March 8, 2009
Fight Insomnia with Cherries
June 9, 2008
Nightly Face Washing Helps Skin
It is found that if a person doesn’t wash their face at night it can make them look older. Leaving dirt, excess oil, and makeup on the skin during the night can cause pores to get larger and can irritate dry skin. It is recommended to rub facial cleanser onto damp skin for 2 minutes and rinse 10 times with lukewarm water.
April 27, 2008
Negative Effects of Not Getting Enough Sleep
There are negative effects of not getting enough sleep each night. Not getting enough sleep each night can lead to obesity, heart disease, and illnesses.
Research has proven that people who get less than seven hours of sleep each night are 30 percent more likely to be obese. Not getting enough sleep affects the flow of hormones that regulate hunger and satiety, which can cause a person to eat more. Sleepy people are also more likely to eat high-fat and high-calorie foods to give them energy.
Women that get less than five hours of sleep each night are more likely to develop hypertension, which is a leading cause of heart disease. When a person doesn’t get enough sleep, their body produces more stress hormones and other substances that would increase inflammation, which increases the risks of heart disease and stroke.
People that get less than five hours of sleep each night also have two and a half times the risk of getting diabetes when compared to people that sleep for seven or eight hours each night. Not getting enough of deep sleep decreases the ability to regulate blood-sugar levels.
People that are sleep deprived often feel cranky because that would make the amygdala, the part of the brain that process emotional events, to go into overdrive and the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that regulates reasoning, to become deactivated and this would make a person feel less stable than usual. Sleep deprivation makes the brain unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce rational responses.
Sleep deprivation affects how well the body fights infections and determines how well the body produces antibodies after a vaccination. While a person is sleeping, the body produces cytokines, chemicals that help the immune system fight off infection and disease.
April 8, 2008
Amount of Sleep Connected to Childhood Obesity
A Harvard study has found that babies and toddlers that sleep less than 12 hours each day are more at risk for being overweight in preschool. The link between sleep and obesity affects young children too, as well as teenagers and adults. Children that slept the least and watched the most amount of television had the greatest chance of obesity.
Previous studies have found that people that don’t get enough sleep produce more ghrelin, which is a hormone that promotes hunger. They also produce less leptin, which is a hormone that signals to the body that they are full and have had enough to eat. Watching television promotes obesity because it can take time away from doing activities that burn calories. The more active a child is the better they will sleep at night.
It is good advice to create a regular schedule for sleep for children and babies. Infants can be taught to sleep on their own by putting them to bed when they are drowsy but not completely asleep.