Sleep is essential, to keep your body healthy you need to spend around one third of your life asleep. Not getting enough sleep is linked to poor health and increased risk of chronic diseases like type two diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
The national sleep foundation recommends adults get between 7-9 hours of good quality sleep each night to maintain your health and provide the rest your body needs to restore itself. Not getting enough of good quality sleep can increase your risk of chronic diseases like obesity. One study found that not getting enough shut eye could increase your risk of obesity by 38%.
Achieving less than 7 hours of sleep or longer than 8 or 9 hours of sleep both increases your risk of heart disease and type two diabetes. The longer sleep duration time is proposed to increase your risk as the quality of this sleep is not as high even though the time you spend in bed is longer. Not having regular sleep patterns has also been linked to an increased risk of heart disease so it is not just about getting enough sleep but consistently providing the needed amount.
When you don’t get enough sleep your hunger hormones are skewed and you feel hungrier during the day. The hunger hormone ghrelin is produced in higher amounts and your fullness hormone leptin is suppressed when you don’t get enough sleep. The craving for sweet foods is also seen to increase.
Another factor which can increase your risk of overeating if you do not get enough sleep is simply by being awake. Once your stomach has digested your dinner and you feel the need to grab a snack which would not have been felt if you were sleeping.
Factors which can help you improve your sleep can be:
- Eating a balanced breakfast.
- Eating meals and snacks which are balanced with adequate dietary fibre.
- Including your main meals of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- Preparing more meals from home rather than eating out.
- Including more variety of different types of foods.
Factors which can inhibit your sleep can be:
- Unnecessary snacking.
- Eating larger amounts at night.
- Irregular eating patterns.
The hypothalamus in your brain follows a 24-hour clock and this is what regulates your sleep and sends different signals to your organs and tissues to promote optimal sleep. When your circadian rhythms are not in sync with what your body needs for health, your metabolic system is negatively affected. One example is insulin, the hormone which takes sugar out of your blood into the cells of your body can become less effective and can lead to insulin resistance which increases your risk of type two diabetes.
Other ways you can promote optimal sleep include:
- Having a dark room to sleep which is not too warm.
- Removing blue screens such as phones an hour before you go to sleep.
- Keeping a regular bedtime.
- Avoiding caffeine after mid-afternoon. Caffeine has a half-life of around 4-6 hours.
- Alcohol has a negative effect on your sleep quality and is not recommended before you hit the sack.
- Practicing relaxation techniques like meditation.
- Not performing strenuous exercise close to bedtime.
- Not having a large meal just before you go to bed.
Take home message: Getting enough sleep does not only make you feel fresh the next day but helps reduce your risk of chronic diseases and improves your overall health to live your best life.
References:
- Al Khatib et al. 2021.
- Yin J et al, J Am Heart Assoc, 2007 6:e005947
- Shan Z et al, Diabetes Care, 2015 38:529-37.
