Got Sleep Problems? Losing 30 Minutes Of Sleep Each Day Could Mess With Metabolic Function, Causing Obesity. That sleep harms health and wellbeing isn’t a new idea.
But a new study presented during the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting last week in San Diego offered deeper insight to some of these harmful effects. Dr. Shahrad Taheri, a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, led the study. He and his team recruited 522 patients newly diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes and divided them randomly into three groups: usual care, physical activity intervention, and diet and physical activity intervention. Before the study began, patients recorded their height and weight, their waist circumference, and insulin sensitivity through fasting blood samples. Researchers found patients with more weekday slept debt were 72 percent more likely to be obese when compared to participants who had no weekday sleep debt.
Diabetes and obesity are two metabolic diseases characterized by insulin resistance. Source: Taheri S, et al. Would You Like to Become Smarter, Healthier and Leaner by Putting in Less Effort? How would you like to become smarter, more creative, leaner, healthier and to have better social skills?
And to achieve all of this by putting in less effort? It’s not a joke. There is a way. A large proportion of Westerners suffer from a certain deficiency that impedes creativity, judgement and their ability to solve complex problems. It can also contribute to weight gain and worse overall health. You may have already guessed where this is going. Are You Deficient? Are you deprived of this essential thing? Do you use an alarm clock to get up on most mornings?
The Importance of Sleep I highly recommend watching the above TED talk by a scientist who studies sleep and the brain. The take-home message there is that most people in the Western world get too little sleep, and that this has dramatic negative consequences. As we find out in the talk, most people feel best when they average about 8 hours of sleep a night (this varies from person to person though!) What You Can Do About It. How Much Sleep Do You Need? Sleep Cycles & Stages, Lack of Sleep, and How to Get the Hours You Need. The power of sleep Many of us try to sleep as little as possible.
There are so many things that seem more interesting or important than getting a few more hours of sleep, but just as exercise and nutrition are essential for optimal health and happiness, so is sleep. The quality of your sleep directly affects the quality of your waking life, including your mental sharpness, productivity, emotional balance, creativity, physical vitality, and even your weight.
No other activity delivers so many benefits with so little effort! Understanding sleep Sleep isn’t exactly a time when your body and brain shut off. The good news is that you don't have to choose between health and productivity. Myths and Facts about Sleep Myth 1: Getting just one hour less sleep per night won’t affect your daytime functioning.
Myth 2: Your body adjusts quickly to different sleep schedules. Myth 3: Extra sleep at night can cure you of problems with excessive daytime fatigue. How to nap. How to nap. Sleep is More Important than Food - Tony Schwartz. By Tony Schwartz | 10:37 AM March 3, 2011 Let’s cut to the chase.
Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for a week. At the end of seven days, how would you be feeling? You’d probably be hungry, perhaps a little weak, and almost certainly somewhat thinner. But basically you’d be fine. Now let’s say you deprive yourself of sleep for a week. Here’s what former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had to say in his memoir White Nights about the experience of being deprived of sleep in a KGB prison: “In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. So why is sleep one of the first things we’re willing to sacrifice as the demands in our lives keep rising? Many of the effects we suffer are invisible. So how much sleep do you need?
When I ask people in my talks how many had fewer than 7 hours of sleep several nights during the past week, the vast majority raise their hands. Great performers are an exception. Go to bed earlier — and at a set time.