To Your Health April, 2012 (Vol. 06, Issue 04)

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Sleep Right – Your Health Depends on It

When it comes to your sleep, a lot more than rest is at stake. Getting restful sleep is now being touted as the best way to ensure you avoid a range of health maladies that can derail your peace of mind.

In two recent studies, sleep has been the primary focus. Simple sleep disruptions such as snorting or stopping breathing during sleep are now being associated with depression.

The journal Sleep reported this month that a recent study which included 9,714 men and women who participated in an ongoing national health survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used interviews about sleep symptoms and a well-validated questionnaire that screens adults for depression. Among those with a diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea, depression was more than twice as common among men and more than five times as common among women, compared with those who did not have the condition.

But the researchers also found that those whose partners reported that they snorted or stopped breathing were also significantly more likely to have depression, with the likelihood increasing with frequency of symptoms.

Men who were affected five or more nights a week were almost four times as likely to suffer depression as those who never had the symptoms. Women with these sleep troubles were more than twice as likely to be depressed.

Too little sleep — or disrupted sleep also seems to increase the risk of diabetes and obesity, scientists found during a recent lab experiment reported by the journal Science Translational Medicine.

To reverse some of these sleep disorder effects, talk to your doctor of chiropractic about how you can get seven and nine hours of sleep every night.