Whenever you go online, there are headlines everywhere. Some attract our attention and we click through to find out more. Others strike no chord and our lack of knowledge continues. Looking back over the last ten years, it’s become impossible to avoid learning about the risks associated with obesity. Everyone makes the link between this condition and an "epidemic" — a word referring to diseases and disorders. The majority accept that eating a healthy diet and exercising on a regular basis is the way to protect our health. Unfortunately, fewer people make the link between lack of sleep and the same list of diseases affecting the overweight. We tend to rate sleep disorders low on the scale of dangers. If we have a bad night’s sleep, it’s difficult the next day. No-one relates loss of sleep to diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

Why worry? Because, thanks to the stresses and pressures of modern life, the majority of us are sleeping less than we did two generations ago. We used to sleep an average of nine hours a night. Now the average has dropped to seven-and-a-half. In part, this is due to longer commutes and more time spent at work. When you finally get home, there’s the family and things to do. You want to catch the latest episodes of your must-watch television series, chat with friends online. There are so many distractions to keep us from going to bed. And then, even if we lie down, we may still be thinking about the last exciting pass through the social networking site, electronic games, the latest music, the argument with your partner for not spending more time with him or her, [insert whatever you find keeps you awake].

No matter what people tell you, the ability to work well on less than five hours sleep a night is very rare. Indeed, the Archives of Internal Medicine reports that people sleeping less than seven hours release stress hormones and this increases the risk of heart disease. The National Cancer Institute proves a link between less sleep and cancer. Ten years ago, a study published in Lancet showed men deprived of sleep with glucose and lipid levels close to those associated with diabetes. People who sleep an average of five hours are 73% more likely to become obese. At present, the research shows no consistent pattern of cause and effect. When someone is diagnosed with heart disease is that caused by the stress, or was the stress only the trigger for lack of sleep which caused the disease? There is a real need for research into the role sleep plays in our lives.

In this, the medical researchers cannot hide behind the success of sleeping pills like ambien cr. Even though this controlled-release version really does enable people to sleep through until morning, it misses the point about when people decide to go to bed. It’s highly relevant that people may be making themselves ill because they only give themselves the chance to sleep six or seven hours. That buying ambien online gives you more of that time asleep does not change the long-term physical effects of sleeping less.