One common issue is associated with dozens and dozens of diseases you'd probably rather avoid. Luckily, the fix is pretty simple.
If you really want to annoy some people, give them the facts. To them, hard data is hard to deal with. It's true in politics, and it's true in fitness and health.
Here's a recent example. A new study showed that 22% of people who said they sleep around 9 hours a night were actually sleeping for about 6 hours. The study showed that self-reports often don't match reality, like when the researchers slapped accelerometers on their wrists and objectively measured what was really happening.
Self-reported data like that is tricky because it led some researchers to associate certain disease states with sleeping too much. In reality, the 9-hour sleepers were under-sleeping.
This same study was eye-opening in other ways, too. Let's dig into it.
The Study
Over 88,000 adults wore wrist accelerometers for an average of 7 years, with health outcomes tracked via ICD-10 disease codes. Six dimensions of sleep were objectively captured:
- Sleep duration: How long you sleep.
- Sleep onset timing: The time you fall asleep.
- Sleep rhythm: The regularity and stability of your daily sleep-wake cycle, including how consistently you hit the sack and wake up.
- Sleep fragmentation: Your sleep efficiency and number of nighttime awakenings.
In a nutshell, the researchers found that sleep regularity and quality are key health determinants, often more so than just hours slept. Moreover, 172 diseases were significantly associated with one or more of the objective sleep traits.
So, what's the root problem here? Well, analysis indicated that inflammatory markers (leukocytes, eosinophils, and C‑reactive protein) significantly contributed to the sleep-disease associations, suggesting an inflammatory pathway linking poor sleep and disease risk.
Inflammation and Sleep
Systemic inflammation is a major mediator between crappy sleep (fragmentation, irregular rhythm, late onset) and disease risk. Two nutritional supplements help with both problems:
1. DHA-Rich Fish Oil
DHA is a precursor for specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs) like resolvins and protectins, which don't just block inflammation, they actively turn it off. This dampens the overactive inflammatory cascades linked to disrupted sleep.
Clinical studies show DHA (more than EPA) reduces CRP, IL-6, and TNF-α. Lowering these biomarkers directly aligns with what the study observed as key mediators. DHA also integrates into neuronal membranes, improving neurotransmission and melatonin signaling, which reinforces sleep rhythm stability.
What to Do: Take a fish oil supplement containing 2000 mg of DHA per serving. Most fish oils do not contain this amount, but Flameout (Buy at Amazon) does.
2. Chelated Magnesium
Magnesium deficiency (very common) activates NF-κB, a master switch for inflammatory cytokine release. Magnesium calms this pathway, lowering CRP and leukocyte activation. Magnesium also supports GABAergic neurotransmission and melatonin synthesis, helping reduce sleep onset latency and nighttime awakenings.
Low magnesium also worsens insulin resistance and oxidative stress. Supplementation improves glucose metabolism and reduces systemic inflammation. This overlaps with many of the diseases that showed high sleep-related risk.
What to Do: To ensure better sleep, take 400 mg of magnesium glycinate before bed. Elitepro Vital Minerals (Buy at Amazon) contains this amount.
Reference
- Wang, Yimeng, et al. "Phenome-wide Analysis of Diseases in Relation to Objectively Measured Sleep Traits and Comparison with Subjective Sleep Traits in 88,461 Adults." Health Data Science, vol. 5, 2025, article 0161, doi:10.34133/hds.0161.