As a mother, how can lack of sleep affect my health?

Moms in particular are starved for sleep, evidenced by the National Sleep Foundation's annual poll. The average woman aged 30 to 60 sleeps only six hours and forty-one minutes per night during the workweek (less than the optimal eight to nine hours for health and wellness). On average, we get an hour less sleep per day than we did 40 years ago, and roughly two-thirds of us complain that sleep deprivation cuts into our life and well-being.

Without adequate sleep, not only does your entire body reels from its repercussions, but one system in particular -- the endocrine, the center of gravity for a woman's energy levels -- starts to malfunction. This can lead to everything from appetite and fat-storing hormones running amok to bona fide infertility. What's more, millions of moms struggle with chronic pain, high anxiety, or full-blown depression, and many become addicted to pain-soothers such as alcohol or prescription pills, all of which further drain energy -- including the energy required to get well.

Sleep deprivation creates an imbalance of hormones that control your appetite and how your body burns energy. That's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to associations between sleep and well-being. Clearly, a night of poor sleep or no sleep at all won't kill you, but prolonged sleep deprivation can have unintended consequences, not to mention putting you at high risk for an accident.

Losing as few as one and a half hours for just one night reduces daytime alertness by about a third. And among the many side effects of poor sleep habits are hypertension, confusion, memory loss, the inability to learn new things, weight gain, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and depression.

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