awakening to sleep

Awakening to sleep What causes Americans to sleep less? Staying up reading emails, technology, or our work environment. According to the Centers for Disease control and Prevention, a quarter of U.S adults say they don’t get enough sleep at least half the time. (Carpenter, 1) There are many reasons as to why Americans don’t get their full 8-9 hours of sleep. Getting too little sleep can affect your physical health, hormone regulation, glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, inflammation processes, pain perception and immune function. (Carpenter, 1) The first study to research the health effects of partial sleep was published in The Lancet in 1999. Van Cauter and his team found that levels of leptin, which is a hormone that regulates hunger, and appetite, dropped 19 percent during a person who is partial sleep deprived. Sleep deprived refers to consistently cutting ones sleep to an hour or two a night. Other factors that have been discovered in research on the role of sleep, is obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Kristian Knutson, PhD, reviewed research on cardiometabolic health, and on sleep. Knutson concluded that sleep restriction leads to changes in appetite regulation, hunger, and food intake. (Carpenter, p. 1) Knutson also found an association between short sleep duration, which is 6 hours per night, and either more obesity or a higher body mass index. Adolescents and children are most vulnerable to the effects of sleep. In 2011, a study published in the American Journal of clinical nutrition, a large multicenter team conducted that healthy men and woman who were restricted to 4 hours a night over six nights took in more calories from fat than those who were well rested. In another study conducted by Aariet Nedeltcheva, MD in 2009, found that adults, who slept 5 hours per night for two weeks, ate more snacks than the adults who slept for 8 hours each night. There was a pattern in sleep that affected a persons, difficulty falling asleep,