We all have that insufferable boorish uncle who scoffed at your social life, and regaled how he stayed up drinking all night when he was a lad and went straight to work for a 15 hours shift and did that 3 days a week throughout his twenties? Yet he now looks 60 years old but he is only 35! It’s simply a case of burning the candle at both ends or in other words: opposite and equal reactions.
Ask any super model and they will tell you the number ONE beauty aid is a good night’s sleep!
The next time you tell yourself that you’ll sleep when you’re dead, realize that you’re making a decision that can make that day come much sooner.
Pushing late into the night is proven by the top experts to be a health and productivity killer.
According to the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, the short-term productivity gains from skipping sleep to work are quickly washed away by the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on your mood, ability to think creatively, and access to higher-level brain functions for days to come.
The negative effects of sleep deprivation are so great that people who are blind drunk outperform those lacking sleep.
I think I would rather be driven home by someone slightly tipsy than someone who never slept last night!
Why You Need Adequate Sleep to Perform
We’ve always known that sleep is good for your brain, but new research from the University of Rochester provides the first direct evidence for why your brain cells need you to sleep (and sleep the right way—more on that later). The study found that when you sleep your brain removes toxic proteins from its neurons that are by-products of neural activity when you’re awake. Unfortunately, your brain can remove them adequately only while you’re in the land of nod. So when you don’t get enough sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc by impairing your ability to think—something no amount of caffeine can fix.
Skipping sleep impairs your brain function across the board. It slows your ability to process information and problem solve, kills your creativity, and catapults your stress levels and emotional reactivity.
You may have heard of stories of successful world leaders who slept a few hours a night and performed admirably on little snoozes during the day, yet the people close to them will attest to living with a grizzly bear with an itch they cannot reach!
What Sleep Deprivation Does to Your Health
Sleep deprivation is associated to a variety of serious health problems, including cardiac arrest, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. It stresses you out because your body overproduces the stress hormone cortisol when it is sleep deprived. While excess cortisol has a host of negative health effects that come from the havoc it wreaks on your immune system, it also makes you look older, because cortisol breaks down skin collagen, the protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic.
In men specifically, not sleeping enough reduces testosterone levels and lowers sperm count.
Too many studies to list have shown that people who get enough sleep live longer, healthier lives, but I understand that sometimes this isn’t motivation enough. So consider this—not sleeping enough makes you fat. Sleep deprivation compromises your body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates and control food intake. When you sleep less you eat more and have more difficulty burning the calories you consume.
Sleep deprivation makes you hungrier by increasing the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin and makes it harder for you to get full by reducing levels of the satiety-inducing hormone leptin.
People who sleep less than 6 hours a night are 30% more likely to become obese than those who sleep 7 to 9 hours a night.
Obese, sick, shorter life, look older, and not virile, my goodness! I’m off to bed at ten PM tonight!!
And why on Earth would you skimp on a quality bed to sleep on? you spend ONE Third of your life asleep, make sure you have a good bed!
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Our factory has been manufacturing first-class mattresses for high end hotels for over 60 years – now you can have the same 5 Star sleeping experience in your own home. See our range here
