Sleep for your health
Do you sleep less than 7 hours a night? You might have fallen into the trap of modern lifestyle. You might be grumpy and less patient when you don’t spend enough time asleep, but that’s not all. It has both short and long term health effects. Sleep is a restorative process that is needed to balance psychological, emotional, and physical health. Not getting enough of it can cause different diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Effects that can be felt right away are the mood swings that can influence your mental health, and higher risk for accidents as the attention is harder to maintain. It will be harder to make decisions and creativity won’t be on your side. You might be going to snack a bit too much as well.
Do you eat more when you sleep less?
Several factors influence if you gain, lose or maintain weight. Sleep is an important one of them. As a consequence of not spending enough time asleep your normal behaviours can change easily.
The behaviour can be altered in a number of ways, usually regarding food habits. Less sleeping time means more time to eat during the day, the tiredness results in less physical activity and there is a higher chance that you will be snacking more. Moreover, the hunger hormon, ghrelin, seems to be produced at higher levels. You will possibly eat more, and not fruits and vegetables, but sugary and processed foods, which are well known not to support a healthy body, as they are high in calories and low in nutrients.
Tips for better sleep
Sleep hygiene is defined as a set of behavioral and environmental recommendations intended to promote healthy sleep. When trying to improve bed time habits, sleep duration and quality have to be considered.
There are a few points to keep in mind:
- avoid caffeine, nicotine and alcohol
- stay away from daytime napping
- exercise regularly, but preferably not 2 hours before going to bed
- eliminate noise from the sleeping environment
- maintain a regular sleep schedule, reserving around 8-9 hours to spend in bed will give you an adequate amount of sleep (remember you sleep less than the time you spend in bed, considering how long it takes you to doze off). Try to go to bed and wake up the same time all the 7 days of the week!
- stress management
- avoid screens and blue light- try to turn off your electronics an hour before sleep and use blue light filtering application on your devices
It is worth paying attention time spent in bed. Don’t try and hide your sleepiness with caffee and just because you try to catch up with sleep during the weekends, it won’t have the same effects on your body. Follow the sleep hygiene points and if you have problems there are sleep clinics out there that might be able to help you!
