Whilst a lot is said about how to reduce your sleeping to a minimum not a lot is said about the effects of lack of sleeping. People often ask questions like, “How can I reduce my sleeping time so that I can be more productive?” or “How can I reduce sleeping to achieve more?”. Beware that there is a threshold that should not be ignored. This threshold is built into our nature. Ignoring such thresholds will have the following effects on you.

Less sleeping is harmful for your health

It is scientifically proven that sleeping less than 7-8 hours a day is harmful for health. This is because as has been discussed in [Sleeping cycles], while you are sleeping your body repairs itself: physically and mentally.

Increases stress

Losing sleep makes you feel stressed. Due to lack of sleeping, you will lose your patience. Such stress will affect your life and the lives of the people who live with you like your husband/wife, children and colleagues. Stress is a major health hazard and has a significant list of bad side effects, such as heart problems, and obesity through nervous over eating.

You are not efficient

The idea of sleeping less is to have more time where you can work. Don’t get shocked. The fact that you sleep less means that you will be tired during most parts of the day. This will severely affect your productivity rendering you less efficient. This will lead to more work piling up which leads you to reduce sleep time further. Sleeping less is not a solution. Better time management and fighting procrastination are sure fire ways to deal with your workload.

Other effects of Missed Sleeping

Missed sleep is cumulative; if you lose sleep one day, you feel its effects the next. If you miss a lot of sleeping several days in a row, you build up a ‘sleep deficit’, which impairs the following:

Your reaction time will decrease resulting in higher probability of car accidents.
  Poor eye sight vision
  Slow information processing
  Short-term memory loss
  Lack of motivation

I wise man by the name of Benjamin Franklin once said: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

What is Stress?

The word ’stress’ is commonly associated with negative life situations. But stress can be caused by both negative and positive circumstances in your life. Fired from a job or the death of a loved one is considered to be stress by everyone. But the birth of a baby, a job promotion or a new relationship is not considered to be stressful by most of us. The proper meaning of the word stress is the effort required to adapt to changes in you life. These changes can be for your better or for your worse and can be changes that you chose to do or were simply imposed on you.

Why do we suffer stress?

Everyone suffers from stress. There is no human being that does not suffer from stress. The difference is that some people know how to deal with it and some do not. Stress is something hard wired in our nature. When we experience anxiety or fear our brain fires a chemical alarm which causes our nervous system to respond by releasing stress hormones. A very common and well known chemical contained in these stress hormones is adrenaline. These chemicals help your body push its limits in life or death situations. For instance, you will run faster and your reaction time will be shorter. Unfortunately our brain is not yet able to distinguish between different types of stress. For instance, the stress of a deadline does not require adrenaline like our ancestors used to need when running away from a tiger.

What are the effects of stress?

Stress has several effects, both physical and behavioural. Some of the physical effects stress has on us are:

1. Headaches or backaches
2. Muscle tension and stiffness
3. Diarrhoea or constipation
4. Nausea, dizziness
5. Insomnia
6. Chest pain, rapid heartbeat
7. Weight gain or loss
8. Frequent colds

Some of the behavioural effects are:

1. Moodiness
2. Agitation
3. Restlessness
4. Short temper
5. Irritability, impatience
6. Inability to relax
7. Feeling tense and “on edge”
8. Feeling overwhelmed
9. Sense of loneliness and isolation

How to eliminate stress?

As I said above, stress cannot be completely eliminated but fortunately enough there are ways that can counterbalance stress. First of all you should avoid stressful situations as much as possible. In future posts I will be publishing which are the most common stressful situations that we encounter in our lifes. When you sense such a situation just avoid them. For those stressful situations which are imposed on us I will be describing different ways how to deal with them to reduce your overall stress.

Stress is the opposite of relaxation. When we are relaxed and calm, our heart rate and breathing slow down, and our brain functions smoothly. When we are stressed our mind and body enter a heightened state of alert to handle the external situation causing the stress.

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Many experts have shown through various studies that including exercise as part of your daily routine is beneficial for your health.

Exercising daily will make you more fit, strong, and happy. It will also boost your immune system to fight off viruses and other undesirables. Even when you get sick your body will be robust enough to get back in shape and heal more quickly. Exercise will make your body more resilient.

Furthermore, you will avoid various diseases in the first place. For example, by performing a daily cardiovascular routine you will strengthen your heart and lungs, thus drastically reducing your risks of heart disease, a major cause of death all over the world.

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The following tips will help you avoid, manage, and overcome stress to take control of your life and live better.

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The start of a new day can be very difficult especially after a weekend or a long holiday. There is a myth that says; the way how you start your day has an effect on the rest of the day. Funnily enough this myth seems to be true. If you start the day by waking up late and rushing to work, there is a great probability that something bad will happen on your way to work to make you even more late. This will be followed by a call from your boss for a word or two in his office, most probably warning you that if you come late again you will be fired….Forget about it. This blog post is intended to list 5 tips that will help you start your day on a more positive note.

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Eating healthy is of utmost importance if you want to live a longer healthier life. I already outlined 5 reasons why you should eat a healthy diet earlier on this blog, so now I will explain some basics about nutrition and then explain how you can eat a healthy diet.

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I think everybody agrees that it is better to eat a healthy diet, but just in case you need to hear some valid reasons for why you should eat healthy I wrote this article.

So here are five reasons why eating healthy pays.

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In my last blog post I outlined what you need to do to have a healthy body. In this post I will outline what you need to do to have a healthy mind. First of all, what is a healthy mind?

That is a complex question, and since I am not a neuroscientist, psychologist, psychiatrist or some other ist, I can only say what benefits a healthy mind gives to an individual.

A healthy mind allows a person to:

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So you want to live a long healthy life and make your life fruitful?

To do this, you first need to get the basics down so that you have a solid foundation on which to build your life.

The lowest layer of that foundation and the one which is most important is your health, both physical and mental. The title to this post is in Latin and it was written by a Roman poet by the name of Juvenal a long time ago. Does this fact make this piece of wisdom irrelevant today? On the contrary, it goes to show how wise the Roman civilization was.

So let’s get started. What do you need to do to have a healthy mind in a healthy body?

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