Making the most of your sleep can easily slip your mind. However, staying committed to practicing healthy sleep habits is worth it to help you accomplish all of your goals and have a higher satisfaction with your life.
Sleep deprivation doesn’t just make you irritable, tired and less attractive; it leads to serious consequences for every part of your body. Here are some the surprising ways The Huffington Post says skipping sleep hurts you in the short and long-term:
- Your brain loses power: Without sleep you don’t have the ability to fully pay attention and your memory weakens, but that’s not all. Since your brain takes a lot longer to process information with poor sleep, you’ll struggle to solve problems. One study even found that medical residents working 24-hour shifts accumulate up to 300% more errors that directly result in the death of a patient, compared to those working 16-hour shifts.
- Your metabolism slows down: Yes it’s true, falling short on snooze increases your chances for gaining weight. As you push your bedtime back, you’ll make poor food choices, as well as lose the motivation and energy to exercise. Falling just 30 minutes short of getting at least 7 hours of quality sleep was found to increase the risk of obesity by almost 20% by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.
- Your blood pressure rises: To reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke, it’s important to keep your blood pressure in check. It only takes one week of sleeping only 4 hours a night for your blood pressure to rise about 10 points.
- You just might get sick: Your immune system is dependent on sleep to release antibodies that fight infection and a protein responsible for fighting stress, infection and inflammation. It’s no surprise that people who sleep less than 7 hours a night are three times more likely to catch a common cold, compared to those who sleep at least 8 hours or more.
- Your skin becomes dull: One of the first signs of sleep deprivation that is visible by others is your fading looks. Without sleep to help brighten your complexion and keep your pores unclogging, you’ll look more wrinkly and drab. Blackheads and breakouts, dark eye circles and puffiness are no welcome sight either.
You need 7-9 hours of quality snooze each night to be your best! Enjoy more success at work, better relationships, more happiness and a cleaner bill of health by regularly tucking in on time, even on the weekends!
No comments yet.