Why Your Health Management/Wellness Strategy Should Include a Sleep Program

The leading causes of death in the US are the chronic diseases which include heart diseases, cancer, and stroke. These are costly and prevalent diseases. Tobacco use, poor diet, lack of physical activities and alcohol overuse are the four main individual behavioural factors contributing to a greater proportion of death from these diseases. Better health managements are provided for most people to reduce multiple individual risk factors and prevention from these diseases.

In most companies, Employee Wellness Programs (EWP) are defined as a well-organized employer-sponsored program designed to promote a healthy lifestyle for their employees, to improve health and wellbeing and prevent the onset of any disease. Employees are educated in lifestyle management interventions and to improve health outcomes.

Lifestyle management program is programmed for employees to follow. The most frequent targeted behaviours are the nutrition or the weight control activities (79%), smoking (77%), and fitness (72%). Despite strong indication that adequate sleep duration and sufficient sleep quality are important health behaviour domains, most people are still unable to promote sleep.

Some of the effects of having inadequate and quality sleep has been associated with hypertension, obesity, diabetes among other adverse health outcomes. However, insomnia which is associated with poor sleep quality, has been identified as one of the major factor responsible for poor mental health.

Poor sleep quality may have indirect adverse effects on other aspects of health such as health behaviours mainly because good sleep quality impact greatly on better health outcomes. Not enough or poor sleep quality may also have some adverse effect on the biological mechanisms such as the deregulation of the body insulin/glucose, metabolic hormones, neuroendocrine stress systems, and the neurocognitive functions but some other effects can be shown through some health behaviours.

Why Sleep Health Is Important

Sleep is also a critical determinant of health and wellbeing like nutrition and physical activity. Sleep is important for better health and development and is mostly required for infants, child, and adolescent. Lack of sleep and untreated sleep disorder have negative influence on our pattern of behaviour and also affect family health and interpersonal relationships. Productivity can be reduced due to fatigue and lack of sleep. It can also increase the chance for mishaps such as medical errors and industrial accidents. Having adequate sleep is necessary to fight off infection, support sugar metabolism, to perform well in school and to work effectively and safely. The obvious signs of sleep deprivation are excessive sleepiness, yawning, irritability and daytime fatigue.

The duration and timing of sleep affect a number of endocrine, metabolic, and neurological functions that are critical to an individual’s health maintenance. If left untreated, both sleep disorders and chronic short sleeps are associated with heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and lastly death.

People suffering from chronic disabilities and disorders such as arthritis, kidney disease, pain, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and depression are always encouraged to sleep well. Health related quality of life, functional limitations, loss of independence, and increased risk of death from any cause are consequences of untreated sleep disorders among older adults.

While sleeping, the immune system produces protective hormones like cytokines (for fighting infections). It uses this hormone for fighting invaders such as bacteria and viruses. The cytokines improve your immune system while sleeping. Sleeping deprivation hinders the immune system from building up its forces. The body may lack enough body defence mechanism if deprived of enough sleep. It may also take a while before recovering from illness.

Effects of Not Having Enough Sleep

Evidence has shown that poor sleep quality may have effect on an individual’s ability to maintain healthy behaviours, include healthy eating patterns, physical activity, alcohol intake, smoking, and stress management. In our current society, it is sometimes very difficult to maintain a healthy sleeping habits.

Normally, we are supposed to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night but sometimes, an hour or two lack mainly because you want to finish a project affect our sleeping hours. The main effect the next day is fatigue. Having a five-hour sleeping habit might be normal to you and nothing to worry about but increased risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression and cardiovascular disease have been attached to chronic sleep deprivation.

Depriving yourself from getting enough sleep will deprive the brain from getting enough energy it needs from sleep. This will make the brain to request for more energy from food thereby making you hungry always. Poor sleeping ability can increase the production of ghrelin which is also known as the hunger hormone in your gut. This will make your body crave fatty and sugary foods. The satiety hormone, leptin can also be produced. This will tend to make you eat more of what you are craving because you are not sensing the indications to stop eating.

Scared of weight gain? You have to sleep well. But having gotten an increased appetite, weight gain is the next thing to happen to you and it is another symptom of sleep deprivation. You eat more food when you are tired and you never watch what you eat. With the more production of ghrelin and leptin due to lack of sleep, your body will crave for more fried food and sweets. All these combinations are a sure way to increase your waist.

People tend to be more repulsive when they are exhausted. The ability to say NO to any food request become more difficult. It is also possible that you might be saying what you don’t mean like smashing your spouse or ranting at a co-worker. The main thing is that you are less inhibited.

You don’t remember what you do last night or where you put your car keys? Don’t panic. Before you panic, know that your brain is working fine. Getting good sleep help improve your brain health over a period of years. Not getting enough sleep regularly can impair your brain and reduce its ability to keep the nervous system clear.

Having problem making decisions? Lack of sleep can also make it harder for you to make decisions. Lack of enough sleep can affect the speed of cognitive processing which involves problems like time management and problem solving.