Better sleep means better health

Good night sleep can help you maintain or lose weight

Too little sleep triggers a cortisol spike. This stress hormone signals your body to conserve energy to fuel your waking hours. Translation: You’re more apt to hang on to fat.

Sleep deprivation makes you “metabolically groggy,” University of Chicago researchers say. Within just 4 days of insufficient sleep, your body’s ability to process insulin – a hormone needed to change sugar, starches, and other food into energy – goes awry. Insulin sensitivity, the researchers found, dropped by more than 30%.

Here’s why that’s bad: When your body doesn’t respond properly to insulin, your body has trouble processing fats from your bloodstream, so it ends up storing them as fat.

Impact on your mental function

Lack of sleep can alter your mood significantly. It causes irritability and anger and may lessen your ability to cope with stress. According to the NSF, the “walking tired” are more likely to sit and seethe in traffic jams and quarrel with other people. Sleep-deprived people polled by the NSF were also less likely than those who sleep well to exercise, eat healthfully, have sex, and engage in leisure activities because of sleepiness.

Sleep affect your heart health

During normal sleep, your blood pressure goes down. Having sleep problems means your blood pressure stays higher for a longer period of time. High blood pressure is one of the leading risks for heart disease and stroke. About 75 million Americans — 1 in 3 adults — have high blood pressure.

Poor sleep is linked to depression

Lack of sleep can have a negative effect on our emotions and can cause depression. Being depressed is a mood disorder that makes you feel sad, helpless, and alone. Most of us feel sad and down at times and that’s normal but when you’re sad and down for a long time, depressed feelings can prevent you from living a positive, happy life.

Symptoms that may indicate that your sleeplessness is causing depression are:

• having little enjoyment in things that were once fun and pleasurable
• having little energy
• difficulty in making decisions or concentrating
• changes in your appetite
• a decrease or increase in the need for sleep.

Affects sugar metabolism and type 2 diabetes risk

Multiple studies have shown that repeated awakenings during the night, insufficient sleep, excessive sleep, and irregular sleep all promote glucose intolerance. Insulin sensitivity is reduced by sleep deprivation and impacts glucose. The time of day a person sleeps impacts insulin and cortisol levels, both of which affect glucose. Increases in growth hormone accompany glucose increases during sleep.

Lack of sleep can be dangerous (sleep deprivation)

Some of the most serious potential problems associated with chronic sleep deprivation are high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure or stroke. Other potential problems include obesity, depression, reduced immune system function and lower sex drive.