Can we be healthy without sleep?

What does sleep got to do with being healthy?

Let’s start by briefly talking about sleep, it’s the best way to manage stress. Stress is the component that links a lot of symptoms together. When we feel anxious and stressed we then often resort to foods that make us temporarily feel good. Often this is sugary food, starchy food and sometimes fat salty foods. Now, that makes us feel good for a short time, we also often tend to overeat these types of food because of how they make us feel. On the back end of this we feel guilty for eating these types of food just because of the sheer knowledge of knowing  it’s not for our best. 

Sleep and weight loss.

It’s common when someone wants to lose weight. The first thing we think of is that we need to train more and harder instead of looking at how to manage stress levels that is the cause of triggering a bunch of other things. Training super intense and often will only increase your stress levels which is what we don’t want and rarely are we able to keep it up for a lifetime.

Since we have the tendency to eat sugary and starchy food that spikes the blood sugar  we can eventually become Insulin resistant as a result. Being  insulin-resistant makes it even harder for someone to lose weight since it promotes storing energy as fat. It is hard to lose weight only by exercising if you don’t address the hormonal imbalance and what has caused it in the first place which often starts with stress that made us resort to certain foods to manage the feeling.

 So how would you manage stress?

I would start by looking at someone’s  sleep if you’re not getting enough sleep during the night which should be 7 to 9 hours per night,  even if you think you are fine on 6 or 5 the body won’t have the time to recover properly. You will be less resilient to handle stress at work or with family if you don’t get enough sleep. Which means the levels will only build up over time. 

 Stress can cause the digestive system to become sensitive, it will be harder to digest certain types of food and can cause you feeling  bloated, get stomach cramps and IBS like symptoms. This we often fix by excluding certain food. You might have a true food allergy and sensitivity but being stressed can make the symptomes stronger. 

The point of my rambling in this blog post is that everything is linked to stress and how we manage it. Sleep being the biggest self-care activity and it is being overlooked the most. Of course exercise is a great way to manage stress and it is so good for other things as well as long as it is in balance with the rest of your life.