IT’S SLEEP SUNDAY – LET’S TALK ABOUT LACK OF SLEEP WITH CO-EXISTING CONDITIONS…

Healthline wrote that lack of sleep, even in the short term, can negatively affect co-existing conditions.

These include

• energy
• mood
• work or school performance
• memory, concentration, and decision-making
• safety

Per the NIHTrusted Source, insomnia can worsen health problems or raise the risk of developing conditions such as:

• asthma
• chronic pain
• decreased immune response
• heart problems
• high blood pressure
• mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression
• metabolic syndrome, diabetes
• overweight, obesity
• pregnancy complications
• substance use disorders

Research from 2019Trusted Source suggests that insomnia in older adults increases the risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

A 2017 comparative analysisTrusted Source on the link between sleep duration and mortality found that when compared with someone who sleeps between 7 and 9 hours per night:

• A person who sleeps on average less than 6 hours per night has a 13 percent higher mortality risk.
• A person who sleeps between 6 and 7 hours per night has a 7 percent higher mortality risk.

These stats include all causes of death, including car accidents, strokes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

A recent study involving 487,200 people in China looked at insomnia risk over a period of about 10 years. Participants were an average age of 51 at the start of the study and had no history of stroke or heart disease.

Those who had three common insomnia symptoms (trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, waking too early, or trouble focusing during the day) were 18 per cent more likely to develop stroke, heart attack, and similar diseases than those who didn’t have insomnia symptoms.

These are some shocking figures and really make you realise how very important good quality sleep is to our health. If you are suffering from sleep deprivation then go and see your GP to see if he can help you with this.

They say that even over the counter sleeping pills can become addictive and create a negative effect on your sleep patterns. It is so easy to take a pill but is it really helping your sleep problems in the long term.

There are countless books and apps to help you sleep in fact a minefield of them which makes it even harder for a sleep-deprived patient to decide what to take or what to do about it.

Making a conscious decision that you are going to do something about this problem is probably one of the best decisions you can make so start looking into everything that is available to you and make the year 2022 the year to get your sleep in order.

Source: Healthline