Matthew Walker on why sleep health is the "elixir of life"

New data suggests lack of sleep early in life can raise the risk of heart disease later. Research in the journal Pediatrics connects insufficient sleep in young teens to cardiac risk factors including high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, and obesity. In the book Why We Sleep, Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker says sleep is underestimated as a prevention for disease. It's published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon Schuster division of CBS. Walker is director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Welcome. Thank you. Sleep is a country we have not been to at this table often. So true. Tragedy, yeah. And it's true. The study found that fewer than three percent of kids get the recommended amount of sleep. So how does this affect their hearts? Yeah, it's frightening. Less than three percent getting the recommended and necessary nine hours of sleep a night. And what they found is that those underslept teens had worse health outcomes. They had larger waistlines, more abdominal fat, but they were also heading on a path towards hypertension, high blood pressure. And we see that same type of heart impact in adults, I should note as well. One example, there is a global experiment performed on 1.6 billion people across 70 countries twice a year, and it's called daylight savings time. And what we see is that in the spring, when we lose just one hour of sleep, there is a subsequent 24 percent increase in heart attacks the following day. So I think the the message here is that without sleep, we become heartbroken in the quite literal medical sense of the definition. What do we mean when we say we've gotten a good night's sleep? Is it just the hours? Is it getting up at the same time every day? You know, what should we prioritize when we're thinking about what makes up a good night's sleep? So regularity is key, going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time, no matter what. But I think also it's not just about quantity. That's what we've been discovering, and that sort of mentioned a lot in the book. It's also about quality. So for example, even if you're getting eight hours, but you're waking up many more times throughout the night, or you're not getting that deep sleep. In fact, coming back to heart health, what we've discovered recently is that deep sleep provides the very best form of natural blood pressure medication that you could ever wish for. And that's sleep essentially both quantity and quality. They are the elixir of life. And I, you know, I often say I think that sleep is almost sort of like the Swiss army knife of health, in that no matter what the ailment, it's more than likely that sleep has a tool within the box that will see you well. Go ahead, Bianca. Well, I was going to say to measure the quality of sleep, many have turned to technology, right? And smartwatches, what have you. Do you support those devices that measure quality? And do they measure quality accurately? Those devices right now are somewhat accurate in terms of quantifying how much sleep that you've got. But in terms of separating that quality of deep sleep from dream sleep, right now, they're not at the precision level of accuracy that they want or that we want. Will they get there in the next three to five years? I suspect so. And I think that quantified self-movement of tracking will actually enable people and empower people to bring back sleep plentifully into their health equation. I really do feel, Matthew, more and more people are talking about sleep or lack of it. Maybe I notice it because I know I'm not getting enough. It's like you don't notice tires on sale until you need it. Do you think that most people don't really understand how serious this is? I do. The lack of it. Because in the lead, Biana said, or John said, you say it's underestimated as a prevention for disease. Yeah, I think sleep is probably the neglected step, sister, in the health conversation of today. I think we've done a good job regarding physical activity and diet. But sleep has remained out there in the cold. And that's surprising to me because sleep is not the third pillar of good health. It's actually the foundation on which those two other things sit. So for example, if you're dieting and you're trying to lose weight but you're not getting enough sleep, 70% of all that weight that you lose will come from lean muscle mass and not fat because your body becomes stingy in giving up that fat when you are underslept. Do you think it's a series of smoking? I think we perhaps are with sleep where we were with smoking 50 years ago in that we had all of the science and it was right there for the public discussion. But it not yet adequately sort of percolated out into policy or even just public wisdom. And I think that's part of the reason I sort of wrote the book to try and get that knowledge out there and empower people. It is definitely not a luxury. It is a necessity. It's a biological necessity. Matthew Walker, thank you so much. You're very welcome.