A lot on your plate? Don’t let sleep fall by the wayside in the process. Study after study finds that sleep and health go hand in hand, and failing to keep proper sleep habits in mind could be a recipe for disaster. Read on for some recent insights:
The risk of ill health effects. If you’re not making time for at least six hours of sleep every night—or if you’re sleeping in too much!—you could be hurting your heart and causing ill effects. A study in the European Heart Journal found that the optimal amount of time for sleep was six to eight hours, and daytime naps for those who slept more than six hours per night were associated with an increase in major cardiovascular events. (On the plus side, if you haven’t been getting six hours of sleep, the nap had no negative effect.) Beyond heart health, sleep deprivation can have negative impacts on your mental health and is often associated with issues like depression and anxiety disorders.
Better regular sleep makes it easier to bounce back when your schedule changes.Sometimes an all-nighter is inevitable, but as long as it’s not a regular affair, there’s a good chance you can make it work. The National Sleep Foundation’s recent Sleep in America poll found that the most disciplined sleepers did better putting in the occasional late night than those who put in all-nighters on the regular. But it’s still better to maintain a consistent schedule to avoid negative physical and emotional effects. “These data suggest that maintaining a consistent sleep schedule has a positive and protective effect against certain consequences on occasions when we need to deviate from our normal sleep schedules by an hour or more,” the report said [PDF].
Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.