Enough sleep keeps you smart and happy!

My previous post stated how getting too little sleep can potentially cause us to gain weight. There was another post I found which stated that getting enough sleep keeps you at your smartest, keenest, and most positive.

How the heck so, you may ask?

The blogger for Huffington Post, Terri Cole, therapist, life coach and CEO for the Live Fearless and Free movement (http://terricole.com/), talks about why getting ample sleep is so important:

"According to a study published in Sleep Medicine, sleep deprivation is associated with lowered self-regard, assertiveness, self-actualization and positive thinking.”

(http://www.sleep-journal.com/article/S1389-9457(07)00256-0/abstract)

 She says that, even if you aren't an anxious person, "the nonstop motion and lack of sleep [can shoot your] anxiety levels up. Anxiety and fear feed off each other. They exist because of each other -- they are each other's host and parasite. The more anxiety you feel, the more fear is dominating your life. Anxiety presents itself because we are afraid of repeating old patterns (ruminating about the past) or of what could happen (projecting fearfully into the future). When we live in the past or the future, we lose the ability to be fully present in the here and now. Time flies when you are nowhere to be found."

Jeepers! Wouldn't it be better to just avoid all that and get some sleep?