Smoking and Insomnia
Want a good reason to give up cigarette smoking? How about the link between smoking and insomnia? It is a proven fact that the nicotine in cigarettes stimulates the brain, and as it does so it interrupts the natural resting and recycling processes within it.
Is this such a big deal? Many studies have shown that skimping on restorative sleep leads to many negative side effects. Consider that anyone who experiences chronic sleep loss, such as a regular smoker, will see problems with learning and memory, metabolism and weight, mood swings, cardiovascular health, and the ability to fight off disease. These are not unimportant matters, and someone who is a smoker is already at serious risk for developing such things as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, altered diet and senses, and many types of cancer.
Let’s just take a quick look at the way sleep repairs the body in order to see why someone might want to consider a smoking cessation program. Firstly, sleep allows the brain to perform something called “memory consolidation”, and this is the reason that most students do much better when they sleep after major study sessions. Sleep also balances the way the body processes food, particularly carbohydrates, and this is going to control appetite, hormone levels and more.
When someone doesn’t sleep they can become a safety risk simply because their brain is trying to find “downtime” whenever possible. This could mean dozing off at the desk, but it could also mean impairment behind the wheel.
Finally, hypertension and stress hormone production appear frequently in those with insomnia, and smokers are another group which also suffer from such problems. When you pair smoking and insomnia you are getting a somewhat lethal combination.
What about the insomnia experienced by those trying to stop smoking? That is an entirely different variety of insomnia and has only to do with the body’s efforts to detoxify itself from nicotine addiction. Once someone has entirely freed themselves from the cravings and small stores of nicotine in the blood stream they will find that they sleep better than ever.
Remember, sleep is a restorative and necessary part of each day, and though we all need different amounts of sleep, when the body is deprived of enough sleep it alters its processes to compensate. These alterations are never beneficial, and when you pair up the detrimental effects of smoking with the unnatural functions created by insomnia you are creating a perfect recipe for illness and disease.
