Schlafexperte Prof. Dr. med. h.c. Günther W. Amann-Jennson

Dietetics see under healthy nutrition a composition of food that is supplementing the body with all essential nutrients. This includes the equivalent proportion of all calorific values delivering nutrients like proteins, fat and carbohydrates, vitamins, mineral and micro nutrients as well as water and the non-vital scents, spices and fibres.

Although, nowadays we are having a wide range of food a balanced nutrition is not selfunderstood. After current guide values, a wholefood diet should contain limited fat but plentiful (55 to 60 percent) energy supply, carbohydrates. Furthermore, a moderate consumption of sugar is advisable. With a conscious way of living and healthy nutrition you are able to limit health risks and make a significant contribution to your health and performance.

But, when it comes to judge nutrition dogmatism is out of place, because, in principle there is no “healthy” nutrition. Neither is it necessary to strictly avoid certain food nor to consume other food exaggeratedly. Also, the classification into “good” or “bad” is not much use. When talking about “healthy” nutrition, it is more depending on the right doses – no matter, whether talking about fat, alcohol, salt or sugar. But, there is one thing that is definitely playing a negative role: additives like flavor enhancer or preservatives. That means, your conscious selection of food as well as careful preparation rather lead into direction “healthy nutrition”.

The manifold wrong nutritional behaviors, lack of movement or too much stress are frequent causes for civilization diseases like digestive, metabolic and/or cardiovascular disorders. Also, psychical factors are connected with over- or underweight. Mental and physical problems influence eating behaviors and food selection.

Unbalanced diets often become a philosophy. The knowledge of the connection between wrong nutrition and health is causing the fewest people concerned  to change their behavior. Campaigns against nicotine- and alcohol-consumption have shown that the motive “fear of sickness” is not very effective. Similar is the situation with a lot of over- and underweight people that rather change their eating behavior out of esthetical than of health damage reasons.

Besides your overall health, the sleeping health should be motivation for you to check your personal eating habits regarding choice, preparation and daily quantity. Because, our “nutritional patterns” are connected with our “sleeping patterns”.

Only one week of sleep debt changes the activity of hundreds of your genes. This finally might explain why too less sleep is connected with so many health problems. Different studies revealed that people with very few sleep rather suffer under cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or metabolic disorders. Also, the immune system is affected by chronical lack of sleep. The biological processes that underlie these observations are not precisely identified yet.

A research team round Carla Moeller-Levet, University of Surrey, Guildford (GB), specially examined the activity of genes. The participants got two times, seven nights each into a sleeping laboratory. One week, they were allowed to sleep in and rested about 8.5 hours per night. The other week, they were wakened in the morning after less than six hours of sleep. After the two weeks, the participants had to continuously stay awake about 40 hours, each. The scientists analyzed, how the gen-activity of the white blood-cells changed. These cells are quite easy to test and therefore easy to examine. According to the scientific final report, in total 711 genes were clearly more or less active after the lack of sleep – 444 genes were downregulated and 267 upregulated. After all, these are about three percent of the approx. 23 000 genes of a human being. Interesting in these findings is the fact that above all those genes were affected that are responsible for inflammations, immune response and stress reactions.

The activity of genes that normally underlie the day-night-rhythm also got affected by the lack of sleep. Amongst others, genes that control the metabolism are included. Therewith, it got scientifically investigated for the first time how many human genes are influenced by a chronical lack of sleep. And the indication that too less or disturbed sleep causes a whole range of health disturbances gets substantiated.        

The early bird catches the worm –- that’s not true for all human beings. Because, the inner clock is ticking differently in any person. While larks love to start into the day early, owls are rather active during the evening and find it rather difficult to get going in the early hours of the day. The sleeping expert Dr. med. h.c. Guenther W. Amann-Jennson knows, how the so-called owls will find it easier to start into the day.

The modern world of working is perfect for the larks. Because, contrary to the owls they are absolute morning people with their high in performance from 08.00 am to about 12.00 am. This makes the morning the perfect time for them to handle with difficult work. From lunchtime, the performance curve is going down and most of the time, the morning persons get so tired at around 09.00 p.m., that they like to go to bed.

Owls – birds of the night
It looks quite different with the owls. They only really come to life in the evenings and go to bed at midnight or even later. Their performance curve slowly and steadily rises after getting up, is showing its first high at around 04.00 p.m. and is reaching its peak in the hours of the early evening. Therefore, the best time for them to deal with important, complex or mentally exhausting tasks is the afternoon.

For the so-called owls that are forced to mutate into larks because they have to be at their working place or at school early in the morning, sleeping expert Dr. h.c. Guenther W. Amann-Jennson has the following hints:

•    No matter, whether being a lark or an owl: a regular rhythm is very important for healthy sleeping. That means, to always go to bed and get up in the morning around the same, if possible.

•    Since the sleeping phases are changing every 90 minutes from REM-sleep, light sleep and deep sleep, for “grumpies” it is worthwhile to find a time window for getting up, in which they are not in deep sleep. Out of this reason, it might pay off to set the alarm clock half an hour earlier, if need be.

•    But, after waking up don’t jump out of the bed but get going slowly. Loll and stretch, get some fresh air at the open window – this gets the organism going. Alternately showering warm and cold is very stimulating, too.

•    It’s advisable to have a quiet breakfast afterwards. Stress in the early hours of the morning is having an even more adverse effect on evening people.

•    Daylight or a bright daylight lamp during the dark season of the year with a high blue light portion supports waking up.

•    Contrary in the evening. Here it is advisable to rather soften the light, so that the evening people can come to rest, too, and are not finding stimulation. They should do without any stimulating, caffeinated drinks then, too.

•    The sleeping place should be dark and cool (about 18°C) and free of electronic devices like computer, TV, phone.

There are a lot of reasons for bad sleep and most of the time there are several sleep disturbing factors. But, due to lack of knowledge many causes often remain concealed and therefore are not taken into account. Representatively, an example with a supposedly minor cause that can have a major effect. It’s the popular quartz wrist watch.

Although these crystal-controlled watches run with a battery in milli-ampere-range, however, the crystal of these modern quartz watches is oscillating with 32 786 oscillations per second. This causes a magnetic field that can be verified by magnetic field detectors or field probes in the range of 0.6 – 1.2. ampere/meter. The organism absorbs these magnetic oscillations via the skin. For sensitive people, this amount is enough to care for a restless sleep and disturbed phases of regeneration.

Out of this reason, it is advisable to take off crystal-controlled watches during sleeping and to store them in an adequate distance to the sleeping place. By the way, this is also true for quartz alarm clocks that often are positioned in close proximity of the head. In any case, this applies to all electrically driven radio alarm clocks, since they are producing a strong magnetic field with a radius of up to one meter.

Image Source: ©fotolia