Thank you very much.
Well, I would like
to start with testicles.
(Laughter)
Men who sleep five hours a night
have significantly smaller testicles
than those who sleep seven hours or more.
(Laughter)
In addition, men who routinely sleep
just four to five hours a night
will have a level of testosterone
which is that of someone
10 years their senior.
So a lack of sleep
will age a man by a decade
in terms of that
critical aspect of wellness.
And we see equivalent impairments
in female reproductive health
caused by a lack of sleep.
This is the best news
that I have for you today.
(Laughter)
From this point, it may only get worse.
Not only will I tell you
about the wonderfully good things
that happen when you get sleep
but the alarmingly bad things
that happen when you don't get enough,
both for your brain and for your body.
Let me start with the brain
and the functions of learning and memory,
because what we've discovered
over the past 10 or so years
is that you need sleep after learning
to essentially hit the save button
on those new memories
so that you don't forget.
But recently we discovered
that you also need sleep before learning,
and now to actually prepare your brain,
almost like a dry sponge
ready to initially soak up
new information.
And without sleep,
the memory circuits of the brain
essentially become waterlogged,
as it were,
and you can't absorb new memories.
So let me show you the data.
Here in this study, we decided
to test the hypothesis
that pulling the all-nighter
was a good idea.
So we took a group of individuals
and we assigned them
to one of two experimental groups:
a sleep group,
and a sleep deprivation group.