More than 80 percent of women surveyed in the Women’s Wellness Report 2017 say they have trouble getting a good night’s sleep on a daily basis.
What if there was a magic pill that you could take once a day that gave you more energy, made you less likely to get sick, made you happier, made you less likely to stress out, made fitting in regular exercise less challenging, and also lowered your risk of chronic health problems, like heart disease, obesity, and cancer? It’s not a pill you can necessarily swallow, but such a cure-all does exist. It’s sleep.
The problem: Many of us are not getting enough of it.
According to a 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one-third of American adults get fewer than seven hours of sleep per night. And according to Everyday Health’s recent Special Report: State of Women’s Wellness 2017, a survey of 3,000 women across America, more than 80 percent of the respondents say they have trouble getting a good night’s sleep on a daily basis. Those women are four times more likely to feel irritated, aggravated, or angry, and two times less likely to feel that nothing is currently challenging their wellness as compared with women who get a good night’s sleep daily, according to the survey.
“Insomnia is an epidemic,” Lauren Streicher, MD, associate clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and medical director of the Center for Sexual Health and the Center for Menopause in Chicago, recently told Everyday Health, in response to the new data. “People do not function if they do not sleep.”
The evidence to that last point exists and is well established. Sleep is that magic pill that allows our bodies to function a whole lot better when we get enough of it — and we can experience some pretty severe consequences when we don’t. Sleep isn’t a luxury for people who have time. Sleep is as essential to our bodies as food and water is, to carry out critical functions.
Skimping on Sleep Means Serious Consequences When It Comes to Your Health and Wellness
As for long-term health, chronically not getting enough sleep has been linked to increased risk of developing hypertension, having a higher BMI, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and some cancers. Those are the conclusions of multiple studies cited in a review published in May 2017 in the journal Nature and Science of Sleep on the long-term health consequences of insufficient sleep.
In terms of more immediate consequences, skimping on sleep affects memory, learning, focus, our ability to control our emotions, appetite, and our immune system. A study published in the journal Current Biology found that even just one night of poor sleep is enough to make the areas of the brain that regulate our emotional responses — like those we have to a misbehaving child or an irksome colleague — more than 60 percent more reactive than they are when we’re well rested.
Other studies have shown that not getting enough sleep worsens attention, memory, vigilance, and reaction time, according to a review published in the journal Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment. You’re also more likely to eat more when you’re underrested, because sleep helps regulate the hunger hormones that signal you’re full — and you’re more likely to get sick because our immune systems don’t work at full speed when we’re sleep deprived.
There’s also a clear and bidirectional link between sleep and mental health. Stress and psychiatric disorders, like anxiety and depression, can lead to sleep trouble; having stress, anxiety, or depression can make sleep problems worse; and having insomnia (chronic trouble sleeping) can put you at a higher risk for psychiatric disorders, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
Not Getting Good Sleep on a Regular Basis Is Taking a Toll on American Women
Given the continuously growing body of research, we weren’t surprised that Everyday Health’s recent survey data from women across America mirrored the findings from the scientific studies that sleep is critical to our health and wellness, across a variety of measures.
The women in the study who reported getting good sleep on a daily basis were less likely to report having gotten sick in the past year compared with women who didn’t get good sleep daily. The daily good sleepers were also more likely to experience positive emotions, like laughing out loud, feeling loved and supported by someone else, and having satisfying sex, compared with the women surveyed who did not get a good night’s sleep daily. And the women who weren’t sleeping well daily said they were more likely to feel irritated or angry, feel stressed or overwhelmed, feel hopeless, or experience negative thoughts compared with the women who did get good sleep daily.
Plus, women who slept well daily were less likely to say that things like exercise, eating healthy, stress, and having low self-esteem challenged their wellness compared with the women who didn’t sleep well daily.
Overall, women who did sleep well daily were more than twice as likely to be satisfied with their overall wellness compared with women who were not sleeping well daily. And not getting enough sleep and feeling lacking in energy was the number one factor affecting women’s ability to achieve their wellness goals, according to the data.
How Much Sleep Women Actually Need — and How to Get It
We get it: Life is full of interruptions and complications, from work deadlines to crying babies to laundry to when-else-are-you-going-to-work-out-if-you-don’t-do-it-at-6-a.m. Setting aside seven to nine hours every day for sleep — the amount recommended for all adults, including women and men, by the National Sleep Foundation — is likely not as easy for most as popping a pill.
But the data is also pretty clear that lack of sleep has dire consequences on physical health, mental health, emotional health, and our overall day-to-day wellness. Those NSF sleep recommendations were written based on a rigorous, systematic review of hundreds of scientific studies that investigated the connection between sleep and performance and health. That review and the NSF sleep recommendations appeared in an article published in March 2015 in Sleep Health: The Journal of the National Sleep Foundation. And importantly, you, our readers, also told us how critical a component sleep is to you.
So, instead of making sleep the afterthought, last thing you do at the end of your day, here are a few resources to help you start prioritizing sleep and getting more of it — tonight.
Sarah DiGiulio
AUG