A report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that 35 percent of U.S. adults don’t get adequate sleep. Dr. W. Chris Winter, of the Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine clinic, recommends we pick a wake-up time that works for every day and stick with it, regardless of bedtime; it pays off by eventually training the brain to fall asleep at the same time every night. Swedish scientists found that sleep loss reduces the presence of hormones that promote feelings of fullness in the stomach and increases the amounts of those that promote hunger, leading to obesity.

This article appears in the December 2017 issue of Natural Awakenings.