Blog 4: One More Reason to Get Enough Sleep.

Have you ever thought getting enough sleep has a significant positive influence in your life? For example, if you can sleep well, you usually wake up energetic and happy, so you will be able to handle your daily problems easier. However, sleep loss usually leads to be more sensitive about the difficulties and struggling with the ordinary troubles. According to the article “One more reason to get enough sleep” researched by the faculty of Harvard medical school, short-term sleepless can cause reduced awareness, daytime drowsiness, bad temper, and trouble concentrating. Furthermore, long-term sleep loss can lead to severe effects including depression, hypertension, health problems, and stroke. Recently some new research is suggesting that lack of enough sleep can even results to obesity. Consequently, getting enough sleep is essential to attain and retain an appropriate weight as well as exercise and healthy diet.
In this article, some related researches and results are stated to define the connection between the sleep and weight. “In one, researchers at Eastern Virginia Medical Center recruited 924 women and men, ages 18--91, from local medical practices and interviewed them about sleep habits, health problems, and sleep disorders. Weight and height measurements were taken and subjects were classified by body mass index, or BMI.”
As a result, this article claims that insufficient sleep influences body weight by distracting some metabolic functions as well as some hormones which leads to increase the appetite. As Stanford and Wisconsin University hypothesis verified that
“Ghrelin (GRAY-lin), an appetite-stimulating hormone, might be involved as well. . . In people who slept less than eight hours per day, body mass index rose in direct proportion to decreases in sleep time. Further, people who slept less had elevated ghrelin and reduced leptin, a combination that can result in hunger. ”
These findings have significant consequences in individual’s life because according to this article, most people in the United States sleep seven hours per night which is one hour less than health experts recommended. So if you sleep seven hours per night or less, you may want to reconsider and change your schedule to get enough sleep. This will benefit you to stay healthier as well as avoiding depression, obesity and other health problems which will be caused by sleep deprivation. However, the connection between sleeplessness and obesity is still under investigation.
Link to the article:
http://galenet.galegroup.com.prox.miracosta.edu/servlet/HWRC/hits?docNum=A169327725&tcit=1_1_0_1_0_1&index=BA&locID=ocea63505&rlt=1&origSearch=true&t=RK&s=1&r=d&items=0&secondary=false&o=&n=10&l=d&sgPhrase=false&searchTerm=2NTA&c=3&bucket=ref&SU=Depression+effects