What are the health effects caused by poor sleeping habits?

You may have the healthiest lifestyle in the world, eat the best possible organic food, avoid all sugar and processed foods, eat loads of fermented veggies, have an ideal body fat and work out regularly with an ideal Peak Fitness regimen, but if you fail to sleep well regularly, for whatever reason, it is virtually impossible to be optimally healthy. Interrupted or impaired sleep can cause a ripple-effect capable of wreaking all sorts of havoc in your body and health. For example, poor sleep can:

• Dramatically weaken your immune system
• Impair production of melatonin – a hormone AND a potent antioxidant, which also has cancer-fighting properties
• Accelerate tumor growth – tumors grow two to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions
• Raise your risk of heart disease
• Cause a pre-diabetic state, making you feel hungry even if you’ve already eaten, which can wreak havoc on your weight Raise your risk of stomach ulcers
• Seriously impair your memory; even a single night of poor sleep – meaning sleeping only 4 to 6 hours – can impact your ability to think clearly the next day
• Contribute to constipation
• Impair your performance on physical or mental tasks, and decrease your problem-solving ability
• Contribute to mood disorders like depression