Catch More ZZZ's and Feel Good About It!

No matter what your lifestyle, many of us do not get adequate amounts of sleep. For example, full time students may have to pull an occasional all-nighter to finish an assignment. A demanding project at work may cause you to have to work longer hours or even work at home in the evenings. A mother with a fussy newborn (or any type of newborn for that matter) constantly has their slumber interrupted. Even though these are all-too-common occurrences for many American adults, too much of this happening can have a drastically negative impact on your health.

I have been pushing myself harder than usual at work and at home these past couple of weeks and I could tell my body was needing rest. And, if you're like me, you don't have time to catch a cold or some other bug because your immune system is worn down due to lack of sleep. It's exactly for this reason that I felt no shame about staying in bed until lunchtime today and catching some precious zzzz's.

The following is an excerpt from an article on WebMD.com that backs up my reasoning:

"Health problems have no relation to the amount and quality of a person's sleep."
"False: More and more scientific studies are showing correlations between poor quality sleep and/or insufficient sleep with a variety of diseases, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression. For example, insufficient sleep can impair the body's ability to use insulin, which can lead to the development of more severe diabetes. Patients with poorly controlled diabetes and sleep apnea have improvement of blood sugar control when treated for sleep apnea. This is also found in patients with high blood pressure and sleep apnea. When the sleep apnea is treated, the blood pressure also improves. In addition, too little sleep may decrease growth hormone secretion, which has been linked to obesity."

Click here to read the entire article, plus get more facts about sleeping. Happy snoozing!