Sleeping is important. Not only is it necessary to function your best, it’s helps you lose weight more successfully, is good for your heart and can improve your cognitive functioning. Sleep disturbances, such as sleep apnea and insomnia can shorten your life expectancy. In fact, getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night is one of the indicators of good heart health. While there are studies identifying how sleep helps, previous studies all show that lack of sleep increases the risk of heart disease.
Obesity is a leading cause of heart disease and sleeping can help prevent that.
If you lack sleep, it can make losing weight harder. That’s because it interrupts the balance of the leptin and ghrelin hormones. Leptin makes you feel full, while ghrelin makes you hungry, no matter how much you eat. If you struggle with weight loss and find you’re always hungry, maybe it’s your sleep patterns that is affecting you. Obesity can also cause blood pressure to be higher. The excess weight makes it more difficult to pump the blood. High blood pressure adds to heart disease.
Consensus among scientists is that people need seven to eight hours of sleep a night.
What is lack of sleep? It’s not the occasional missing hour or two, but a chronic schedule that leaves you sleep deprived. The National Sleep Foundation noted that many Americans not only fail to get adequate sleep, they also get poor quality sleep, as well. That same study showed that a whopping 63% of Americans lacked adequate sleep during the week on a regular basis. They reported getting less than seven hours on a regular basis. Getting less than six hours every night increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by causing higher blood sugar levels, more inflammation, obesity and higher blood pressure.
Calcium can build in your arteries if you lack sleep.
The build up of calcium causes plague and plaque increases the risk of a heart attack. Just getting one hour less sleep every night than you need increases the risk by 33% of calcium building in your arteries to the heart. Sleeping too long, nine hours or more, can be just as bad as sleeping too little. It also increases the potential for heart disease.
- If you want to improve your sleep, exercise more. Exercise burns off stress hormones and helps you achieve a deeper sleep. A program of regular exercise can help improve your sleep quality of sleep, too.
- Improve your sleep by sticking with a schedule, even on weekends. If you break that schedule and have to take a nap, keep the nap under 20 minutes.
- When you wake up from sleep, your morning habits play an important role, too. Open the drapes and get as much sunlight as possible. The light each morning, signals your body it’s time to rise and starts biological processes.
- You can get better sleep by avoiding artificial light a few hours before bedtime, limiting alcoholic drinks, foods high in fat or sugar and keeping your bedroom dark, quiet and cool.
For more information, contact us today at Team Worx Fitness
