There’s nothing quite like curling up in a cozy bed, sleeping peacefully for at least 8 hours, and waking up feeling well-rested and refreshed. Most of us know how good it feels when we’re sleeping well, and how awful it can be when we’re not. Yet most adults nowadays aren’t sleeping nearly as much as they should be. So, why is sleep important?
The average American adult gets just 6 hours of sleep a night. That’s a couple of hours less than is recommended by the International Sleep Foundation. And it’s not just the lack of sleep, but the quality too, that is affecting our health, our mood, our looks, and even our bank balance.
Understanding Sleep
Why Is Sleep Important For Good Health?
Sleep is one of the most basic human needs. It’s as important to our health as clean water, a good diet, and regular exercise, yet it’s one of the first things we neglect when life gets busy. The irony is that that’s exactly when we need it the most.
People who have trouble sleeping and regularly get less than the recommended 8 hours have a harder time fighting off sickness. Their lack of sleep means they don’t have much immunity to common colds and viruses.
How does sleep affect your immune system?
During sleep, your body creates and releases cytokines, a type of protein that targets infection and inflammation. Without these your immune system’s response is weak and it has trouble fighting off infections and diseases, even the most common ones like a winter cold.
Deep sleep is when your body releases hormones that are vital for healthy growth and for repairing your cells. These actions take time. The body needs a certain amount of uninterrupted sleep to complete these tasks every night.
Not allowing our body the time to do what it needs to do to look after us can lead to more serious health issues such as heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and obesity.
Why Is Sleep Important For The Brain?
While we sleep our brain spends the night forming new pathways to help us learn and remember information, whilst weakening and getting rid of pathways that it doesn’t need. We take in so much information during our waking hours every day that the brain needs time to consolidate everything.
Memories and newly learned skills are moved to more permanent regions of the brain so that they are easier to recall in the future. Unimportant information that we’ve collected is cleared away.
During sleep, your body produces an increased amount of a clear liquid called cerebrospinal fluid. This liquid moves through the brain, flushing out toxins and waste products that build up during the day and that could potentially contribute to harmful diseases such as Alzheimer’s. It does this job much more efficiently when we’re asleep, as the space between our brain cells expands allowing the liquid easier access.
Why Is Sleep Important For Mental Health?
A link is often drawn between depression and sleep deprivation. Sometimes symptoms of depression appear before the onset of sleep problems, but other times the sleep problems appear first and then lead to depression. The two share many risk factors and biological features, and they both respond to some of the same treatments.
Studies suggest that people who suffer from insomnia are 10-times more likely to develop depression than those who sleep well.
There are different types of insomnia:
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sleep onset insomnia – difficulty falling asleep
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sleep maintenance insomnia – difficulty staying asleep
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hypersomnia – excessive sleepiness
People suffering from both insomnia and hypersomnia are more likely to have severe and longer-lasting depression. Severe sleep deprivation has been linked to risk-taking behavior and suicide.
Stress works in a similar way. We’re either too stressed to sleep, or we’re stressed because we can’t sleep, and we all know how bad stress is for both our physical and mental well-being.
Why Is It Important For Weight Loss?
Sleeping helps keep our hormones in a healthy balance. When we don’t get enough sleep, our levels of ghrelin (the hungry hormone) go up and our levels of leptin (the full hormone) go down. That’s why we find ourselves reaching for the tub of ice cream at midnight.
Sleep also has an effect on the way insulin works in our bodies. Insulin is the hormone released from the pancreas that balances our blood sugar, turning glucose from the carbohydrates we eat into energy and storing the rest. Our bodies experience a surge in blood sugar at night, usually between 4 am and 8 am. It’s called the “dawn effect”.
A healthy body that is getting enough sleep can handle the surge efficiently by telling muscle, fat, and liver cells to absorb the glucose from the blood, keeping the levels stable. However, sleep deprivation can cause other hormones such as cortisol and the thyroid hormone to spike, affecting how insulin works and making us more resistant to it. When we’re resistant to it our body will start storing fat in all the wrong places.
When we’re tired our brain isn’t working at its best. This leads us into making a whole host of bad decisions that will affect our health and our weight. We feel more hungry and less satiated after we’ve eaten which leads us to eat more, and crave food that isn’t good for us like greasy, salty food, or sweet things.
We also tend to eat more at night because we’re awake. The body isn’t prepared for this, leading to the insulin issue, and we end up storing more fat because of it.
There’s also the effect tiredness has on our day-to-day lives. Who feels like getting up and heading to the gym after a bad night’s sleep? It’s easy to forgo the workout in favor of a giant latte when we’re feeling exhausted.
All these things affect our weight, but don’t forget the most obvious and simple thing. The longer we’re asleep, the longer we are going without eating. This nighttime fasting has a hugely positive impact on our health and our waistlines.
How Does Sleep Affect Performance?
When you’ve had a rough night you wake up feeling groggy. It’s going to be a tough day at work. It’s pretty clear that when we’re not feeling our best, we’re not going to be able to give our best.
Lack of sleep even affects your emotional intelligence. One study by the Journal of Sleep Research revealed that people who were sleep-deprived weren’t able to pick up on others’ emotional states and were, therefore, less empathetic toward them.
There have been several studies showing that sleep deficiency alters activity in some parts of the brain. It can cause us to have trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling our emotions and behavior, and coping with change. All skills that come in really handy in the workplace.
The RAND research group recently released a 100-page analysis of how sleep affects us and what sleep deprivation can do to us and to the economy. They estimate that between lost work and poor performance at work from lack of sleep, the U.S. alone loses $411 billion each year.
Not only that but there is a huge safety issue to consider. Studies show that sleep deficiency harms driving ability as much as, or more than, being drunk. It’s estimated that driver sleepiness is a factor in about 100,000 car accidents each year, resulting in about 1,500 deaths.
Workplace accidents are a common occurrence with sleep-deprived people. In fact, they are 70% more likely to have or cause an accident than their well-rested colleagues. It really does have a significant effect on your performance.
What Is Beauty Sleep?
And finally . . . a good night’s sleep has a huge impact on the way you look. Yes, beauty sleep is a real thing. Your mother was right to make you go to bed early. We do all need our beauty sleep.
While we sleep, our skin has time to heal itself from the damage of everyday life. Pollution, sunbathing, harsh products and a bad diet all take their toll on our looks, and nighttime is when the body works best to try to put things back in order. Late nights tend to leave our skin looking pale and blotchy. We’re also less stressed when we are sleeping well, which means fewer wrinkles and acne breakouts.
We’ve all had days when we wake up, look in the mirror and just think “What a mess!”. Bloodshot, puffy eyes, and dark circles make it obvious to the whole world that we’ve had a bad night. Want sparkling whites? Get some shut-eye.
Researchers in Sweden asked a study group to look at pictures of sleep-starved people and people who’d had eight hours. The well-rested people seemed healthier, less tired and so were voted the more attractive ones.
And To All A Goodnight…
A good night’s sleep is so important, for so many reasons. We all need to be getting our required hours as often as possible. It’s easy to talk ourselves into believing that we can get by on little sleep with no negative side effects. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Research shows that getting enough quality sleep at the right times is vital for our mental and physical health.
If we want to look our best, feel our best, and perform at our best, basically if we want to be the best version of ourselves then we need to make sleep a priority.
That’s why sleep is important.
There are some things we can do to make the absolute most of the sleep we do get; certain hacks that we’ll discuss in another post. For now, just go and get your head down.
Sweet Dreams Everyone x
Trying to get a good sleep has been something that I have battling with all my life. I know that I am more productive when I sleep but man it is so hard especially now with this pandemic. I certainly am familiar with some prescription pills (Ambien) and also over the counter (Melatonin and Valerian Root.) They certainly do help me sleep but I hate the next morning when I wake up groggy as if there is a cloud hovering my brain. Now that you wrote all these wonderful benefits of sleep, I am going to have to keep on trying. Thanks for the reminder 🙂
Thanks Nuttanee. I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve also been through periods of trouble falling asleep. I found that sleep hypnosis works well for me a lot of the time, and it doesn’t leave you groggy on in the morning. Try it, there’s loads of free videos on YouTube. My favourites are the ones by Michael Sealey. His voice really relaxes me. I’m almost always asleep before the end of the video. Hope they work for you.
hello dear, thanks alot for sharing such amazing content with us all, i was actually doing some research online when i saw your post, i believe all you said all leads to living a healthy life, , i also want to thank you for the hard work you put into bringing these website together, your choice of words and writing skills is really amazing, and the description of each words you shared makes it easier for the readers to form an opinion, i already saved these post so as to come back for future reference jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj nice work
Thanks so much Skuchmane, really nice of you to say. Glad you found the post helpful. Have a great day.
Hey,
Being the best version of ourselves is what I strive to do each day. I also try to teach others to be the best version of themselves every day too by working hard on ourselves.
One thing I had not considered yet in doing this however was sleep. Sleep is so important and to be the best version of yourself I do agree that having the right amount of sleep each night is another part of working on yourself every day. I need to take your advice and share it with others when I am helping them to be the best version of themselves too.
Thank you so much for sharing and keep up the amazing work.
All the best,
Tom
Thanks so much Tom. I’m glad you found it help and it’s definitely a big priority if you’re after self improvement. It’s encouraging to hear that people are always trying to be better, and getting quality sleep will go a long way to helping with that. Cheers x
I feel we should all read this article of yours about the importance of sleep and how vital it is for your physical and mental health as well as for your beauty. I am so glad to have come across this important reminder.
In modern times, we all got so busy in our lives and sleep has gone somewhere in the background. Or I could say our lifestyle, it is in some cases affected our vital sleep so much.
Many thanks for this.
Kind Regards
Habib
Thank you Habib. I agree with you. The busier we are the more we need to sleep but it is almost always the first thing we sacrifice. Hope this has served as a reminder as to why it’s so important. Take care x
Getting a good nights sleep is vitally important for your wellbeing and to bring out the best version of yourself. This last few years we’ve cut out the late nights and slept longer – the results are much better for our concerns, especially my attention span and work life which has improved significantly. Thanks for sharing the advantages of getting a good night’s sleep,
Thank you Simon. Yes, it definitely makes us healthier and more productive. You’ve got into some good habits and it’s paying off. Good luck to you x
Hello,
I can share from my own experience of sleep insomnia how this can affect all aspects of your life and your health, you will experience low energy to do everyday chores but also it will cause your brain to not function properly as well. So if you suffer from sleep like many people today, I recommend you seek professional help if nothing else is working for you.
Jeff
It’s so true that it really messes you up, not sleeping well. There are plenty of things you can try but if nothing works then yes, you should definite seek professional help. Thanks Jeff x
Thank you so much for this article! We could all definitely use more sleep. Haha We live in a very “get as much as you can, as quickly as you can” type of society, and as such, we often neglect the most important things, sleep included (although some of us didn’t sleep well because our eyes were too focused on social media. Haha). I rarely get more than 6 hours of sleep a night, and my body has gotten used to it, but when I am able to get a full night’s rest, I feel so much better in the morning. Sleep definitely affects how you feel, your mood, your academic/professional performance, how you look, and how well your body is able to fight infections. I am going to rearrange my schedule to try to get more sleep. God bless you!
It’s so easy to get distracted and sacrifice our rest. The problem is it’s usually for unjust reasons as you said, like scrolling through social media. These things aren’t going to make us happier or healthier. I hope you manage to make sleep a priority so you can reap the benefits. Take care x
I totally agree that to be in your best version of yourself it is very important to have a adequate amount of sleep in night. I have personally experienced it in my life. I recommend it to anyone.
Absolutely, it’s one of the most important things you can do for yourself.