pills are a goldmine for the pharmaceutical industry. In 2011 alone, an estimated 40 million prescriptions for such drugs were dispensed.4 In 2011, sales of generic Ambien (zolpidem tartrate) amounted to a whopping $2.8 billion and Lunesta another $912 million.5 Prescription sleep aids are some of the most heavily marketed drugs to the public.

Lunesta’s manufacturer Sepracor spent more than $215 million and added 450 salespeople to its physician marketing staff just to pitch the drug to doctors in 2005, when it was released.

And it paid off. Lunesta generated $329 million in sales its first nine months—with one sleep specialist saying it was the only time he’d ever experienced “a line of people outside his door waiting to try a new medicine.”6

In 2005, Ambien and Ambien CR put close to $2.2 billion into Sanofi-Adventis’ pockets.7 Unfortunately, the dangers of these drugs are as impressive as the profits they generate for Big Pharma. By taking prescription sleeping pills, you may be unknowingly putting your life in danger.

Tiny Pills, Big Risks

A startling study in 20128 revealed that people who take sleeping pills are not only at higher risk for certain cancers (35 percent higher), but they are also nearly four times as likely to die as people who don't take them. The list of health risks from sleeping pills is growing all the time, including the following:

• Higher risk of death, including from accidents
• Increased risk of cancer
• Increased insulin resistance, food cravings, weight gain and diabetes
• Complete amnesia, even from events that occurred during the day
• Depression, confusion, disorientation, and hallucinations

Studies recently submitted to the FDA revealed that blood levels of zolpidem (found in Ambien and other sleeping pills) above 50 ng/mL may impair your driving to a degree that increases the risk of an accident, especially among women. As a result, FDA recommended manufacturers cut the dosage of zolpidem from 10mg to 5mg for immediate-release products (Ambien, Edluar, and Zolpimist) and from 12.5 mg to 6.25 mg for extended-release products (Ambien CR).9

Are You Sleep-Tweeting?

Aside from increasing your risk for premature death, by taking sleeping pills, you may be in for some extremely awkwardexperiences. Sleeping pills can cause a variety of strange behavioral reactions10 that are not only bizarre but also potentially risky—and at the very least embarrassing. The following are being reported with increasing frequency:

• Sleepwalking
• Sleepdriving
• Sleep eating (including bizarre things like buttered cigarettes, salt sandwiches, or raw bacon)
• Sleep-sex or “sexsomnia” (sexual acts carried out in your sleep)
• Sleep-texting or sleep-tweeting

These behaviors, called “parasomnias,” are more common when you are stressed or sleep-deprived, but can also be triggered by certain medications, such as sedatives and hypnotics. Reports of “sleep-texting” are on the rise.11 Users are shocked to find messages they have no memory of sending—some of which are total gibberish. If this happens to you, you may want to hide your smart phone from yourself when you go to bed at night and avoid the use of sleeping pills, which may trigger a social media nightmare.

Dr. Lisa Fine, a neurologist at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, reported that people who use digital devices just before nodding off are more likely to use them during the night. She also stated that sleeping pills are known to cause people to use digital media in their sleep. Dr. Fine told KOMO News:12 “A person may text an inappropriate message emerging out of their unconscious mind that the conscious person would not want to send.”

Insomnia Comes with Its Own Risks

It is extremely important to optimize the quality of your sleep, but drugs are not the answer. Just as sleeping pills come with serious risks, so does insomnia. Poor sleep adversely affects your immune system. Lack of sleep may directly increase your risk of developing a number of serious illnesses, such as:

• Viral and bacterial infections
• Depression
• Hypertension
• Stomach ulcers
• Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many more

Poor quality sleep is associated with decreased production of melatonin, insulin resistance and weight gain. These three factors all contribute to cancer development. Studies have linked poor sleep with prostate cancer in men and aggressive breast cancer (and recurrence) in women. Even if your sleep is disturbed for only one night, there may be significant health risks. Studies show that losing even one hour of sleep, such as after making the switch to Daylight Saving Time, may increase your risk for a heart attack the next day.

Lack of sleep decreases leptin (your satiety hormone), while increasing ghrelin (your hunger hormone), which explains why night shift workers are at increased risk for obesity and diabetes. Researchers have also found higher rates of breast, prostate, colorectal cancer, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among night shift workers. If you sleep poorly, you are more likely to crave junk foods and make poor food choices. This is because poor sleep amplifies the part of your brain responsible for cravings, while suppressing the part responsible for rational decision-making. In one study, sleepy people consumed 600 extra calories.13

Vitamin D for Sleepless Elders

A number of vitamin and mineral deficiencies may contribute to poor sleep, the three most common being potassium, magnesium and vitamin D. This is particularly important you are older. Studies indicate that vitamin D deficiency in the elderly has reached epidemic levels, because their skin produces less vitamin D and they spend less time in the sun.14 In addition to vitamin D’s wide ranging health benefits, new evidence suggests it may play a role in sleep quality. This is a significant finding, as sleep drugs are even riskier for the elderly, making natural approaches very important. Although there are not yet many studies examining the connection between vitamin D and sleep, here are a few that I found:

• A study at Louisiana State University found that vitamin D plays a role in sleep, although the mechanism remains unclear. The relationship between vitamin D and sleep appears quite complex, with skin pigmentation being an additional factor.15,16
• In a study at East Texas Medical Center, vitamin D supplementation improved sleep in a group of patients with neurologic complaints, possibly due to decreasing their pain.17
• In a study of veterans with chronic pain, researchers concluded that vitamin D supplementation decreased their pain, and improved their sleep and overall quality of life.18
• In a sleep apnea study, as the severity of the apnea increased, the more vitamin D seemed to help.19

Vitamin D is important for regulating your mood, energy, immune function, cognitive function, and many other things that are especially challenging as you age. It makes sense there would be a sleep connection—after all, practically everything affects your sleep!

Your should keep your serum vitamin D level between 50 and 70 ng/ml year-round, and the only way to determine this is with a blood test. Sun exposure or a safe tanning bed is the preferred method for increasing your vitamin D level, but a vitamin D3 supplement can be used if necessary. As a general guideline, research by GrassrootsHealth suggests most adults need about 8,000 IU's of vitamin D per day to achieve serum levels of 40 ng/ml.

It’s important to remember that if you’re taking high dose vitamin D supplements, you ALSO need to take vitamin K2. The biological role of vitamin K2 is to help move calcium into the proper areas in your body, such as your bones and teeth. It also helps remove calcium from areas where it shouldn’t be, such as in your arteries and soft tissues. Vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries.

The reason for this is because when you take vitamin D, your body creates more vitamin K2-dependent proteins that move calcium around in your body. Without vitamin K2, those proteins remain inactivated, so the benefits of those proteins remain unrealized. So remember, if you take supplemental vitamin D, you're creating an increased demand for K2.

Better Options for a Good Night's Rest

Numerous factors can influence your sleep, and the good news is that many are under your control. Remember that sleeping pills are not the answer and will probably create more problems than they solve. Below are four strategies for optimizing your sleep, and you will find many more in my comprehensive sleep guide.

1. Cover your windows with blackout shades or drapes to ensure complete darkness. Even the tiniest bit of light in your room, such as the glow of a bedside clock, can disrupt your sleep and therefore your melatonin production. Close your bedroom door, get rid of night-lights, and refrain from turning on any light during the night, even when getting up to go to the bathroom. If you need a light, install so-called "low blue" light bulbs in your bedroom and bathroom, which emit an amber or red light that will not suppress your natural melatonin production.
2. Keep the temperature in your bedroom at or below 70 degrees F (21 degrees Celsius). Many people keep their bedrooms too warm, which can result in restless sleep. Studies show the optimal room temperature for sleeping is fairly cool, between 60 to 68 degrees F (15.5 to 20 C).
3. Check your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs). These can disrupt your pineal gland’s melatonin production. In order to do this, you will need a gauss meter, which can be purchased online for between $50 and $200. Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to kill all power in your house. Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your head. If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least 3 feet. Put away your computer, TV, iPad, and all other similar gadgets at least and hour before bedtime, as they also emit blue light.
4. Try Earthing. When walking barefoot on the earth, free electrons transfer from the ground into your body through the soles of your feet. These free electrons are some of the most potent antioxidants known to man. Experiments have shown that these electrons decrease pain and inflammation, and promote sound sleep. Spend more time with your bare feet in contact with the earth. You may want to invest in an earthing sheet for your bed.
5. Exercise to sleep better, but do it early! Exercising for at least 30 minutes per day can improve your sleep, but exercising too close to bedtime (generally within the three hours) may keep you awake.
6. Avoid foods that interfere with sleep. The worst foods for sleep include alcohol, coffee, dark chocolate, spicy foods, and certain fatty foods.
7. If you're feeling anxious or restless, try using the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), which can clear emotional issues and alleviate stress and worries that keep you tossing and turning at night.

Related articles

• Americans are Popping Sleeping Pills in Record Numbers
• Sleep Is Critical for Brain Detoxification
• Alzheimer's Advances; Early Detection Test Using Peanut Butter
• FDA Sued, Forced to Remove Safety Status on Trans Fats
• Preventable Medical Mistakes Account for One-Sixth of All Annual Deaths
• Stress - Trigger of Alzheimer's Identified

Sleep Is Critical for Brain Detoxification

Main health effects of sleep deprivation (See Wikipedia:Sleep deprivation). Model: Mikael Häggström. To discuss image, please see Template talk:Häggström diagrams (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

Scientists have long tried to tease out the purpose of sleep, and countless studies have concluded that sleep is deeply interconnected with your health in a myriad of ways. As just one example, previous research has found that sleep deprivation has the same effect on your immune system as physical stress or illness.1

Quite simply, even if you do everything else right, if you don’t sleep enough, your health and well-being will still suffer. You may even die prematurely, should poor sleep plague you long-term.

Now, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Center for Translational Neuromedicine believe they may have discovered yet another clue as to why sleep is mandatory for good health—especially brain health.

Their report, published in the journal Science,2 reveals that your brain has a unique method of removing toxic waste through what’s been dubbed the glymphatic system.3, 4, 5, 6, 7

The clincher is that this system ramps up its activity during sleep, thereby allowing your brain to clear out toxins, including harmful proteins linked to brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s for example.

What’s more, they discovered that your brain cells actually shrink by about 60 percent during sleep, which allows for more efficient waste removal. According to lead author Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., featured in the video above:

“This study shows that the brain has different functional states when asleep and when awake. In fact, the restorative nature of sleep appears to be the result of the active clearance of the by-products of neural activity that accumulate during wakefulness.”

What Is the Glymphatic System?

In your body, the lymphatic system is the system responsible for eliminating cellular waste products. However, the lymphatic system does not include your brain. The reason for this is that your brain is a closed system, protected by the blood-brain barrier, which controls what can go through and what cannot.

In a previous animal study,8 Dr. Nedergaard showed that the brain actually has its own unique waste disposal system, similar to that of the lymphatic system. This system, called the glymphatic system, “piggybacks” on the blood vessels in your brain. The “g” in glymphatic is a nod to “glial cells”—the brain cells that manage this system.

By pumping cerebral spinal fluid through your brain’s tissues, the glymphatic system flushes the waste, from your brain, back into your body’s circulatory system. From there, the waste eventually reaches your liver, where it’s ultimately eliminated.

During sleep, the glymphatic system becomes 10 times more active than during wakefulness. Simultaneously, your brain cells are reduced in size by about 60 percent.

This creates more space in-between the cells, giving the cerebrospinal fluid more space to flush out the debris. Amyloid-beta, for example—proteins that form the notorious plaque found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients—is removed in significantly greater quantities during sleep. As stated by Time Magazine:9

“The findings raise interesting questions about how sleep may affect the progression of Alzheimer’s or other neurogenerative disorders, but they also provide a strong warning for anybody who skips sleep. The short version: don’t.”

According to Dr. Nedergaard:10

“The brain only has limited energy at its disposal and it appears that it must choose between two different functional states — awake and aware or asleep and cleaning up. You can think of it like having a house party. You can either entertain the guests or clean up the house, but you can’t really do both at the same time.

...These findings have significant implications for treating ‘dirty brain’ disease like Alzheimer’s. Understanding precisely how and when the brain activates the glymphatic system and clears waste is a critical first step in efforts to potentially modulate this system and make it work more efficiently.”

How Sleep Influences Your Physical Health

Sleep is usually one of the first things people sacrifice when the going gets tough, and this could be a critical mistake. First of all, significant memory impairment can occur after a single night of poor sleep—meaning sleeping only 4 to 6 hours. It also has a detrimental impact on your ability to think clearly the next day, and decreases your problem solving ability.

But foggy-headedness and forgetfulness are the least of your worries should you ignore your poor sleeping habits. Aside from impacting your immune function as briefly mentioned earlier, poor sleep is now known to have multi-varied detrimental effects on your health, courtesy of your circadian system, which "drives" the rhythms of biological activity at the cellular level. Disruptions to this biological clock tend to cascade outward throughout your entire body.  For example, interrupted or impaired sleep can:

Increase your risk of heart disease.11	Harm your brain by halting new cell production. Sleep deprivation can increase levels of corticosterone (a stress hormone), resulting in fewer new brain cells being created in your hippocampus.
Impair your ability to lose excess pounds or maintain your ideal weight. This is likely the effect of altered metabolism, because when you’re sleep deprived, leptin (the hormone that signals satiety) falls, while ghrelin (which signals hunger) rises.	Contribute to a pre-diabetic state, making you feel hungry even if you've already eaten, which can wreak havoc on your weight.
Accelerate tumor growth, primarily due to disrupted melatoninproduction. Melatonin inhibits the proliferation of a wide range of cancer cell types, as well as triggering cancer cell apoptosis (self destruction). The hormone also interferes with the new blood supply tumors require for their rapid growth (angiogenesis)	Contribute to premature aging by interfering with your growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep (and during certain types of exercise, such as high intensity interval training).
Raise your blood pressure.	Increase your risk of dying from anycause.

Furthermore, lack of sleep can further exacerbate chronic diseases such as:

Parkinson's	Alzheimer's	Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Gastrointestinal tract disorders	Kidney disease	Behavioral problems in children

Why You Shouldn’t Reach For a Sleeping Pill When You Can’t Sleep...

Chronic lack of sleep has a cumulative effect when it comes to disrupting your health, so you can’t skimp on sleep on weekdays, thinking you’ll “catch up” over the weekend. You need consistency. Generally speaking, adults need between six and eight hours of sleep every night. There are plenty of exceptions though. Some people might need as little as five hours a night, while others cannot function optimally unless they get nine or 10 hours.

My strong recommendation and advice is quite simply to listen to your body. If you feel tired when you wake up, you probably need more sleep. Frequent yawning throughout the day is another dead giveaway that you need more shut-eye. Personally, I find that when I am reading during the day, if my eyes close and I tend to doze off, I know I did not get enough sleep the night before. However, above all, should insomnia strike, don’t make the mistake of reaching for a sleeping pill.

Not only do sleeping pills not address any of the underlying causes of insomnia, researchers have repeatedly shown that sleeping pills don’t work, but your brain is being tricked into thinking they do... One analysis found that, on average, sleeping pills help people fall asleep approximately 10 minutes sooner, and increase total sleep time by a mere 15-20 minutes. They also discovered that while most sleeping pills caused poor, fragmented sleep, they induced amnesia, so upon waking, the participants could not recall how poorly they’d actually slept!

In terms of health consequences, this could end up being worse than not sleeping and being aware of that fact. At least then you’d be encouraged to find and address the root cause of your sleeplessness. Besides not working as advertised, sleeping pills have also been linked to significant adverse health effects, including a nearly four-fold increase in the risk of death, and a 35 percent increased risk of cancer.

How to Optimize Your Sleep

Below are half a dozen of my top guidelines for promoting good sleep. For a comprehensive sleep guide, please see my article "33 Secrets to a Good Night's Sleep."

1. Avoid watching TV or using your computer at night—or at least about an hour or so before going to bed—as these technologies can have a significantly detrimental impact on your sleep. TV and computer screens emit blue light; nearly identical to the light you're exposed to outdoors during the day. This tricks your brain into thinking it's still daytime, thereby shutting down melatonin secretion.
Under normal circumstances, your brain starts secreting melatonin between 9 or 10 pm, which makes you sleepy. When this natural secretion cycle is disrupted, due to excessive light exposure after sunset, insomnia can ensue.
2. Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. Even the slightest bit of light in the room can disrupt your internal clock and your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin. So close your bedroom door, and get rid of night-lights. Refrain from turning on any light at all during the night, even when getting up to go to the bathroom. Cover up your clock radio.
Make sure to cover your windows—I recommend using blackout shades or drapes.
3. Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. Many people keep their homes and particularly their upstairs bedrooms too warm. Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees. Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep. This is because when you sleep, your body's internal temperature drops to its lowest level, generally about four hours after you fall asleep. Scientists believe a cooler bedroom may therefore be most conducive to sleep, since it mimics your body's natural temperature drop.
4. Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. This increases your core body temperature, and when you get out of the bath it abruptly drops, signaling your body that you are ready for sleep.
5. Check your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs). These can disrupt your pineal gland and the production of melatonin and serotonin, and may have other negative effects as well. To do this, you need a gauss meter. You can find various models online, starting around $50 to $200. Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to shut down all power in your house.
6. Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your bed. If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least three feet. This serves at least two functions. First, it can be stressful to see the time when you can't fall asleep, or wake up in the middle of the night. Secondly, the glow from a clock radio can be enough to suppress melatonin production and interfere with your sleep. Cell phones, cordless phones and their charging stations should ideally be kept three rooms away from your bedroom to prevent harmful EMFs.

Sleeping Well Is Part of a Healthy Lifestyle Plan

There's convincing evidence showing that if you do not sleep enough, you're really jeopardizing your health. Everybody loses sleep here and there, and your body can adjust for temporary shortcomings. But if you develop a chronic pattern of sleeping less than five or six hours a night, then you're increasing your risk of a number of health conditions, including weakening your immune system and increasing your risk of degenerative brain disorders. If you’re feeling anxious or restless, try using the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), which can help you address any emotional issues that might keep you tossing and turning at night.

For even more helpful guidance on how to improve your sleep, please review my 33 Secrets to a Good Night's Sleep. If you're even slightly sleep deprived, I encourage you to implement some of these tips tonight, as high-quality sleep is one of the most important factors in your health and quality of life.

Links Between Poor Sleep, Weight Gain, and Cancer

English: Recurrent breast cancer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

Sleep deprivation is such a pervasive condition in these days of artificial lights and non-stop entertainment, that you might not even realize you’re not getting enough sleep. It’s important to recognize that sleep is an absolutely crucial component of optimal health and disease prevention.

For example, the link between impaired sleep and cancer has been repeatedly confirmed. Tumors grow two to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions, primarily due to disrupted melatonin production.

Melatonin inhibits the proliferation of a wide range of cancer cell types, as well as triggering cancer cell apoptosis (self-destruction). The hormone also interferes with the new blood supply tumors required for their rapid growth (angiogenesis).

Poor sleep is also associated with an increased risk of insulin resistance and weight gain—two additional factors that also play an important role in cancer development.

Less Sleep = Higher Risk of Cancer

Most recently, a study published in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention1 found that men who had trouble sleeping were twice as likely to develop prostate cancer compared to those who slept well. According to the featured article:2

"This association was even stronger in cases of advanced prostate cancer, and the risk increased relative to the severity of the sleep problems... The lead researcher, Lara Sigurdardottir, Ph.D., expects that, ‘If our results are confirmed in future studies, sleep may become a potential target for intervention to reduce the risk of prostate cancer."

Another recent study3 found that insufficient sleep may be a contributing factor in both the recurrence of breast cancer, and more aggressive forms of breast cancer among post-menopausal women. According to the study’s co-author Dr. Li Li:4

"Short sleep duration is a public health hazard leading not only to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, but also cancer... 
Effective intervention to increase duration of sleep and improve quality of sleep could be an under-appreciated avenue for reducing the risk of developing more aggressive breast cancers and recurrence."

Sleeping less than six hours per night has also been implicated as a risk factor for colorectal adenomas, which may develop into cancer if left untreated. In fact, those who slept less than six hours a night were found to have a 50 percent increased risk compared to those who got seven hours or more of sleep per night.5

Insulin resistance and disrupted melatonin production are two potent mechanisms through which chronic sleep problems affect your cancer risk. The fact that poor sleep can have such a dramatic impact on insulin resistance is why I keep repeating that you simply cannot be optimally healthy unless you also sleep well—even if you eat right and exercise...

Insulin Resistance Drives Both Weight Gain and Cancer

In one 2005 study6 aptly titled: "Sleep loss: a novel risk factor for insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes," the authors note that “sleep exerts marked modulatory effects on glucose metabolism.” Lack of sleep also decreases levels of the fat regulating hormone leptin while increasing the hunger hormone ghrelin. The resulting increase in hunger and appetite can easily lead to overeating and weight gain.

According to a recent study in the journal Sleep,7 later bedtimes correlate to greater weight gain even in healthy, non-obese people.

Late-night snacking further increases that risk, which shouldn’t come as a great surprise. In fact, avoiding food at least three hours prior to bedtime is one of my standard recommendations as it helps to make sure that your body is burning fat as its primary fuel which will keep you lean. As reported in Medical News Today:8

"Andrea Spaeth and team had one group of participants sleeping just from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. each night for five nights running, and compared them to a control group who were in bed from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. The investigators found that those who slept much less consumed more food, and therefore calories, compared to the normal-hours sleepers... Lead author, Andrea Spaeth... said:

'Although previous epidemiological studies have suggested an association between short sleep duration and weight gain/obesity, we were surprised to observe significant weight gain during an in-laboratory study.'"

The link between insulin resistance/weight gain and cancer may be of particular concern for women... Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, and obese women are thought to be up to 60 percent more likely to develop cancer than those of normal-weight. The reason for this increased risk is because many breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, a hormone produced in your fat tissue. So the more body fat you have, the more estrogen you’re likely to produce.

How Working the Night Shift May Affect Your Health

Confirming the need for regular sleep during night-time hours, researchers have also noted a link between night shift workers and higher rates of breast, prostate, colorectal cancer, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Working the night shift also raises your risk of diabetes and obesity.

A Danish study published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine,9 found that women who worked night shifts were significantly more likely to develop breast cancer compared to those who did not work nights.

After taking confounding effects into account, such as use of birth control pills, childbirth, hormone replacement therapy, age, and sunbathing, women who worked nights had an overall 40 percent higher risk of breast cancer. As reported by Time Magazinelast year:10

“The effect was cumulative: women who worked at least three night shifts a week for six years had twice the risk of breast cancer as those who worked one to two night shifts a week. Most surprising, though, was the fact that women who worked night shifts and described themselves as being ‘morning’ people — that is, they preferred to wake up early, rather than stay up late at night — had a four times higher risk of breast cancer than women who worked during the day.”

Interestingly, this study was also able to discount vitamin D deficiency as a culprit, as night shift workers were found to have greater levels of sun exposure compared to those working indoors during the day. This suggests that hormone disruptions (such as the insulin, leptin, ghrelin and melatonin disruptions discussed above) play a key role in cancer development that vitamin D alone cannot counteract. So again, a healthy lifestyle simply isn’t complete without enough proper sleep.

What You Need to Know About Sleeping Pills

According to a recent report by The Sleep Council,11 nearly half of those polled responded that stress and worry keep them tossing and turning at night, and nearly seven million Americans resort to sleeping pills in order to get some rest. While it may be tempting to look for a pill to quickly help you sleep, they will not address any of the underlying causes of insomnia.

In fact, researchers have repeatedly shown that sleeping pills don’t work, but your brain is being tricked into thinking they do... In one meta-analytic study, they found that, on average, sleeping pills help people fall asleep approximately 10 minutes sooner. From a biomedical perspective, this is an insignificant improvement.

On average, sleeping pills increase total sleep time by about 15-20 minutes. But here is the catch: This study also discovered that while most sleeping pills created poor, fragmented sleep, they also created amnesia, so upon waking, the participants could not recall how poorly they’d actually slept! Worse yet, sleeping pills have also been linked to a wide variety of health hazards, including a nearly four-fold increase in the risk of death, along with a 35 percent increased risk of cancer.

Additionally, most people do not realize that over-the-counter (OTC) sleeping pills -- can have a half life of about 18 hours. So, if you take them every night, you're basically sedated much of the time. Not surprisingly, they're associated with cognitive deficits in the morning. Trust me, there are far better, safer and more effective ways to get a good night's sleep...

Tips to Help You Sleep Better

There are many variables that impact how well you sleep. I suggest you read through my full set of 33 healthy sleep guidelines for all of the details, but to start, making some adjustments to your sleeping area can go a long way to ensure uninterrupted, restful sleep.

1. Cover your windows with blackout shades or drapes to ensure complete darkness. Even the tiniest bit of light in the room can disrupt your pineal gland's production of melatonin and the melatonin precursor serotonin, thereby disrupting your sleep cycle.
So close your bedroom door, get rid of night-lights, and refrain from turning on any light during the night, even when getting up to go to the bathroom. If you have to use a light, install so-called "low blue" light bulbs in your bedroom and bathroom. These emit light that will not suppress melatonin production.
2. Keep the temperature in your bedroom at or below 70 degrees F (21 degrees Celsius). Many people keep their homes and particularly their upstairs bedrooms too warm. Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is quite cool, between 60 to 68 degrees F (15.5 to 20°C). Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep.
3. Check your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs). These can also disrupt your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin, and may have other negative effects as well. To do this, you need a gauss meter. You can find various models online, starting around $50 to $200. Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to kill all power in your house.
4. Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your head. If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least three feet.
5. Reduce use of light-emitting technology, such as your TV, iPad, and computer, before going to bed. These emit the type of light that will suppress melatonin production, which in turn will hamper your ability to fall asleep, as well as increase your cancer risk (melatonin helps to suppress harmful free radicals in your body and slows the production of estrogen, which can contribute to cancer). Ideally, you'll want to turn all such light-emitting gadgets off at least one hour prior to bedtime.

As previously discussed by Dr. Rubin Naiman, a leader in integrative medicine approaches to sleep and dreams, sleep is the outcome of an interaction between two variables, namely sleepiness and what he refers to as "noise." This is any kind of stimulation that inhibits or disrupts sleep. In order to get a good night's sleep, you want your sleepiness level to be high, and the “noise” level to be low. Under normal conditions, your sleepiness should gradually increase throughout the day and evening, peaking just before you go to bed at night. However, if noise is conceptually greater than your level of sleepiness, you will not be able to fall asleep.

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/11/poor-sleep.aspx  For more information and videos on this subject, please follow the above link to the Mercola website.

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