Shawn Stevenson - Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way To a Better Body, Better Health and Bigger Success

Sleep is the secret sauce.

There isnt one facet of your mental, emotional, or physical performance thats not affected by the quality of your sleep.

The big challenge is that in our fast-paced world today, millions of people are chronically sleep deprived and suffering the deleterious effects of getting low quality sleep.

The consequences of sleep deprivation arent pretty either. Try immune system failure, diabetes, cancer, obesity, depression, and memory loss just to name a few.

Most people dont realize that their continuous sleep problems are also a catalyst for the diseases and appearance issues theyre struggling with.

Studies have shown that just one night of sleep deprivation can make you as insulin resistant as a type-2 diabetic. This translates directly to aging faster, decreased libido, and storing more body fat than you want to (say it aint so!).

Now stretch that out over weeks, months, even years, and you can start to see why lack of sleep can be such a huge problem.

A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal showed that sleep deprivation is directly related to an inability to lose weight. Test subjects were put on the same exercise and diet program, but those who were in the sleep deprivation group (less than six hours per night) consistently lost less weight and body fat than the control group who slept for over 8 hours per night. Could high-quality sleep be the missing component to nutrition and smart exercise to help you shed fat for good?

In Chapters 11 and 13, well be exploring the sleep-body fat connection and specific strategies to help you get in the best shape of your life. Pour on that secret sauce please!

Other studies show sleep deprivation encouraging cancer, Alzheimers, depression, and even heart disease. In a society thats overworked and under-rested, its more important than ever to pay attention to issues associated with not getting the sleep that we require. Although well be covering the negative impact of sleep problems in this book, were going to put our major focus on what you can do to improve your sleep starting tonight, and avoid these chronic issues in the first place.

What about performance in your work? And what about productivity and getting things done?

At first glance we might think that working more and skimping on the sleep will get us there faster. The research is in and its 100 percent conclusive: when you dont sleep well, you get slower, less creative, more stressed, and underperform. Basically youre only utilizing a fraction of what youre capable of. Were going to talk about this more in Chapter 1, so sit tight and Ill give you the low down on what sleep (or lack there of) is doing to your brain.

Theres an old Irish proverb that says, A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything. My promise to you is that this book will give you real, practical strategies to help you get the best sleep possible. Youll laugh, youll think, youll plan, youll put things into action, and youll see your life transformed as a result of it.

You deserve to be healthy, happy, and fulfilled in your life. Getting great sleep is a huge component of this, and this book is the key to helping you get there.

A pioneer, and leading authority on sleep research, Dr. William Dement said, Youre not healthy, unless your sleep is healthy.

Nothing could be more true, and these 21 tips are going to help you get great sleep for many years to come.

The topic of this chapter is a little unusual, but its probably the most important. Many people are negligent about getting enough sleep because they dont truly understand the benefits theyre getting from it.

So what is sleep? And why is it important?

Well, defining sleep is a lot like trying to define life. No one completely understands it, and if you try to explain it youre more likely to sound like Forrest Gump than a world-renown scholar (Life is like a box of chocolates sleep is like pretending to be dead).

Sleep is actually defined as a natural periodic state of rest for the mind and body, in which the eyes usually close and consciousness is completely or partially lost, so that there is a decrease in bodily movement and responsiveness to external stimuli.

That sounds a little weird, but the most important takeaway is that its a natural periodic state of rest for the mind and body. If youre not doing it, then youre being completely unnatural. And, nobody likes unnatural people.

Whats more important is knowing the big prizes that sleep gives you. Generally, being awake is catabolic (breaks you down) and sleep is anabolic (builds you up). Sleep is known to be an elevated anabolic state , heightening the growth and rejuvenation of the immune, skeletal, and muscular systems. Basically, sleep rebuilds you and keeps you youthful.

High quality sleep fortifies your immune system, balances your hormones, boosts your metabolism, increases physical energy, and improves the function of your brain. Without all of the essential benefits that sleep is providing, you will never, I repeat never , have the body and life you want without giving your body the right amount of sleep.

In our culture, sleep is not respected very much at all. As a matter of fact, we are often programmed with the idea that to be successful we need to work harder, sleep less, and we can catch up on all the sleep we want when were dead. To say sleep is not respected is really an understatement.

Working hard is unarguably a big part of being successful, but so is working smart. So many people in our world today go on plugging away with work, burning the candle at both ends, not realizing that the quality of work theyre doing is being radically compromised. Research shows that after just 24 hours of sleep deprivation, there is an overall reduction of six percent in glucose reaching the brain. Simple translation: You get dumber.

This is also why you crave candy, chips, donuts, and other starchy, sugary things when youre sleep deprived. Youre body is trying to compel you to get that glucose back to your brain as soon as possible. Its a built-in survival mechanism. This is inherent in our genes because, in our days as hunter-gatherers, that lack of brainpower could mean a swift death from a predator or a substantially reduced ability to hunt and procure your own food for survival. Today a simple trip to the refrigerator can bypass your bodys cry for more sleep, but those stress mechanisms are still alive and well within your body right now.