Importance of Sleep Can’t be Over Stated!

Sleep gives your body the opportunity to relax and refresh. During sleep your heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and oxygen consumption all decease. Chronic stress can lead to burnout, anger, depression and medical problems.

Impacts of Sleep

Sleep has been linked to the following:

• Learning and memory
  • Sleep helps your brain commit new information to memory
• Metabolism and weight
  • Chronic lack of sleep may contribute to weight gain
    • Sleep can affect the way your body stores calories
    • Lack of sleep alters hormones that affect your appetite
• Safety
  • Sleep deprivation can cause mistakes such as falls, traffic accidents or errors
• Mood
  • Sleep loss may result in irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate and moodiness
• Cardiovascular Health
  • Serious sleep disorders have been linked to hypertension and irregular heartbeat
• Health
  • Sleep deprivation has been shown to alter immune function

Chronic Sleep Loss and Body Composition Changes

Recent studies at Tufts University have found people who regularly don’t get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight. Less sleep was associated with lower metabolic activity in muscle tissue and increased activity in fat tissue. This suggests that acute sleep loss might cause hormonal disruptions, which then lead to metabolic changes in fat and muscle tissues.

So, not getting enough sleep can be associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome, hormone imbalance and type 2 diabetes.

Tips for Sleep

Both adults and children can have problems getting to sleep at night and staying asleep. We all need 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night for good health.

• Caffeine consumption affects people differently.
  • Be mindful how caffeine (soft drinks, iced tea, and chocolate) affects your sleep.
  • Caffeine peaks at 2 hours and can remain in your system for up to 7 hours.
• Be active during the day to improve the quality of sleep.
• Establish a calm, relaxing, inactive, bedtime routine.
• Create a bedroom environment that is quiet and comfortable for sleeping.
• Keep televisions and electronics out of bedrooms.