By Alice Mitchell,
Project Weight Loss Editor
October 22, 2008Some people sleep too much and some don’t even remember the last good night’s sleep they’ve had. Few know the benefits and, most important, the consequences of getting too little sleep. The next time you think of replacing sleeping with work or some other activity, you should consider a few factors.
Living a healthy life involves a good night’s sleep. Specialists believe this should be one of the priorities. Few know that sleeping less than seven or eight hours a night may cause cardiovascular, endocrine, and immunity problems. The nervous system can also be affected by a chaotic life. Facts show that 50 up to 70 million Americans don’t get enough sleep, suffering from sleep apnea or chronic sleep disorder, also known as insomnia.
People who choose to do another activity over sleeping tend gain weight rapidly. A report from 2006 made by the Institute of Medicine discovered that less hours of sleep is the main cause of obesity. Leptin, a hormone that lowers the appetite level, grown during the night and ghrelin, his opponent, grows and the appetite is stimulated. Poor sleeping also translates in bad food choices, as it is showed in a study published recently in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
During the sleeping hours, at night, people tend to eat food higher in cholesterol, which contains unhealthy and saturated fat. The one who are affected the most are women. Several studies and reports show that people that don’t get enough sleep are more likely to be diabetic, suffer heart attacks and have and increased blood pressure. There is also a fact that 20% of the car crashed are caused by a sleeping drives, without involving alcohol use. It is known that insomnia causes depression, mental distress, alcohol use, lower self-esteem, and behavior problems considering the chaotic, unbalanced way of life.
This affects not only the adults, but also the teenagers and children, who can suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Taking all into account, all this problems caused by not getting enough sleep, may ultimately lead to death. Several studies published in the journals Archives of General Psychiatry and Sleep show that those who sleep less than sever hours a night have a higher risk of dying, with almost 15%.
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Project Weight Loss. All rights reserved.
