Beat Insomnia
Friday, March 21st, 2008
More than a third of Brits have trouble sleeping at least some of the time, and around 1 in 10 have chronic, unrelenting insomnia. Find out how to minimise the risks and get a good night’s sleep. A massive 97 per cent of British professionals are missing out on their recommended eight hours of sleep a night, according to a recent study. Yet sleep is vital for healthy functioning and for your brain’s logic and decision making abilities.
Not getting enough z’s is also known to increase your risk of being overweight and developing high blood pressure, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. Several studies have shown that the less you sleep, the greater your body mass index will be, and the more weight you’ll gain over time. Plus, regular sleep deprivation makes you twice as likely to be obese. This is because a lack of sleep causes hormonal changes that increase appetite, change your metabolism and mess with your glucose tolerance.
“Sleep is obviously something we require to function. It’s not really surprising that if you are depriving someone of the sleep they need, there can be a knock on effect on quite a lot of physical and mental conditions,” says Jessica Alexander, a spokesperson for the Sleep Council. She blames the situation on today’s “24-hour society”, which forces people to fit too much into a day, and makes them feel too stressed to sleep even when they do get the chance. (more…)