Lack of sleep silently harms your heart, increases inflammation, raises blood pressure, and disrupts vital body functions. Here's expert backed tips to improve sleep and protect long term heart health.
In our busy and fast lives, sleep is the very first thing we compromise so that we can beat deadlines, binge watch content, read indefinitely on a social media app, or balance work and personal life. Although it is a common belief among individuals that when one skips a couple of hours of sleep, what is experienced is just the fatigue the following morning, it is actually much more than that, as experts caution. Health findings indicate that insomnia may silently harm your heart and result in the possibility of eventual heart conditions.
It is not important that at the beginning you may not experience anything strange, but in the hidden part of your body, there are various stress responses that may put pressure on the heart with time. Sleeping is not only rest but it is an excellent healing time to your whole cardiovascular system.
Sleep is not merely a passive process, it is an active and restorative process whereby your body does its biological chores. In the process of deep sleep, the heart rate decreases, blood pressure levels become normal, hormones are released, allowing the body to restore damaged tissues and eliminate inflammation, as well as to keep the body at a stable level. These restorative processes are disturbed when sleep is deprived.
Regularly getting less than 7 hours of sleep at night can disrupt the normal functioning of the body in controlling stress hormones, blood sugar and blood pressure. In the long run, these imbalances may lead to the emergence of conditions that facilitate heart disease, high blood pressure and even stroke.
Celebrity nutritionist, Dr. Siddhant Bhargava says," you might be thinking that big threats to your take care of our food stress late night partying, but the real villain is something that you do every night skimping and sleep as it is slowly destroying your heart health, not with junk food, not with stress butwith lack of sleep".
If you are missing out on sleep this is what it can do to your heart
What is particularly dangerous about sleep deprivation is that its impact on an individual can be very silent. Individuals do not instantly associate insomnia with heart problems due to the fact that the symptoms are not so clear. But there are some other disruptions on the inside, which start to take place:
Lack of sufficient rest to your body leaves your body alert. Cortisol and adrenaline are stress hormones that are elevated leading to an increased blood pressure. The chronic high blood pressure is among the topmost risk factors of heart disease.
Sleep deprivation causes systemic inflammation. It is also possible to cause the destruction of blood vessels by chronic inflammation, which will be more susceptible to plaque deposition, one of the causes of heart attacks.
Sleep assists in keeping the heart rate constant. The sleeping deprived people are more susceptible to irregular heartbeats or arrhythmia.
Sleep deprivation changes appetite hormones and leaves you with the urge to eat sugar and junk food. This brings about the risk of obesity and diabetes, which are significant causes of heart disease.
Under such conditions as sleep apnea, which is usually triggered or exacerbated by poor sleep habits, the oxygen levels are reduced multiple times during the night. This imposes a direct load on the heart and undermines the cardiovascular activity in the long run.
The good news is that the risks of the heart can be reduced significantly by doing something to improve your sleep habits. Even the minor changes can make a tremendous effect:
Overall, you can protect your heart by fixing your sleep cycle and you can at least do it the rest and the break it deserves. Sleep is highly important, it is not a luxury, but a part of a healthy heart. Just a few minor changes in your everyday life and a proper rest can preserve your heart and make you healthier in terms of energy and health. It is true that, a healthier heart starts with healthier sleep.