The most important points
Cancer patients report frequent sleep disturbances and we are aware that inadequate sleep is an increased risk factor for the development of cancer. In this article, we will examine the link between cancer with sleep. We’ll cover:
the reason why sleep issues are so frequent with the diagnosis of cancer
the benefits of a good night’s sleep to improve your overall well-being
the link between poor sleep and the risk of developing cancer
how treatments for cancer can affect your sleep
ways to improve your sleep following cancer.
Introduction
The rate of insomnia among patients with cancer is believed to be double than that of the general population. However, sleep disorders are not being treated within this population.
We’ll examine the numerous reasons why cancer may affect your sleep, and look at ways to enhance or safeguard the quality of sleep for patients suffering from cancer.We’ll explore sleep’s beneficial impact on our health, and the ways that sleep may affect the risk of developing cancer.
Buy Zopiclone Online, We’ll go over how a diagnosis and treatment could affect your sleep and the steps you should follow during and after treatment to ensure that you’re sleeping the best you can.
Let’s begin with a brief review of what ties your sleeping habits to your overall health and wellbeing.
Sleep plays an important role in ensuring your overall health
When we consider ways to look after our overall health, we typically look at regular exercise, healthy eating and taking good care of our mental well-being. There are however four, not three aspects that we must be thinking about and the one that we tend to overlook is sleeping.
Sleep is something that a lot of us don’t practice, but it’s established that sleep is vital to maintain good health overall. Let’s explore the reasons.
While you sleep the body is repairing and regulating your tissues, cells and muscles. In the meantime, your brain processes thoughts as well as emotions and feelings you’ve felt throughout the day.
Sleep improves your immune system. Sleep aids maintain our mood and provide us with the energy to work out, eat nutritiously and get on with our daily lives. Therefore, without adequate sleep our minds and bodies won’t perform optimally.
However, when we speak of ‘good’ sleep, what exactly do we refer to? To be healthy, it has to be of a good length, and also consist of good quality sleep. A night of bad sleep won’t have the same benefits as 8 hours of quality sleep.
How can you tell when you’re asleep? It’s easy: if you wake up feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, with enough energy to face the day If you’re sleeping well, then the quality of your sleep is probably excellent.
We’re aware that poor sleep is associated with the development of conditions like diabetes, heart diseases and obesity. Therefore, it’s not a big leap to conclude that our sleeping habits can affect our chances for developing cancer.
There’s no reason to live with a poor quality of sleep
Most people are unaware that the majority of sleep disorders respond very effectively to treatments. Sleepstation can assist you to discover the root of your sleep problems and create a strategy for you to follow, and help you rebuild your sleep.
Does sleep affect the likelihood to develop cancer?
This is an area of study that is growing quickly. Researchers have examined the length of our sleep (long or shorter duration) or the quality of our sleep (sleep quality) could affect our chances of developing cancer.
To study the connections between sleep and risk for cancer Researchers often examine how long people rest (i.e. the duration of their sleep) with the possibility that they develop cancer or not.
The majority of research has focused on the possibility that sleep duration, whether short or lengthy, might be linked to an increased risk of getting cancer. These results aren’t always straightforward.
Many studies show that a shorter sleep time increases the risk of developing cancer, whereas there are some studies that show associations between certain types of cancer and long periods of sleep. Some studies have found no conclusive connection between the amount of time we sleep for and the risk of developing cancer.
Researchers recently looked at the data of nearly 24,000 participants taken part in an investigation into health. They examined data from participants over a period of more than eight years, and then the average amount of sleep they slept in the initial phase of the study to determine if they later developed cancer or other illnesses.
The results showed that, compared to a typical sleep (7-8 hours) short sleep (less than 6 hours per night) was associated with 40% likelihood of getting cancer overall.
However, a Meta-analysis (where the results of a number of studies are compared) evaluated the findings from 65 studies and found no risk increase for cancer in general.
The possible reasons behind some populations being more at risk are not known, however they might be due to variations in lifestyle, culture or genetics, or a combination between all three.
Although it’s impossible to generalize or say that the length of your sleep affects cancer risk, we recognize that sleep deprivation has an adverse effect on health overall, so ensuring that you’re getting enough sleep can be beneficial for your health.
If you’re feeling like your sleeping isn’t as good or you’re having trouble with a sleep issue it’s best for your overall well-being and overall health to try to tackle this. The best initial step would be to complete our brief test to determine what we can do to help to improve your sleeping habits.
The sleep biology and cancer
When we refer to ‘cancer’ when we talk about cancer, it’s crucial to realize that it’sn’t an individual illness. As per Cancer Research UK, there are over 200 different kinds of cancer.
Cancer is a broad word that covers a multitude of malignancies that impact our bodies in different ways.
The main characteristic that connects all cancers together is the fact that they all result in an uncontrolled expansion of the cells within the body. Therefore, since the term cancer can be used to describe an extensive and varied set of diseases, the connection between the sleep cycle and cancers is likely to be complex.
Based on the research findings suggests that some cancers are more affected by sleep than others. It is also plausible to conclude that, even if two people are suffering from the same type of cancer, the sleep of one individual could be more disturbed than the other.
No matter what type of cancer that is being investigated regardless of the type of cancer studied, when looking at biological link between cancer and sleep, research tends to focus on three aspects:
disturbance of circadian rhythms
immune function
Melatonin secretion.
Therefore, we’ll look at the three categories in more depth. Read more: Buying Zopiclone Online
Circadian rhythms
Many studies have revealed connections between body clocks, circadian rhythms, and the growth of cancer. What exactly do these all mean?
The body operates around a 24-hour schedule that we refer to as the circadian rhythm. This rhythm is synchronized naturally to sunset and sunrise. It is controlled by our body clock, that is the name given to the special cells that form the brain’s part known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN).
The human body has several different clocks, which serve as the clocks responsible for timing daily events within the body. Each of these clocks are in the hands of the central clock inside the brain.
They determine when certain chemical levels in your body fluctuate, controlling a range of bodily functions, ensuring that your body is functioning in the way it is supposed to. Imagine that master clock like the headquarters and the other clocks as departments within the business (the the body).
The master clock reacts to signals from dark and light to keep the clocks smaller in line. When we open our curtains in the early morning, the sun shines through and light reaches our eyes. Signals are transmitted to the SCN which results in the clocks of all our computers being coordinated.
This is similar to the head office distributing messages to say “It’s time to get going, every department will then synchronize its clocks and begin its work. The tasks could include regulating our temperature, launching processes that we employ in the daytime, or stopping the production of molecules which were required in the night but not during daytime.
These rhythms keep the balance of our bodies and help us stay fit and live our lives with energy. However, there are many factors that can disturb that equilibrium.
An example of this is jetlag. The time difference of flying across the globe can knock the body’s circadian rhythms off in sync, and the result is that you may feel headachy, ill or simply not completely right.
Similar effects can happen when you aren’t getting enough sleep or even if you sleep too much and wake up feeling tired. These are temporary disturbances of your circadian rhythm, and they are easily corrected by getting enough sleep at the proper time of the day.
Problems can arise when these short-term problems become more frequent. If you’re constantly in conflict with your body’s natural rhythms, the body is forced to keep its balance in the midst of chaos.
Imagine the headquarters, sending out its morning memo around 3am. or sending multiple copies of the early morning memos over the course of the week. Or at different times every day. Each department will become confused and unorganized, and the whole system collapses.
This is the reason why we speak of the circadian rhythm being disturbed.
It’s widely known that disrupting our circadian rhythms can be an important risk factor for types of cancer.
