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Health Bytes
Lack of Sleep Could Get You Fat
The benefits of a good night’s sleep go beyond improving your concentration and overall well-being. Researchers have found that it is also good for your waistline.
Those who consistently fail to get enough sleep may experience weight gain, according to findings presented at Sleep 2009 in Seattle last month.
The annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies is attended by doctors, researchers and healthcare professionals.
A study on 92 healthy adults conducted by University of Pennsylvania found that those who had less than the average amount of sleep gained an average of 1.3kg during the 11-day experiment.
Another study on 1,000 volunteers conducted by Stanford University in California found that those who slept less than eight hours a night had higher levels of body fat. Those who reportedly slept the least weighed the most.
The findings are hardly surprisingly, since inadequate sleep affects the hormones that help control our appetite and metabolism, said sleep specialist Dr Lim Li Ling from Singapore.
According to Dr Lim, who is the director of Sleep Disorders Unit at Singapore General Hospital, sleep deprivation is “a stressful state which alters our body’s hormonal environment”.
Lack of sleep decreases the level of leptin, a hormone that makes one feel full after eating. It also increases the level ghrelin, a “hunger hormone” that stimulates one’s appetite. This results in overeating and weight gain, said Dr Lim.
“People who don’t get enough sleep may also feel tired and exercise less,” she added.
For those who have less sleep because they stay up late, eating habits such as bingeing on calorie-laden foods to stay awake may be the reason behind the weight gain, said Ms Lim Su Lin, chief dietitian and senior manager at National University Hospital’s dietetics department.
“To stay awake, they may resort to drinking high-sugar, caffeinated beverages or munching on tidbits,” said Ms Lim. They may pile on the pounds as a result.
To control your appetite through the day, Ms Lim recommended sticking to three main meals a day at fixed times, and including fibre to your meals.
Fibre, which can be found in vegetables, fruits and whole grains, makes you feel full and thus deters snacking. Starting the day with a wholesome breakfast can also help you avoid binge eating later in the day.
For another group of people, the problem may be more serious than weight gain.
A substantial number of people also suffer from sleep disorders such as insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
OSA is a condition where a person’s upper airways are blocked during sleep. “When breathing is interrupted during sleep, the quality of sleep is affected,” she said. Poor sleep is known to be as detrimental as lack of sleep.
So what constitutes a good night’s sleep?
“It is simply one from which we wake up naturally (without an alarm clock), feeling refreshed, alert and able to function at peak mental performance,” said Dr Lim. A person who sleeps well would not need to nap in the middle of the day.
The amount of sleep a person requires varies with age. According to Dr Lim, newborns may need as much as 16 to 20 hours, spread throughout the day, while young children should get 9 to 10 hours and teenagers, 8 to 9.5 hours.
Adults require six to 10 hours of sleep.
“Although some people take pride in getting by with very little sleep, most people who get fewer than five to six hours daily are probably not getting enough,” said Dr Lim.
So how can one achieve a good night’s rest?
Here’s a guide to a good night’s sleep by Dr Lim Li Ling, director of Sleep Disorders Unit at Singapore General Hospital.
- Try to go to bed and wake up at around the same time. Our sleep-wake patterns are regulated by an internal “clock” that dictates when we feel sleepy. When our daily activities synchronise with our internal clocks, we will naturally sleep better.
- If you can’t fall asleep within 15 to 20 minutes, leave the bedroom and do something relaxing, such as reading or listening to soft music. You should only return to bed when you feel sleepy again, however long it takes.
- If you have insomnia, you should not read, watch TV or work in bed. Associating the bed with other types of activities, especially if they are stimulating, will make it harder to fall asleep.
- Avoid caffeine - a stimulant that can stay in your body for over 10 hours - and stimulating activities close to bedtime. Stimulating activities include vigorous exercise, intense work and exciting TV programmes.
- Long afternoon naps make it difficult for us to fall asleep at night and should be avoided.
- A daily ritual to help us relax at the end of the day is a good lead-up to sleep. This can take the form of a taking a warm bath, dimming the lights, reading quietly or listening to soft music.
Now chew on this health byte: Do you know that people who drink TNJ frequently reported better sleep?
Wealth Bytes
Three Feet From Gold
“Most great people have achieved their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.” - Napoleon Hill
In the last Sunday Chat, I spoke about determination, single-mindedness and focus.
In today’s Wealth Bytes, I would like to touch on the virtue of persistence.
One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another. An uncle of R. U. Darby was caught by the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went west to DIG AND GROW RICH. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite.
After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbors of the “strike.” They got together money for the needed machinery, had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.
The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.
Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again-all to no avail.
Finally, they decided to QUIT. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some “junk” men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines.” His calculations showed that the vein would be found JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS HAD STOPPED DRILLING! That is exactly where it was found!
The “Junk” man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up. Most of the money which went into the machinery was procured through the efforts of R. U. Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives and neighbors, because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.
Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that DESIRE can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.
Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, because he STOPPED three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say `no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”
Darby is one of a small group of fewer than fifty men who sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his “stickability” to the lesson he learned from his “quitability” in the gold mining business.
Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to QUIT. That is exactly what the majority of men do.
More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known, told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning.
It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.
Interesting Video
I love this one, brings back memories of childhood. Hope you would enjoy it too: Andrea Bocelli sings Elmo to sleep!
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Here’s wishing you a healthy week ahead. Remember to practice your breathing techniques and start to relief your muscle spasm!
