Why Sleep is Essential to Your Overall Health
Not sleeping enough can be extremely detrimental to our overall health. If you have even spoken to an insomniac, for example, someone who is at the extreme end of sleep deprivation, they will tell you have debilitating it feels. From being tired all the time to feeling sick, not to mention the negative effects on their mental health. However, you do not need to be a full-blown insomniac to suffer the negative health consequences of not getting enough sleep. This can happen to anyone who does not get at least seven hours every night. Here are a few ways not getting enough sleep can affect you:
Weight Gain
Did you know that by not sleeping enough, you can actually gain weight? There is a link between obesity and reduced sleep cycles, in the sense that by feeling tired, a person is more likely to choose negative life choices, such as overeating. If you are tired, you may well eat more sugary or fatty foods to boost energy levels, leading to obesity. Additionally, being overweight may mean you wake up hungry and therefore need to snack during the night. And this has a snowballing effect.
Your Concentration
Sleep deprivation will have a severe effect on your concentration, productivity, and cognition levels. This clearly affects you in almost every aspect of your life, from work and home to your relationships with people.
Heart disease
If you don’t sleep enough, you are not giving your body the chance to regulate its blood pressure. High blood pressure is a major contributing factor to heart disease. If you can sleep more, you will reduce your blood pressure, and this will also affect conditions such as sleep apnea, which will help you sleep better and deeper.
Depression
Instances of depression are definitely linked to lack of sleep. Not sleeping enough will make you feel run down, and over time, this will affect your mood, no matter how positive you may be. That means that sleep and mental health work together. Your brain needs to be switched off to help regulate your mood. People who suffer from depression may suffer from other conditions, such as drug or alcohol abuse. This may well be a coping mechanism, but this actually reduces sleep even more. A vicious cycle then rears its head. If you are stuck in a negative life cycle like this, then going to alcohol treatment centers may well help you solve the issue and improve your life in many ways.
Your Immune System
Have you ever noticed that you are more likely to get ill after a heavy weekend, or just simply when you have not slept properly? Well, when you are asleep, the body gets to work on repairing all the damage that has occurred to it over the day. It is where the immune system is strengthened. If you are not sleeping enough, even just an hour too little every night, over time, you will become more likely to fall ill from any sort of infection.
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