4 Hidden Red Flags That Say you’re Sleeping Wrong
Some sleep-related issues can be hard to miss. For instance, if you wake up every day with a sore neck or back, you should probably ditch the pillows and/or mattress that you have and start browsing for a new one. If you sleep on your stomach, you might want to ditch that habit to save your (presumably) crying neck and spine.
However, there are a few more signs of poor sleep that you may not be picking up on, such as the following:
1. You’re stress eating even when there’s nothing to be stressed about…
…though chances are, you are stressed – but the stress isn’t from anything or anyone but you not having slept well enough. Having inadequate or poor-quality sleep can often lead to people being more stressed during the day, which can often translate to high irritability because of the extra stress hormone, cortisol.
2. You take way too many naps during the day.
If you feel sluggish at work on a regular basis and constantly need coffee in order to do anything, you may need to look into exactly how much sleep and how deep a sleep you get every night.
And if you take too many naps, chances are…
3. You probably don’t have a regular sleep schedule, either.
Irregular sleep schedules can mess up your body’s natural circadian rhythm really badly, which puts you at risk of more than just things such as lower overall cognitive function – studies have shown that risks for chronic conditions such as type-2 diabetes and obesity are higher for people who don’t have a regular sleep schedule.
But there are also short-term effects that you would notice when you don’t enough shut-eye.
Because you struggle to resist the urge to close youreyes in the workplace, you would end up falling asleep and feeling refreshedfor the rest of the night. And because you no longer feel tired, you now startto think that you can take on another evening of binge-watching and stay uplate at night. Which leads to…
4. You’re feeling sleepy all the time.
The cycle will keep repeating itself until you land on a stable sleep schedule. If you keep staying up all night, your body will then start to compensate by powering down during the day until you crash at a certain point, after which the general feeling of grogginess will decrease at night.
This will then become your new sleep schedule, which can be detrimental for your body in the short and long term. The only cure for this is a proper night’s rest for about seven to nine hours (complete with both non-REM and REM sleep), and doing it consistently.
