Mental Health | NC Health Action

The Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Health

In some cultures, it is customary to take naps in the middle of the day. Entire towns and villages shut down for the afternoon while people take the time to sleep. In Western cultures, this is less customary. The pressure to work and meet various life demands pushes people to go to bed late and wake up very early. What many people don’t realize is that, over time, sleep deprivation takes its toll on a person’s health and well-being.

Sleep Deprivation and Weight Gain

It may seem logical that if you’re sleeping less, you’re burning more calories because you’re awake and active. The truth, as scientists are discovering, is that when your body is sleep deprived, its hormonal make-up changes. You experience an increase in hormones that strengthen your appetite. So when you do not sleep enough, you tend to eat more.

Additionally, sleep deprivation causes a drop in the hormones that allow you to feel satiated. You can eat and eat and still not feel full. The collective hormonal change in the body causes you to gain weight and feel deprived of energy.

Little Sleep and Mental Health

Not sleeping enough can also lead to fatigue and depression. When you’re tired all the time, everything in life becomes a chore. Even activities that you would normally enjoy become less interesting when you’re not awake enough to enjoy them.

Sleeping for Greater Health

To enjoy optimal health, sleep for seven to eight hours each night. Set and maintain a regular bedtime. When you’re rested, you’ll feel physically and mentally invigorated, allowing greater enjoyment of health and life.

Good Emotional Health

1. Good emotional health requires that we be in touch with our inner selves. We live in stressful times. Job loss and environmental stressors this can lead into emotional dis-ease.

2. Emotional Check ups

When stressed we tax our hearts forcing them to work harder. When under distress we may not sleep well, eat right, or exercise our minds our bodies properly. All of this leads to a negative emotional health. Taking the time to know our bodies and our limits can aid in developing and managing good mental health practices.

Rest and Relaxation
Adequate rest is needed in order to keep a good emotional state. Six to seven hours is still the recommended amount required for adults. Of course children and adolescents need more and it needs to be consistent. Bust schedules and carpools across town don’t always make this easy. Today’s youth have more on their plates than previous generations. Juggling school and extracurricular activities can make everyone in the household bit nuts at times.

3. Beating the Blues
The Holiday Season and other special days like Birthdays and Anniversaries can lead to emotional fallout. If we have lost loved ones these and, or happen to be alone during these celebrated times it can be very painful. Beating the holiday blues can be difficult when everyone else around you in celebratory mood.

4. Taking Care of Your Emotional Health
Depression is not uncommon and the levels vary. Talking with a trusted friend or finding a health care professional are good steps to take after determining a need. The need can be mild or severe. You may experience light blueness to an overall feeling of helplessness. Help is available if funding is an issue check Public Health listings for free or sliding-fee-scale health services. A health care professional can determine if you need to be treated with medication.

5. Breathing to Live
Sometimes, just taking the time breathe and slow down can help improve emotional health. Smiling doesn’t hurt either.

Filed Under: Health, Health Care Tagged With: Emotion, Mental Health, Public health

Advocating for LGBT Youth

1. Advocating for LGBT Youth Fosters Community

A large percentage of LGBT or gay youth are on their own after they come out. Values, beliefs and homophobia all play a part in the high number of LGBT youth struggling to be themselves. Homophobia and ignorance play a large part in keeping people from having honest conversations around LGBT issues. Gay youth that are accepted by their families do better at school and in general experience better emotional health than LGBT youth who are not nurtured.

2. Family Advocates

The family members who stands with LGBT or questioning youth may be stigmatized as well. Parents Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays serves Parents of LGBT youth through National Programs and local chapters around the country. Drop in meetings and programs are held to help parents understand and support LGBT youth.

3. School GSA’s Just Another Club

Gay Straight Alliances (GSA’s), are school approved after school meetings that bring gay and straight kids together to talk. These meetings are facilitated by a faculty member who is present but allows students to run their own discussion. Points for mandatory community are earned through GSA activities and monies earned for fundraisers often go towards a service project that helps others in need.

4. Help around the Holidays

Holidays are a very lonely time for closeted LGBT youth. While everyone is festive and happy holidays can send a young LGBT youth over the edge. Dating, mistletoe and the pressure to conform at the time of year when families work on bonding can be troubling for LGBT youth who aren’t supported emotionally.Unfortunately, the suicide rate for LGBT youth goes up during the holidays. Taking time invite a young person over to eat with your family or, sponsoring a community pot luck to ease the financial burden while welcoming LGBT youth to a family oriented dinner can add holiday joy and lend hope.

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: Family, Gay, LGBT, Mental Health

Antidepressants facts

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Depression has become one of the largest mental disorders of the twenty first century. Every one has big aspiration and dreams, but the spots available to reach there are very few. This leaves the million who do not gain the same status in life disappointed and depressed. Then there are multiple emotional issues to deal with which are concerned with personal lives. All these thing make depression in the lives of people imminent. Anti depressants are the most commonly used drug to deal with depression. Antidepressants are quick acting drugs that work mostly with the first one. But many people do not take these drugs because of a lot of misconceptions.

Anti-depressants do not make one forget her problems. Depression is based on certain chemicals in the body that cause the whole bag of worms to fall out. During the phase of depression, small problems seen huge and make you feel more depressed. Anti depressants make the problem seem smaller and help you deal with it easily. Anti-depressants do not completely kill your emotions. It is a stupid assumption that people have against anti-depressants. People believe that anti-depressants lead to gaining fo weight. This may be true, but during a phase of depression, people eat more than when they are not, hence it could be a combination of factors that leads to this weight development. People also believe that taking antidepressants will ruin their sex lives. This may not be exactly because of the antidepressant but because of the phase of depression where one is unable to get an orgasm. As to the prior belief, antidepressants are not that expensive and are covered under insurance under prescription drugs category. If you are one of the few people who believe that taking these drugs is a sign of weakness, then you are better off and you have fought half of the depression stage yourself.

Filed Under: Dental Health, Health Tagged With: Antidepressant, Depression, Disorders, Health, Major depressive disorder, Mental Health, Mood, Prescription drug

Sex Drive Road Blocks

: Image via Wikipedia

If you’re in a healthy, normal and typical relationship then healthy, normal and typical intimacy should be a part of that relationship. Most couples settle into a decent and loving routine when it comes to their sex time together but for others there can be some bumps along the road towards romance. Recognizing sex drive road blocks just might help you break through them.

There’s a nasty “S” word that gets in the way of more sex than anything else and that word is “stress.” If you bring the stress of your work, money situation or other family pressure points into the bedroom there is no wonder things are going to fizzle out. This doesn’t mean you can flip a switch and all your troubles will fly away. But if you’re making time for your partner, let that be the focus.

Many couples think that the key to a healthy marriage is not to go to bed angry. The same can be said for having sex. If you are having relationship issues, fix them fix before your turn out the lights for fun.

Sleep is another “S” word that can have an impact on a couple’s sex driver. Somewhere there is a spouse making advances only to be told “not tonight, I’m too tired.” That is only natural especially if one of those spouses is playing referee to the rest of the house. Timing is key in this situation. You’d be amazed at how providing for a good night’s sleep can go towards setting you up for the following night of romance.

Another big sex drive road block are kids. Yes, they are a blessing but they can also create a wedge between couples when it comes to getting intimate. A nice solution is scheduling a date night. Bring in a baby-sitter and treat yourselves to a night on the town. You never know where a little time out of the house could lead. The bottom line with all of this is to keep the lines of communication wide open between you and your partner.

Filed Under: Health, Public Health Tagged With: Advice, Counseling Services, Health, Intimate relationship, Marriage, Mental Health, Relationships, Sexuality

Commitment, Control and Challenge – Behavior essentials for hearty survivors.

: Image by TheeErin via Flickr

You’ve probably heard the saying “the strong survive”, but what does strength entail? Having a healthy heart? Sound mind? Stiff upper-lip?

Certainly all these can help. But in during stressful times with so much out of our control happening all around us, the methods by which we deal with stress define the difference between having a happy life, and a life of emotional chaos and upheaval.

According to studies at the University of Chicago, survivors share three specific traits that appear to give them a higher degree of stress resistance. 1) They’re committed to what they do. 2) They feel they’re in control of their lives. 3 – They see change as a challenge, not a threat. This could explain why one salesman has ulcers, and another, perfect health.

In the 1950’s, researchers began to look at the link between stress and illness, exploring the idea that the more stress a person had in their daily life, the more imminent their chances for illness. They went so far as to develop a scale for ranking stressful events, their hypothesis being that the higher the sum of combined stress numbers, the more likely a serious health event would occur in the following year. The top four stressful events include: death of a spouse, divorce, marital separation, incarceration, and “good” stresses, too, such as; getting married, Christmas, or the birth of a child. But what all the combined scores identified were the kinds of stresses people were under, not the manner in which they dealt with the stress.

Turns out, how we deal with stress has everything to do with longevity and living a quality life. So, what’s the key to turning those self-defeating thoughts around? It’s simple: earn to accept change, and let go. Learn to see every exit as an entrance to something new. Give yourself time for emotional healing after a loss, then set a deadline, and move on. If you’re having trouble with either of these, seek the advice of someone you trust; a friend, clergy, or a trained therapist. Life is worth living, and survival is a skill anyone can perfect, with practice.

Filed Under: Health Care, Health Nutritions Tagged With: Divorce, Health, Mental Health, Stress