13 Reasons Not to Skimp on Sleep

Are you sleeping enough at night? Studies show that losing sleep can have a negative impact on your health. This is because daytime drowsiness can impair your cognition and can bring negative effects on your endocrine, immune, and nervous systems.

An article from http://health.usnews.com has outlined 13 reasons why you shouldn’t lose sleep at night:

• The less sleep people have more obese they tend to be. This may be due to the fact that insufficient sleep appears to tip hunger hormones out of whack. Leptin, which suppresses appetite, is lowered; ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, gets a boost.

• Sleep problems may actually make you make bad health choices. A study found out that people with obstructive sleep apnoea or other severely disordered breathing while asleep ate a diet higher in cholesterol, protein, total fat, and total saturated fat. Women were especially affected.

• According to a study, people getting five or fewer hours of sleep each night were 2.5 times more likely to be diabetic, those getting six hours or fewer were 1.7 times more likely.

• A 2003 study found that heart attacks were 45 percent more likely in women who slept five or fewer hours per night than in those who got more. And a 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that too little sleep promotes calcium buildup in the heart arteries, leading to the plaques that can cause heart attacks and strokes.

• Blood pressure may increase. Obstructive sleep apnoea, for example, has been associated with chronically elevated daytime blood pressure, and the more severe the disorder, the more significant the hypertension.

• As stated in a 2007 report in the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 20 percent of serious car crash injuries involve a sleepy driver — and that's independent of alcohol use. Sleepiness affects professional drivers, too. Sleep problems can also affect pilots.

• According to another study, older folks who have trouble getting to sleep, who wake up at night, or are drowsy during the day could be 2 to 4.5 times more likely to sustain a fall.

• Adults who chronically operate on fumes report more mental distress, depression, and alcohol use.

• Sleep loss is likely to negatively affect your mood, causing irritability, impatience, and an inability to concentrate.

• Sleep promotes learning. It helps the brain commit new information to memory.

• Kids who lose sleep may suffer more behaviour problems.

• People are perceived as being less attractive and more unhealthy when they're sleep-deprived than when they're well-rested.

• Those who get five hours or less per night have approximately 15 percent greater risk of dying — regardless of the cause.

Read more here:

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/articles/2012/03/05/13-reasons-not-to-skimp-on-sleep?page=2

Image  Courtesy of stockimages / freedigitalphotos.net