The Magic of More Sleep – Arianna Huffington
The life lesson: you need to get enough sleep, because the negative effects of sleep loss make you unhealthy, unproductive, and overweight! The successful woman: Arianna Huffington. These four steps to getting more sleep will help increase your productivity, energy levels, and overall health…
“Very often women workaholics forego sleep, because they’ve bought into the mentality that says sleep time is unproductive time,” says Huffington, author of On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life. “Yet what have all this workaholism and sleep loss bought us?”
Below are some of the negative effects of sleep loss. And - more importantly - here are four steps to getting more sleep. And, click on Arianna Huffington’s On Becoming Fearless to learn more about how not to be a well-behaved woman!
Arianna Huffington on Sleep Loss
The effects of sleep loss? “Less productivity, less job satisfaction, less sex, and more inches around the waist,” says Huffington. “Doesn’t seem like a very good deal, does it?”
My friends, it’s important to work hard to achieve your goals…but not at the expense of sleep. Sleep loss makes you irritable, moody, less healthy, and less likely to think clearly and solve your problems. Sleep loss also makes you look haggard and older than you are…which, let’s face it, affects your self-esteem and self-confidence. Another life lesson: this can create a downward spiral that’s crazily difficult to stop.
4 Steps to Getting More Sleep
1. Figure out why you’re not sleeping. Are you struggling to fall asleep because of prescription medications, relationship problems, work stress, money problems, or other health issues, such as sleep apnea? The first step to getting more sleep is to pinpoint the exact problem.
2. Decide if you need to see a doctor. If you’re dealing with sleep apnea, prescription medication, sleeplessness due to menopause, or emotional health issues – then your next step to getting more sleep may be to see a doctor or naturopath.
3. Find healthy ways to cope with your problems. If you can’t sleep because of money worries, work stress, or relationship problems, your next step is to find other healthy ways to cope with your problems! This is a great life lesson, because you – we all – have to learn how to deal with problems without becoming physically unhealthy.
4. Try different things until you find what works. Some successful women find that sleeping with all the windows open helps, while others sleep better with eyeshields and earplugs. Others swear by yoga, chamomile tea, white noise machines, or warm baths. This step to getting more sleep involves trying different things until you find what works for you.
Do you have a secret to getting more sleep – something that helps you sleep better, longer, deeper? For more steps to getting more sleep, read Better Sleep Tips From Sleep Specialists. The source of Ariana Huffington’s info is The Huffington Post Compete Guide to Blogging (Simon & Shuster, 2008).
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Women who get less than the recommended eight hours sleep a night are at higher risk of heart disease and heart-related problems than men with the same sleeping patterns.
Research by the University of Warwick and University College London has found that levels of inflammatory markers vary significantly with sleep duration in women, but not men.
The study, published July 1 in the American journal Sleep, found levels of Interleukin-6 (IL-6), a marker related to coronary heart disease, were significantly lower in women who reported sleeping eight hours as compared with 7 hours.
Lead author of the study, Associate Professor of Biochemical Medicine at Warwick Medical School Michelle Miller said short-term sleep deprivation studies have shown that inflammatory markers are elevated in sleep-deprived individuals, suggesting that inflammatory mechanisms may play a role in the cardiovascular risk associated with sleep deprivation.
“These findings add to the growing body of evidence which suggests that there is a non-linear relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and duration of sleep,” says Dr Miller. “Furthermore, they support the idea that short sleep is associated with an increase in cardiovascular risk and that the association between sleep duration and cardiovascular risk factors is markedly different in men and women.”
Sleeping seven or eight hours per night appears to be optimal for healthy women!
Source: University of Warwick press release (July 1, 2009). “Lack of Sleep Could be More Dangerous for Women Than for Men.”
I just read that not getting enough sleep also leads you to gamble more and make bad decisions! Arianna Huffington’s thoughts on getting enough sleep didn’t include this, but not gambling your life away an important part of being a successful woman