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Jun 01
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There are many ways that not getting enough sleep can negatively affect our health. This is not just about being tired during the day. Insufficient sleep can affect your overall health, your mental state, and can affect the quality of your life. Some people think about being able to function without much sleep as being something to be proud of. If they only knew the truth.
Obesity
How does insufficient sleep lead to obesity? The most obvious way is that if you are not getting enough sleep then you will not have as much energy to get the recommended amounts of exercise. Anyone could fall victim to this trap.
But did you realize that you might be coping with your fatigue in ways that could be making you gain weight? Fatigue affects your mood and people often eat more to feel better emotionally. More than that, many people use food to keep them going with a burst of energy. Sugary foods, energy drinks, and the like can all contribute to weight problems and obesity.
Depression
Without sleep people become impatient and irritable. It’s a fact. This can contribute to depression because you will see the entire world through this less positive viewpoint.
Beyond that, your impatience, crankiness, and generally less pleasant mood are not just yours to deal with. Your loved ones will have to contend with you and this could easily cause friction in those relationships. It may even cause people to not want to be around you. If this irritability seeps into your work life then you could have problems in the workplace. Your fatigue could affect your work performance and even get you fired. That’s just depressing.
Safety
When you don’t get enough sleep you have slowed reaction times and impaired concentration. This means that anything that you do will be more dangerous. Some daily activities are innocuous while others are not.
If you drive without getting enough sleep then you are putting yourself and everyone around you at risk. Just because you cannot tell that your abilities are impaired that does not mean that they are not impaired. You are no longer in a position to determine your ability to drive or to do any other potentially dangerous task safely. Without sufficient sleep, you are a risk on the road and possibly everywhere else.
Cardiovascular Disease
Now this one seems a little less likely, doesn’t it? Can you really obtain a heightened risk for cardiovascular disease just because you are low on sleep? The truth is that you can and you will be more likely to experience cardiovascular disease without enough sleep. There’s no way around it.
Diabetes
Diabetes is another one. Not getting enough sleep means you are more likely to become diabetic. Clearly, not getting enough sleep can do more than make you tired.
Not getting enough sleep can decimate your health in time. From the obvious repercussions to the ones you may not have known about, sleep deprivation does real damage to your health. At least there is a simple solution. Get enough sleep every night.
T. Rheinecker enjoys writing about how to pursue an LVN to RN bridge.