Three Reasons Why Lack Of Sleep Matters

Lack of sleep causes all sorts of problems from obesity, to high blood pressure, to insulin resistance. 

Our minds and bodies rely on the restorative benefits of sleep. Lack of sleep causes all sorts of problems from obesity, to high blood pressure, to insulin resistance. Yet, sleep remains a low priority to many people—to the point where many brag about their ability to function on few hours of rest.

The value of sleep is not to be dismissed. Don't allow life to defeat you. Give yourself permission to pause, permission to sleep, to reboot.

I dare you. What do you have to lose? Except for maybe stress, depression, and sadness.

Three Reasons Why Lack of Sleep Matters

• Appetite control gets completely out of whack. When you don't sleep well your hormones, the ones that signal when the body is hungry or full simple don't work correctly. Are you more hungry when you're tired? This is probably why. We need our sleep in order for our hormones to work correctly during the day.

• Our stress multiplies by lack of sleep. It's during our sleep cycle when our brains perform the "wash cycle" so necessary for rinsing stress, and protein buildup from the day. Without sleep, there is a build-up of plaque that literally makes us feel dumb when we awake. Do you ever wake up and feel stressed and the day hasn't even started yet? Or you feel forgetful? This is all due to cortisol | protein buildup in your brain.

• Just a couple of nights of poor sleep makes our cells more resistant to insulin. AND we know this can lead to so many major medical problems including abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism, and, high triglycerides.

It's amazing to understand that just a few nights of restless sleep can cause a multitude of problems. Is it any wonder that moms today are stressed, overloaded and even depressed? Tired and wired has become acceptable, in fact for some it's a badge of honor. Eventually, it will catch up with you and rear its ugly head typically in the form of a serious medical problem. Don't let that happen to you.

Written by Maureen Lake for The Healthy Moms Magazine and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.