I’m going to start with this premise….sleep is more important than diet and exercise, by far.

I see a huge mistake happening in the world today. People want to have less depression, anxiety and better mental health. They want to feel more movitvated. They want to regulate their hormones. Some want to lose weight while others want to put on muscle mass. They want to be healthier and have stronger immune systems. They’re tired of getting the cold or flu each Winter. They want to have more energy.

The mistake isn’t wanting those things, the mistake is trying to achieve these things by changing our diet or doing an exercise program instead of focusing on better sleep.

If you have insomnia you know exactly all those things you’d like to have and you know how frustating it is to not be able to sleep.

If you were to get a deep sleep every night, over time sleep alone would most likely fix all the issues above.

Isn’t that crazy?

No more pills, no more diets, no more colds, no more flu, no more excess body fat, no more depression or fatigue all day.

Imagine the progress you could make if you adopted an exercise routine along with better diet and supplementation ALONG WITH a plan to get better sleep?

You could be an entirely different human in the next 3 months.

Because many people think that diet and exercise with fix their health problems (chronic insomnia and sleep issues is just one) I’d like to share 9 reasons why sleep is more important than both diet and exercise.

You see there are biological processes that happen during sleep that no pill, supplement or exercise routine can come close to duplicating.

Did you hear that? You cannot out diet your lack of sleep.

You cannot out exercise your lack of sleep.

You cannot out supplement your lack of sleep.

Getting a deep restful sleep that’s restorative is healthier than hours of yoga, mediation, diet or exercise routine.

I want you to understand that.

As a result the primary focus each day should be on how everything you do during the day is going to affect your sleep that night.

I think about sleep the moment I wake up. This is why the very first thing I do upon waking is go outside (before looking at ANY screen) and get full spectrum UVA, UVB and infrared frequencies of sun into my naked eyes.

Every one of my actions after that during the day is geared toward getting deep sleep that night.

So let’s talk about the 9 reasons sleep is more important than diet or exercise.

#1. Glymphatic System Activation

Many people have heard of the lymphatic system of the body. Did you know that you have more lymph fluid in your body than you do blood? Did you know that your lymphatic system has no “pump”. When you sit for hours every day your lymph system gets stagnant. The only way to keep the lymph fluid moving is by manual action or stimulation.

Most doctors do not even learn about the lymph system. You have lymph nodes all over your body to help collect toxins. Let’s say you cut your finger and some toxin or chemical enters your blood through the wound. It’s the job of the lymph nodes in your elbow or armpit to stop those toxins from getting to your vital organs. It’s a genius design!

The main ways I like to activate and keep my lymphatic system moving are…

• Walking
• Skin brushing
• Massage
• Rebounding
• Vibration plates
• Grounding
• Chi machines

Did you also know you have a similar system for removing metabolic waste from your brain? It’s called the glymphatic system and it works very much the same way. The only difference is that it only operates when we sleep.

Notice how many people with neurological diseases like dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s etc. don’t sleep well. Part of the issue is their glymphatic system doesn’t get a chance to operate because they never reach REM states of sleep.

Heavy metals can accumulate in the bones and brain of humans. The way the body rids this is to activate glymphatic system drainage and allow it to move through the vagus nerve of the central nervous system.

This only happens during deep sleep.

#2. Detoxification Schedule

Depending on who you read, it’s generally accepted that there are 5 main phases of sleep that humans encounter each night. There are biological actions that happen during each phase that only happen in these phases and only when sleep happens. This is why it’s so important to get into these phases each night.

Every day we’re eating and breathing chemicals, toxins, parasites, heavy metals and other environmental poisons. When we sleep cells will shrink and expand to allow for better cerebral spinal fluid transfer to exit the body through the main detoxification pathways (liver, kidney, lungs and colon).

There have been some studies showing that brain cells can shrink by as much as 60% when we sleep. This increases CSN (cerebral spinal fluid) to get these toxins out of the body.  For example, in mice, the fluid exchange increased by 20 times when they were asleep.

This only happens during sleep.

#3. Memory Consolidation

During the day we experience many different people, events, environments and critical situations. Some of them are traumatic, some of them are exciting while others are mundane or boring. One of the roles of sleep particularly REM sleep is to consolidate the events of the day from short term to long term memory. We store memory in our hippocampus. In order to access that memory, magnesium is required.

REM sleep enhances synaptic plasticity, which is the ability of synapses (connections between neurons) to strengthen or weaken over time. This plasticity is vital for learning and memory. The brain reorganizes and reactivates neural circuits during REM sleep, which helps in integrating new information with existing knowledge.

During REM sleep our brain shuffles the past events and organized them and stores them for future access and one of the ways it does that is converting short term events into a long term memory. This only happens during sleep.

No amount of diet or exercise can do this.

Can you see a thread throughout this post?

The idea is that as we age, typically we don’t sleep as well. Does this explain why older people tend to get more neurological disease or have less long term memory?

Want to avoid memory loss, cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s Disease?

Focus on sleep.

#4. Autophagy

The term autophagy literally means self (auto) eating (phagy). In our body we have senescent cells that are on the verge of dying. I’d consider these to be cells that are drunk or in a coma. They’re one step away from dying. When these cells die (with proper nutrition it’s possible to wake up and convert senescent cells back to fully function and healthy cells again, spermadine is one of many substances that can do this) it’s the autophagy process that recognizes dead cells and shuttles them out of the body through normal detox pathways (liver, lung, colon, kidney).

If cells accumulate or if parts of cells accumulate in excess this can lead to the development of cancerous growths.

During autophagy, damaged organelles, proteins, and other cellular debris are engulfed within double-membrane vesicles called autophagosomes. These autophagosomes then fuse with lysosomes to form autolysosomes, where the cellular components are degraded and recycled.

REM sleep in particular is where most autophagy happens. In order for autophagy to occur cellular communication needs to be functional. Cells need to be able to recognize and distinguish dead cells from cells that are in the dying process or cells that look like dead cells.

If REM sleep doesn’t occur, autophagy doesn’t happen on a deep level. Think of cleaning your home. If you have a team of professional cleaners with all of their tools and enough time, your house will look spotless with no dust, stains or trash anywhere.

If you do it yourself in a half an hour with only a broom, it might look presentable but there’s debris and trash hidden in places you cannot see.

This is like getting 2 or 3 hours of sleep at night vs getting 8 to 9 hours with deep REM sleep.

Autophagy only occurs on a deep level during REM sleep.

#5. Muscle and Tissue Repair

During the day we break down muscle fibers and tissues in our body. This is why in the bodybuilding world they say sleep is more important than the workout. The workout is when you break muscle fiber down and sleep is when it gets rebuilt. Whether you workout or not, this is happening to all of us during the day.

The body will cleanse and go through autophagy as mentioned above but it also lays down new muscle fibers to any tissues that have been damaged. This could be from an injury or a cut or scrape on the skin or an internal bruise. The body always needs to repair and rebuild itself.

During the repair process, the body produces fibrin, a type of scar tissue that forms a latticework on which new tissue can be built. This provides structural integrity to the injured tissues and joints. Once the initial repair work is finished, proteolytic enzymes break down the fibrin and remove it, allowing for more flexible and functional tissue to form.

The only time it does this is when we’re sleeping. It’s like adding new lanes to a freeway. The best time to do that is when there’s less cars driving, at night.

The night is when the body heals, repairs and rebuilds itself.

#6. Immune System Strengthening

Many people have said that 80% of your immune system is in your gut. I’ve recently read where that is not true. Every cell of the body has an immune repair switch. It makes sense that the immune system would work as a lattice network signaling and communicating to each other in multiple ways.

Every cell in your body is a part of innate immunity.

Sleep is critical for proper immune system function. T cells, which are a large family of lymphocytes forming the cornerstone of our immune response, plummet when we are sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation affects lymphocytes and other white blood cells, leading to a loss of immune system function.

Here’s something to try.

During the next cold or flu season when you’re extremely stressed out, try getting less and less sleep. You’ll probably notice that you get a cold or flu in a couple of days.

The strength of your immune system is significantly diminished when you get very little sleep.

Notice among your friends and family, those who do not sleep well tend to get more illnesses.

Want to prevent getting sick?

Get more sleep.

#7. Brain Function Maintenance

Brain function maintenance is the idea of keeping your brain working like a well oiled machine. It means making sure that there’s no toxins or heavy metals preventing neural cells from doing their job. It means that each part of your brain is not encumbered in anyway.

This daily process is necessary to support cognitive abilities like memory, decision-making, and emotional regulation.

There are studies showing the brain works 10 times as hard during sleep to remove foreign proteins, chemicals and heavy metals that may lead to diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease.

If this process isn’t happening every night and you’re sleep deprived you’ll notice the inability to process thought in a stressful environment. Ever happen to you? Think about trying to make a difficult complex decision while your kids are fighting.

Sleep deprivation also makes it difficult to regulate emotion which also comes from the brain.

Sleeping enhances the production of proteins used by the body to regenerate brain neurons. A person with more brain neurons is more capable of learning and digesting new information.

#8. Neurodegenerative Disease Prevention

Know anybody with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis? How do they sleep? How have they been sleeping for the past 20 years? Are they night owls? I would venture to say they’re not good sleepers and they probably are night owls and they look at blue lit screens after sunset.

Poor sleep can lead to the accumulation of toxins in the brain, which can trigger inflammation and contribute to the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s. The reason is the brain is unable to clear metabolic waste through the central nervous system. Autophagy is not happening and the glymphatic system is not working.

All those chemicals and heavy metals you’re exposed to through diet, environment and lifestyles has no way of exiting the body. Years of this lead to cognitive conditions.

If you want to prevent or reverse those conditions, get better sleep.

Diet or exercise cannot do this.

#9. Cleansing of Toxins

We’ve talked a bit in this article about the glymphatic system during sleep and the accumulation of heavy metals and toxins in the brain. The same is true for the rest of your body. When we’re exposed to heavy metals, toxins or chemicals some may accumulate in the brain, while other toxins may accumulate in the liver or blood stream.

Regardless, it’s during REM sleep that your body activates key enzymes to facilitate the mobilization and detoxification of these toxins.

Remember the analogy above about how the freeways are shut down during the night to repair or rebuild.

If you want to do a detox, get good sleep.

Conclusion

This is why I believe sleep should be your #1 priority when it comes to health, healing and disease prevention. I consider chronic insomnia or sleep issues a modern “dis-ease”. Fix your sleep before doing a cleanse, before doing a detox, before taking supplements or sleeping pills and before starting a new diet or workout program.

Remember, light is King and sleep is Queen.

Proper light exposure dictates how we sleep. And how we sleep dictates everything about our health, our life, our longevity, our energy and ability to enjoy this wonderful life we had.

Make sleep your #1 priority.

Questions….

Have you thought about how or why sleep is important?

Did you fall into the trap of thinking diet and exercise matter more than sleep?

How DO you sleep?

Do you track your sleep?

Comment below.