Healthy Longevity

Want to perform better tomorrow at anything you do? Then get a good night’s sleep tonight. “Sleep plays a critical role in restoration for humans; it is the housekeeping process for our physiology that allows us to restore and start the next day,” says sleep expert Sahil Chopra, MD, today’s guest on Healthy Longevity with Florence Comite MD.             Dr. Chopra is co-founder and chief medical officer for Empower Sleep, a virtual sleep care program that makes personalized multi-night sleep analysis and treatment accessible from home.             Nearly 40% of adults report falling asleep during the day without meaning to at least once a month. Also, an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic, or ongoing, sleep disorders, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “If people don’t sleep well, the likelihood of having cardiovascular disease … is higher, the possibility of cancer is six-fold higher,” says Chopra. “Growth hormone levels are lower; cortisol dysregulation is higher. Circadian rhythms, if they are misaligned, result in a compromised metabolic state. REM sleep plays a critical role in emotional stability.”             If you’re suffering from brain fog or nodding off at your desk after lunch, you’ll want to tune in to discover how to dramatically improve your health and health trajectory by improving your sleep habits.   You’ll learn: * Sleep debt builds slowly, so you may not recognize what it’s doing to you. * Why a one-night sleep study is not an effective way to diagnose a sleep disorder. * Sleep trackers like Empower Sleep’s medical-grade ring and consumer models like the Oura Ring provide patients with real-time analysis of their sleep quality in their own bed without spending a restless night in a sleep lab wired to a machine. * Poor sleep is a gut punch, affecting the gut microbiome by disrupting the GI tract’s normal nightly slow-down, which allows its epithelial lining to repair and recover. * Lack of sleep compromises the immune system. Studies show that sleep-deprived people (getting four to six hours of sleep) don’t respond to vaccines as well as people who get adequate sleep (seven to eight hours). * During deep sleep stages, blood flow to the brain peaks through the glymphatic system, which clears the beta amyloid and tau proteins that are believed to play a role in Alzheimer’s dementia. * What to do an hour before bedtime and within 15 minutes of waking to reset a healthy circadian rhythm. * Remedies for restless leg syndrome, including new technology that stimulates nerves in the legs to make the brain think that your lower limbs are moving. * And much more!   About Florence Comite, MD Dr. Comite began her medical journey at Yale University School of Medicine and continued at Yale with a residency in medicine. She completed a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology (multidisciplinary training incorporating pediatrics, gynecology, and andrology) at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She remained at the National Institutes of Health as a senior clinical research associate before joining the Yale faculty as an associate professor in endocrinology. During her 25-year faculty tenure, Dr. Comite founded and directed Women’s Health at Yale. In 2005, she launched her bespoke medical practice, Comite Center for Precision Medicine & Healthy Longevity, in New York City and subsequently expanded offices to Palo Alto and Miami Beach. Through her medical practice and decades of clinical research, Dr. Comite recognized that all humans have inherited a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism (a glucose disorder leading toward diabetes), which is accelerated by aging and the natural decline of the hormones testosterone and estrogen, which begins around age 30. Dr. Comite’s podcast delivers the truth about your health—that age-related disease begins early in life at the cellular level. By slowing and even reversing the biological aging process, we can stay active and in great health for life. She interviews renowned physicians, researchers, and thought leaders offering surprising insights and practical tips that listeners can use to improve their own health trajectory.