If you are a bit of a night owl, it could spell trouble for your fertility according to this health expert.
Kristen Holmes has warned that staying awake when your body is supposed to be sleeping on a regular basis has ‘massive health consequences’ and causes ‘huge amounts of stress on the system’.
It turns out having a midnight snack, a nighttime Netflix session or agreeing to take the late shift might actually have sinister implications, the fitness scientist and executive at workout firm WHOOP said.
During an appearance on Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast, Holmes explained that there are lots of negative implications that could bite you in the bum if you keep staying up way past your bedtime.
She told the Dragons’ Den star: “If you’re awake for two hours between 10pm and 4am, for two days per week, for 25 days of the year, you qualify as a kind of card carrying shift worker.”
The sleep expert explained that the likes of doctors, nurses, firefighters, truck drivers and other workers who have chaotic schedules often shave years off their lives because they are disrupting their sleep so heavily.
Holmes added: “Shift work is considered a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Those folks are making an enormous sacrifice. And are likely to have significant circadian disruption.”
Circadian disruption refers to your body’s biological clock being thrown into confusion, often because you have not been sleeping – between that huge chunk from 10pm to 4am – and it can trigger a myriad of health problems.
Holmes claimed: “You are putting yourself at increased risk for cancer, cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, you can have trouble having children, it impacts fertility, mental health, psychiatric disorders.
“There isn’t a disease or disorder that circadian disruption doesn’t touch.”
Bartlett then bravely took the reigns of the concerning sleep conversation to dumb down all the scientific jargon enough for us lot to understand.
He said: “A way of thinking about this is that there is a master clock in our hypothalamus and this master clock regulates all of the other clocks throughout our entire body, and there is millions of them basically.
“The thing that the master clock is using as a signal for the clock in our brain, is light and darkness. That’s the most reliable. Its the signal it cares about and listens to the most, but there is other signals as well.
“But if I’m up at 4am, looking at a light at 4am, that master clock is going to start firing off chemicals to all the other clocks and then all the clocks are going to be out of sync because then when I wake up it’s light…
“I’m confusing my body and it’s firing off in all different ways. So I need to form an alignment, which means sleeping at the right time, exposing myself to darkness at the right time, etc, etc.”
Holmes said he’d hit the nail on the head and added: “You’re confusing your system. Your body loves regularity.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ll be making sure my eyes are firmly shut between 10pm and 4am every single night from now on after listening to these two.
Sarah Carter is a health and wellness expert residing in the UK. With a background in healthcare, she offers evidence-based advice on fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being, promoting healthier living for readers.
