***Lack of Sleep May Accelerate Aging

From time to time, you may have noticed that when you don’t get a good night of sleep you end up looking older the next day. Unfortunately, this is not your imagination. In fact, medical science has proven this to be the case. Many people mistakenly believe that they can skip getting a full night of rest, but the simple fact is that when you skip sleep, you do indeed pay a price. One of the prices you pay is that you will age more rapidly.

The notion that the “small” decision that we make can impact our health is a foreign one to many people. But the facts are that these actions can add up and ultimately take a toll on your body. Whether it is the food you eat, the amount of physical activity you receive or the number of hours of restful sleep you receive on a regular basis, how you treat your body definitely matters. Sleep is not something that you can skip without expecting to deal with some serious consequences.

A lack of sleep is a much bigger deal than you might suspect. Too little sleep can produce cortisol in your body. Cortisol is a stress hormone that usually serves the evolutionary function of helping us get out of dangerous situations. If you have too much cortisol in your system, you will see the effects of aging. This factor also underscores the importance of avoiding stress in all of its forms. A lack of sleep, as it turns out, triggers the stress reflexes in your body. When you put your body under this kind of stress, you can expect wrinkling and gray hair. Yet, the effects can run deeper.

Stress can weaken your immune system and cortisol also causes inflammation. Many diseases such as cancer are able to spread quicker as a result of inflammation. Thus, if you want to avoid sickness of all kinds, it is best to get enough sleep.

A lack of sleep also inhibits your body’s ability to repair itself. This means that if you have an injury and are not getting enough sleep, you can expect that injury to take longer to heal. Combine all of these different factors together and it quickly becomes apparent that when you skip sleep you are, in fact, shortening your life.

So how do you balance a busy schedule and make certain that you are receiving enough sleep? The answer is to prioritize sleep. If you are consistently not getting enough sleep, do not just assume that this is “the way it is” and simply accept your fate. Instead you should analyze your schedule and, if need be, what you do from one hour to the next. In the process, you are likely to discover ways that you can find some way to get more sleep.

Look at how you are spending your time critically and see if you can’t eliminate some of your activities in favor of sleep instead. While initially this may not seem as “productive” or “fun,” you will soon discover the simple fact that you feel better, look better, have more energy and are able to get more done on a daily basis when you are well-rested. In short, sleep is definitely your friend. Getting enough shut-eye might just help you live more years as well.