Chances are, you have probably woken up one morning after only five hours of sleep and felt like you could have used another five. Not getting the amount of sleep your body needs can actually have some harmful effects – even if you cannot physically see them.
Not enough sleep has been linked to a lack in efficiency of your memory, ability to learn, your ability to focus and be productive, and more. This can even affect your body in such a way that your organs have trouble performing their best and your metabolism can slow down. For those people trying to lose weight, you need to make sure you are sleeping enough!
Especially with older people, not having enough sleep can be a risk factor for things like depression when the person has a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Heal Your Body
“Forty-five percent of Americans say that poor or insufficient sleep affected their daily activities at least once in the past seven days, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s inaugural Sleep Health Index™.” – LackOfSleepFoundation
A lack of sleep clearly has more than enough negative effects on our bodies. Being that it is so important to have a healthy sleep each night, there are things you need to do to help regulate your patterns:
Set a schedule each day on when you are waking up and going to bed to help your body’s natural sleep cycle to kick in during times it is needed. Also, putting your body through a routine before bed can help trigger your mind into recognizing that sleep is soon to come. Even if you are tired, try to stay awake when it is later in the day so your body can effectively start its sleep cycle at night.
If you want to drink coffee, do so earlier in the day so your body has a chance to come down to normal levels for its nighttime cycle of sleep. Also, when trying to fall asleep in bed it is important to remove distractions that may cause you to wake your body up: Pets, cell phones, light pollution, etc.
Not getting enough sleep is sometimes not our fault. We may have experienced an event, or person, waking us up for some reason through the night, or we may even have a disease that prevents us from getting our full 8 hours.
Sleep apnea affects 1 in 5 people and this interferes with their ability to breathe when they sleep. There are machines and processes you can use to alleviate sleep apnea, but to make sure you even have it you should get tested first. There are two choices for this: Go to the doctor and get hooked up to many different tests, or click HERE and get your own sleep test kit to use in your home.
Sleep is something that people often overlook because it is a common thing we all experience. A lack of sleep is something that needs to be fixed before your health sees terrible effects! Go catch some quality Zs!