But one thing that was clearly missing in her article was the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. There are a number of reasons why most modern Americans are not getting enough sleep.

A National Sleep Foundation poll in 2005 showed that Americans averaged 6.9 hours of sleep per night, which is about one hour less per night compared with 50 years ago. Furthermore, our sleep duration has dropped another 20 minutes since 2001. Invasion of technology has been blamed as one major factor, as cellphones, computers, and various media options are rampant in today’s society. The bad economy is also thought to create more insomnia and diminished total sleep times.

Not only has our sleep duration dropped, but the quality of our sleep is dropping even further. Obesity is a major risk factor for having obstructive sleep apnea. As obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, it’s likely that rates of obstructive sleep apnea has increased as well. Untreated obstructive sleep apnea, by causing multiple breathing interruptions, prevents continuous, quality deep sleep. It also significantly increases your future risk of developing heart disease, heart attack, stroke and motor vehicle accidents.

A healthy diet, portion control, and regular exercise are cornerstones of most diets or weight loss programs. But without good quality sleep, your chances of losing a significant amount of weight and keeping is off is relatively low. One major reason for this is that poor sleep promotes weight gain. It’s been shown that hormonally and metabolically, one tends to either gain weight, or has difficulty losing weight, no matter how much you diet or exercise.

One great example was reported by Glamour Magazine in 2009: Seven women of varying weights were told to sleep at least 7.5 hours every night. After 10 weeks, 6 of the 7 women lost anywhere from 6 to 15 pounds, without any changes in their eating or exercise habits. The one woman that didn’t lose any weight did lose 2.5 inches off her waist, bust and hips.

This just goes to show that unless you can optimize sleep, losing weight through dieting and/or exercise won’t work as well, or last.

If you’re currently dieting, have you incorporated an optimal sleep program into your weight loss regimen?

The night before this test, I went to bed at my normal 10:30 PM time, but was unable to fall asleep unto about 4AM! What made it worse was that my mind was filled with thoughts of studies showing memory loss and poor recall  in sleep-deprived individuals. Imagine a sleep doctor having major sleep problems before a major sleep test. This temporary, stress-induced insomnia is called adjustment (or acute) insomnia as defined by the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (Second Edition). Fortunately, it goes away once the stressor resolves.

I got a refreshing 8 hours of sleep last night, and now with the test over, I can get back to a normal life again. 

It’s been stated that chronic insomnia and sleep apnea can co-exist together, but very few studies are saying the one could cause the other. To challenge this assumption, Dr. Barry Krakow and the Sleep and Human Health Institute is looking at the provocative theory that a large percentage of people with chronic insomnia have undiagnosed breathing problems during sleep.

I wrote in my book, Sleep, Interrupted, that almost every patient that I see with chronic insomnia has significantly narrow upper airways, and one or both parents snore heavily. Most chronic insomniacs prefer not to or absolutely can’t sleep on their backs, due to the tongue taking up relatively too much space within the confines of smaller jaws. When in deep sleep, especially when on their backs, the tongue can fall back due to gravity, and because of additional muscle relaxation, causes breathing pauses and an inability to stay asleep.

It’s also not surprising that most people with sleep maintenance insomnia keep waking up at various 90-120 minute intervals, usually around the same times. This makes sense since at the end of one sleep cycle, your muscles will be most relaxed. Not sleeping deeply can lead to chronic sleep deprivation, which causes adrenaline overload and a hyperactive nervous system, which you can’t shut down when you’re ready to go to sleep. This process can explain sleep onset insomnia. One recent study showed that sleep deprivation can even cause a kind of euphoria, which can lead to poor judgement and even addictive behaviors.

Maybe this is why cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for insomnia works very well, but not for everyone. There are numerous studies and personal experiences that confirm that treating the underlying sleep-breathing problem can fix the insomnia issues.

Granted, even if only 50% of people with chronic insomnia have obstructive sleep apnea, it’s likely that another 30 to 40% will have upper airway resistance syndrome (or UARS), which is a huge topic that has been discussed elsewhere.

What do you think about my suspicion?

Here’s my take on it: Lack of sleep of poor quality sleep causes a physiologic state of stress. Your adrenaline levels are constantly increased. Since digestion is your last priority (especially when you’re running from a tiger), blood flow and nervous system activity are shut down when you’re under stress. Now imagine if you place food in your bowel, and your gut is not able to digest properly, or clear toxins appropriately. Hypoxia (low oxygen) causes local tissue damage (causing inflammation) and what’s called neo-vascularization, where new blood vessels are created to try to bring in more nutrients. Chronic over-stimulation of tissues in a state of low oxygen levels can create a perfect storm for cancer development. This process can also be applied to reproductive organs such as breast or prostate.

If you have or had colon cancer, how many hours of sleep do you normally get?

A similar study that was presented found similar levels of improvement with football players at Stanford University. This was also the same sleep team that found in previous years that tennis players that got more sleep had more power, were more accurate, and had more stamina than those that slept less.

Not to diminish the importance of these studies, but I guarantee that you'll see more and more of these type of studies in the future. 

What's improved in your personal or professional life every since you started sleeping better?

• Can sleeping on a problem create overnight insights?

• Will naps make you smarter?

• Are you getting enough sleep?

• How much sleep is enough?

It can be a little technical at times, but there are lots of areas that a layperson can understand and appreciate. I highly recommend that you browse through the various topics and learn as much as you can. Then sleep on it. The ones about memory and naps were especially interesting. Please come back to this post and give me your feedback on the various videos. What was your favorite topic?

Sleep Better, Live Better

Numerous research studies have shown that a good night’s rest is vital when it comes to your ability to focus, concentrate, remember, be creative, and various other mental and cognitive abilities. Your athletic abilities are also enhanced significantly when you sleep well. Needless to say, consistent, high-quality, refreshing, rejuvenating sleep can enhance almost every aspect of your emotional, mental, physical, sexual, and spiritual live. Unfortunately, in our fast-pased, information-driven, stress-filled modern lives, sleep is the first thing that’s sacrificed when we have too much work to do. The common corollary to getting that promotion or making more money is to work harder, and longer, and in the process, forgo even the most basic necessities. Forgoing a balanced meal, and substituting fast food instead, and sleeping less to work more, becomes the habituated norm for the success minded. Nonetheless, how can you enjoy the fruits of your success if you’re so tired and sick all the time?

Reasons For Your Sleep Deficit

Sleep deprivation can be so insidious and cumulative that you may not realize that your depression or anxiety may be from months or years of chronic low-grade levels of poor quality or quantity of sleep. Not only are we not getting enough sleep, our sleep quality has diminished significantly in modern times. In my book, Sleep, Interrupted, I explain how due to major changes in our diets and with the addition of bottle-feeding, our jaws are much more narrow with dental crowding. Smaller jaws leads to smaller breathing passageways, especially when we’re on our backs and in deep sleep (due to muscle relaxation). This leads to various degrees of partial to full obstruction, disrupting deep sleep, and preventing you from getting restorative, refreshing, and rejuvenating sleep.

Sleep Well and Prosper

Here are 5 habit and mindset changes that will help you to begin your journey towards a better nights’ sleep today.

1. Make an appointment with yourself at bedtime. If you had an important job interview or meeting, would you ever come late because you had some work left to do or you wanted to finish watching your TV show? Think of sleep as an appointment that’s just as important as an important meeting. Dr. Mao of AskDoctorMao.com recommends setting an alarm to go to sleep, as well as for waking up.

2. Plan your activities well during the day so that you can fall asleep quickly and stay asleep. What you do during the day has significant effects on how well you sleep at night. Exercising in the morning exposed to early morning sunshine can strengthen your internal sleep clock. Eating healthy meals with lots of fiber and multi-colored vegetables will not only keep you regular, it can also affect the the type of foods that you’ll crave, since your appetite, weight and sleep are all inter-related.

3. Set SMART goals. Commit yourself to goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and timely. Rather than just saying, "I want to sleep better," say something like, "I’m going to eat 3 hours before (8PM) going to bed (at 11PM) for the next 7 days," or "I will get up at 6 AM to jog 3 miles on Tuesday and Thursdays for 4 weeks. Yes, getting better sleep is your bigger goal, but it’s easier to succeed if you break it down into small bite-sized chunks that have SMART features.

4. Be mindful of how well you sleep in relation to your diet, activities, and your sleep times. The best way to is document this by writing everything down in a sleep journal. Short of doing this, be more aware of how you feel in the morning or during the day after you went out to have a late dinner, or during the weeks when you exercise. Which foods make you feel better and which make you feel more tired or sluggish? Bare minimum, make a quick mental note of how well you slept when you first wake up and how you felt during the day as you’re about to fall asleep.

5. Unclutter your mind just before you sleep. Turn off all forms of electronic stimulation such as your computer, TV, and radio at least one hour before you go to sleep. Watching the news is the worst thing you can do, since not only is it stimulating, but also disturbing stories and images that you don’t want cluttering up your subconscious during sleep. Read a relaxing book, do some light stretching, breathing or meditation before going to bed.

There are plenty more tips I could list here for you, but all of this is a moot point if you can’t breathe properly at night while you’re sleeping. Any by definition, all modern humans are susceptible to breathing problems while sleeping to various degrees. This is the one major flaw with Western medicine as well as alternative and complementary forms of healing. Everyone naturally assumes that you’re able to breathe properly at night. But this is not true. You can do everything I listed in this article, as well as every sleep hygiene recommendation that’s mentioned in thousands of books, articles, and reports, but if you’re not able to breathe well, you can only get so far. Lack of inspiration can definitely hinder your brain’s ability to think at all, let alone sleep or grow rich. Something to think about.