The importance of sleep on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified

Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

I'm honored this week on the podcast to be joined by Dr. George Sanders, a CBC certified counselor,

and a board certified medical doctor in Southern California. We are happy to have you here,

Dr. Sanders, and to talk about a very important topic

that I bet a lot of people don't realize is as important as it is, and it's the topic of sleep

and the importance of getting a good night's sleep. Why is it important for somebody to do that?

Thank you, Heath.

It's always a pleasure to be with you.

You know, they say that the world is run by tired men and women, so I suspect that they need to be listening this morning.

Why is sleep important?

Well, for one thing, it allows us to repair and revitalize our bodies.

In our brains, there's a substance called adenosine.

And when that substance is charged up, it becomes ATP, which is the energy molecule that our brain uses.

As we are growing tired as the day passes, more and more adenosine is accumulating in our brain.

And sleep allows us to recharge that into ATP, and that sort of clears away the fog in our brains.

So that's an adenosine fog that you're experiencing as you grow tired as the day passes.

Also, growth hormone is produced at night when we're sleeping, so that our mothers probably knew what they were talking about when they said, if you don't sleep, it'll stunt your growth.

Also, sleep prevents and heals diseases.

If you sleep under six hours a night, you are four and a half times more likely to come down with a cold in a particular week than someone who sleeps over seven hours.

It also, someone sleeping under six hours has an increased mortality over someone who is

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