Sleep isn’t just “not being awake.” While you’re in bed snoozing your brain is consolidating memories, your body is repairing tissue, your immune system is producing infection fighting proteins, and here’s a fascinating one your brain is literally flushing out toxic waste through something called the glymphatic system. That includes amyloid beta proteins linked to Alzheimer’s. This cleaning process barely runs when you’re awake. Poor sleep, night after night, may be quietly setting the stage for neurological problems decades down the line.
Sleep also cycles through stages every 90 minutes or so light sleep, deep restorative sleep, and REM where your emotional processing and memory happen You need several full cycles to get the benefit. Cut the night short and you’re creating lots of health issues.
Short term affects include worse mood, slower reactions, impaired judgement, reduced ability to learn. You already know this feeling.
Long term, it gets more serious. A 2025 umbrella review covering over six million people found that sleeping less than seven hours consistently raises your risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and coronary heart disease. It also disrupts your hunger hormones ghrelin the hunger hormone goes up, leptin goes down which is why poor sleep tends to make you eat more and gain weight. Insulin sensitivity drops too, raising type 2 diabetes risk.
Mental health is deeply tangled up in this as well. Chronic poor sleep drives anxiety, depression, and cognitive decline. There’s even emerging evidence linking long-term sleep deprivation to dementia risk in older adults.
Sleeping less than seven hours a night is associated with up to a 15% higher risk of dying from any cause. It’s one of the most underrated health levers we have…..
Soooo there’s a new product that’s just landed …
It binds to GABA receptors in the brain the same pathway that many pharmaceutical sleep aids and anxiolytics target but without the dependency risk. It also inhibits a protein called CD38, which normally eats through your cellular NAD Preserving NAD matters because it’s a coenzyme central to energy production and healthy ageing, and our levels decline as we get older. So this natural substance is doing 2 things calming the brain and supporting cellular health at the same time…..
It’s got some great studies showing it stops the 2-3:00 wake up cortisol spike the one where you wake and overthink .. it’s been shown to improve all sleep cycles… and the best bit is that because of its affect on NAD you wake up feeling refreshed with loads more energy.. the problem with just taking NAD supplements is if you are creating too much of the enzyme that eats it up.. you are essentially pouring into a bath with holes in.. the stops the enzyme breaking down your natural reserves of NAD
You take 1 at night before bed…
If you want to max out your sleep go for our Ultimate Sleep stack