Welcome back to the Becoming Ageless podcast where we have conversations about WHOLE HEALTH for naturally increasing healthspan and decreasing biological age. I’m your host, Robynn Lin Fredericks and I believe in living and BEING Ageless!
When talking Healthspan, we are talking about individuals being able to age in good health without chronic diseases or disability.
And If you follow this podcast, you know that I strongly believe that achieving a long healthspan is like putting together a complicated jigsaw puzzle! There are many pieces, with various shapes and colors. Some of the those pieces are obvious to the final picture, while others are not so obvious, but nonetheless, still important to the overall image. It’s my goal that we uncover them all to help YOU put together the beautiful masterpiece of a long healthy, vibrant, and passionate life!
Today, we are talking about SLEEP. The National Institute of Medicine cites, that “Healthy sleep quality was associated with a reduced risk of premature end of healthspan, suggesting healthy sleep behavior may extend healthspan.”
And according to the Institute of Medicine, 50-70 million US adults have a sleeping disorder, with 40% of people aged 40 to 59, which is our main listener group, reporting that they are getting less than recommended amounts of sleep, which is 7-9 hours. 75-90% of insomnia sufferers have an increased risk of medical disorders including heart disease, stroke, asthma, COPD, cancer, arthritis, depression, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and even premature skin aging. 9 million Americans take prescription drugs to help them fall asleep, with China being the most sleep medicated country in the world. The frequency of sleep med use is associated with higher mortality rate and a 35% higher chance of developing cancer.
Sleep deprivation is a chronic issue in our world, perhaps more now than ever before, and obviously, from the statistics I just mentioned, it affects our health and wellbeing. So my hope today is that we can delve into this subject and talk about things that we can do.
My guest today is Dr. Nirusa Kumaran. She is the Founder and Medical Director of the Elemental Health Clinic in London, she is a practicing NHS and Private GP, Certified Lifestyle Medicine Physician and Functional Medicine Specialist. She’s passionate about holistic, integrative and patient centered care with specialties in Gut health, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and Bio-energetics.
Dr. Kumaran faced both her own challenges of burnout and digestive issues as well as her own daughter, at just 5 weeks old, suffering from severe eczema and multiple food allergies, which took her down the road of searching for root causes, which ultimately led her to Functional Medicine.
