Sleep is crucial for your overall health and wellbeing as it gives your brain and body a chance to recover from the day’s activities.[1] This means that sleeping helps your body regulate things such as brain activity, your immune system, hormone levels, and metabolism.[2] Lack of sleep has also been associated with numerous health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.[1] Because of this, scientists and medical professional decided to start studying how sleep can affect cancer development.

Studying the relationship between sleep and cancer is still a relatively new topic, and so results on how sleep can affect cancer risk are not always consistent. This means that at times, it can be difficult to draw accurate conclusions from some of these studies. However, there has been evidence that things such as quality and duration of sleep, circadian rhythm, and the presence of sleep disorders can affect your risk of developing cancer.[2]

Some of these studies on sleep and cancer have found that shorter sleeping cycles (less than six hours per night) tend to be correlated with the development of various cancers. In example, one study found that inadequate sleep was associated with the development colon polyps, growths that are a possible precursor to colon cancer and can turn cancerous if not removed.[2,3] Another study found that inadequate sleeping habits were associated with a higher chance of developing stomach cancer as well as a correlation with thyroid, bladder, head, and neck cancers.[2]

These studies, whether they be the ones examining the relationship between sleep and cancer or that between sleep and general overall health, emphasize the importance of maintain healthy, adequate sleeping habits for better overall health and cancer prevention.[2] The practice of giving yourself the best opportunity to sleep well every night is known as “sleep hygiene”. Good sleep hygiene includes things such as setting your sleep schedule, following a nightly routine, cultivating healthy daily habits, and optimizing your bedroom for sleeping.[4]

References:

1.     Physical Health and sleep: How are they connected? https://www.sleepfoundation.org/physical-health (accessed Dec 16,  2021).

2.     Cancer and sleep: Connections, disturbances, & sleep tips. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/physical-health/cancer-and-sleep (accessed Dec 16,  2021).

3.     Colon polyps. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/colon-polyps/symptoms-causes/syc-20352875 (accessed Dec 16,  2021).

4.     What is sleep hygiene? https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene (accessed Dec 16,  2021).