Terry Mitchell

Is There a Correlation between Sleep and Stomach Health?



Posted: Friday, June 26, 2009

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

I don't think I've ever read about any medical research suggesting such a thing, but I suspect that there is a correlation between getting enough sleep and stomach health. This, of course, is just based on my own personal experience.
  
It seems to me that I generally only have stomach problems right after I've gone a night or two without getting enough sleep. Surprisingly, that appears to have more to do with it than the kinds of food I eat.
When I was a kid, I always hated to go to bed – and hated to get up. I guess most children are like that. However, for me, this attitude carried over into adulthood. I try to set a strict bedtime for myself (especially when I know I have to get up at 6:00 a.m. to go to work the next morning), but I tend to resist it when that time comes. I can always find ‘better' things do, like watching a ballgame, surfing the Internet, writing articles/blog posts, or enhancing my websites. These activities often result in my not getting to bed until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.

This lack of discipline is something that will likely prove very costly to me in the long run. But even in the short term, I'm paying for it with stomach problems like mild nausea and diarrhea. And they tend to hang on until I come to my senses and get several nights of adequate sleep. But since I never seem to learn my lesson, this cycle is repeated over and over again.

Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Dianne Lehmann
from Dewey, AZ 2 years 331 days ago.
Hi Terry.
 
Consider this: stress hormones (most notably cortisol) are only processed and removed from our bodies during sleep (and sometimes meditation). The more cortisol you build up, the more stressed you are. I don't know about you, but when I am stressed, my stomach is one of the first things to "go."
 
Try recording that ballgame. I know a lot of guys say but then I'll never watch it. But I say that if that's the case, maybe it wasn't all that important in the first place. As for the rest of what you mentioned ... well is any of that really better than getting a good night's rest? What's more important than your health?
 
With respect,
Dianne
» left by Terry Mitchell 2 years 329 days ago.
93 fans.
Dianne, great advice. I really need to follow it.
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