How Lack Of Sleep Can Be Bad For Your Health

One in three people complain of poor sleep.
Sleep problems can occur due to long work hours, job pressures, career and family depression, seasonal or long term illnesses and, environmental factors such as extreme temperatures and excess of noise. On a slightly humorous note, poor sleep also crops up due to those minor tiffs with your dating partner, spouse or any of your office colleague or superiors who want to prove their one-upmanship over you.
What should you do in this case? Sit pretty and take positive action. Grow up, as it is time to address and solve the nagging issue of poor sleep before it causes any further damage to you and your happiness.

Negative Effects of Poor Sleep
Sleep deprivation can affect our mind, body and overall health, both physically and mentally. Let us have a glance at how it upsets our normal behaviour, working pattern and overall health:
Loss of Concentration: Often it is the nature of our task and work hours that leave us deprived of sleep. Sleep deprivation affects their speed, agility and alertness.
Obesity: Research shows that poor sleep due to our passive lifestyle affects our eating pattern, thereby increasing our food consumption and causing weight gain. Increased blood pressure, hypertension, and chances of heart attacks are the natural fallouts of poor sleep.
Reduced tolerance to stress: When you are tired owing to the workload and hectic hours, even minor things such as grocery shopping at a store close to your home or travelling in public transport to reach office might seem a huge task. The capacity of doing minor errand jobs seems like a huge burden on the shoulders.
Signs of Ageing : Lack of sleep quite naturally leads to puffy eyes. Since our body releases excess of cortisol (a stress hormone), it can cause breakdown of collagen which is the skin protein responsible for smooth and elastic skin in us. This over a period of time precipitates ageing symptoms such as fine lines, wrinkles, and dark circles under the eyes, affecting natural beauty.
Hampered social interactions: Staying awake at a stretch due to a set of reasons affects our interaction time and connectivity with friends, family members and community. When this happens, it slowly and gradually sucks us into an isolated space which makes us feel withdrawn and alone. In the process, poor sleep negatively affects human relationships.
Increased Accidents: Studies have revealed that poor quality sleep in the night time is likely to lead to injuries and accidents while you are on way to work. That is because sleeplessness affects our concentration level when we are travelling and leads to mishaps and injuries.
Cardiac Arrest: Sleep deprivation is one of the reasons that can cause early heart attacks as per certain research studies.
How to ensure sound sleep?
Lifestyle disorders such as staying up late and watching television, chatting and internet surfing, making long distance calls at night to avoid hefty phone bills during daytime, catching up with books and magazines, making children study and complete their class assignments etc. contribute a lot to triggering insomnia. However, here are a few of home remedies that can be the best alternative to fight poor sleep:
Follow bedroom ethics: A bedroom is meant to sleep in so there should be no kind of hindrance in Try to avoid keeping TV, computer, music system and other electronic gadgets in the bedroom so that when you come back from work, you get into a zone of 100% uninterrupted sleep. This might sound difficult to follow, but is worth a try if you wish to get sound sleep.
Take a warm bath: Your body needs relaxation and rejuvenation after a tiring day. Give yourself the benefit of warm tub bath. This will help you wash out the stress of everyday life. Try and add a few drops of essential oil (lavender or chamomile) to your bath water so that you can enjoy the soothing benefits of aromatherapy.
Meditate: Hitting the sack is an obvious choice after coming back from work. But do spend some time to meditate and clear your thoughts. This will help in bringing you the much needed sleep and calm your mind and nerves.
Apply lemon balm: If you want instant mood uplift, get for yourself lemon balm. One of the ancient herbs used for centuries, lemon balm helps you get good sleep through its physical and mental therapeutic properties. A relaxing tea made out of lemon balm is good when it comes to mood uplifting.
Drink warm milk: Take a glass of warm milk before going to sleep. It relaxes your nerves and is a mild soother that helps you unwind mentally and physically.
Drink tart cherry Juice: This one is a natural sleep aid, so drink half to one cup of it.
Do Feng Shui: This is an art of living that is more than just decorating your living space. It teaches you the philosophy of how to arrange your room, furniture etc. to ensure maximum flow of energy in the spaces so that a positive feeling leads to sound sleep. Therefore, it is essential to keep the room neat and clean with least clutter and trash.
Cut down on caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco: Caffeinated beverages should be avoided at least eight hours before bed. Similarly alcohol should be avoided as it interferes with the quality of sleep. Avoid smoking at night as well.
A solid night?s sleep is very important for a healthy life. Make sure you follow the tips above to live life happy and to the fullest.