Why is a good sleep important?
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We all understand that a good night’s sleep is essential for a productive day, but what is the reason behind it?
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Why is sleep important and the surprising effects it has on our lives?
Don’t you love the feeling when you get to sleep in and wake up feeling refreshed? Though feeling refreshed is a great reason to prioritise getting a good night’s sleep, there are many more other reasons and benefits. In fact, studies have shown that moderate sleep deprivation can affect our cognitive and motor performance, so that it is equivalent to legally prescribed levels of alcohol intoxication.
It really is a crucial pillar of our health. Yet, most of us in our busy lives underestimate the importance of sleep.
When we refer to sleep, we are referring to all the stages, so that we obtain the benefits of all of these when we sleep. We generally cycle between NREM and REM stages of sleep, approximately every 90 minutes. NREM sleep is the deep and restorative sleep, the first three hours of sleep that we experience for the first half of the night and helps us regenerate both physically and mentally. The second half of the night is when we spend time in REM sleep, which tends to be a little more uneven and is usually when we dream, processing memories and experiences. REM stands for rapid eye movement because of the way our eyes move rapidly behind our eyelids during this stage.
Here, we look at the different ways sleep affects different parts of our lives.
Healthier eating and exercise levels
When sleep deprived, this can cause overeating, as it affects your appetite hormones, increasing levels of ghrelin, making you more likely to feel hungry and less likely to feel full.
When you feel tired from inadequate sleep, it’s also harder to make positive food choices, as you’ll be too tired to prepare something and you will want something quick and convenient, which is often fast food.
The trouble is also, that if you put on weight, this will make it harder for you to sleep well, causing a vicious cycle.
Calories consumed late at night increases the risk of weight gain. Eating late at night may also impact the ability to sleep. Sleep loss increases fatigue and being tired makes it hard to find the motivation to exercise.
Stress management
REM sleep helps to resolve our emotional issues. When we dream, it helps us to process bad experiences and memories. Interestingly, this explains why our bodies are paralysed when we dream, so that we don’t act out our dreams. During REM sleep, the flight or fight response is switched off, so when you are dreaming during this time, this a form of psychotherapy, as you revisit unpleasant memories and events but remain calm.
Better functioning and mood
Sleep can help us manage our mood. I’m sure we have all experienced lack of sleep and how this has affected us the next day. Often it can lead to irritability, impatience, and anger. This in turn can impact on how we interact with others and our relationships. We may be quick to snap or feel down.
Without enough sleep, we are likely to feel foggy, decision making, and judgement may be impaired. Getting enough deep sleep is also important for our ability to remember things, and retain information, for example, if we are learning something new at work or school.
According to the Sleep Foundation, getting enough rest helps you process new information, and sleeping after learning can help consolidate this information into memories, and store them in your brain. Not getting enough sleep can lower your learning abilities by as much as 40%.
Staying up all night and then making for the sleep on another day doesn’t work, as memories need to be consolidated within 24 hours of being formed.
Deep NREM sleep is also when memories are sorted, with the brain deciding on the most useful ones to be moved to and kept in long term storage.
Because we get less deep sleep as we get older, this may also explain why our ability to recall things declines.
Finally, another positive of getting REM sleep is that research has shown that it can help you be more creative for problem solving.
Recharge and rejuvenate the body and mind
During sleep, there are systems and processes that occur to help the body rejuvenate, to recharge the body and the mind for its optimal functioning.
The brain has a waste management system (called the glymphatic system) a series of tubes that carry fresh fluid into the brain, mix this with the waste-filled fluid that surrounds the brain cells, and then flush the mix out of the brain and into the blood. This process takes place primarily during deep sleep.
As we get older that we tend to get less deep sleep, which means that our brains are not as good at washing away the toxins .
According to the Sleep Health Foundation, sleep can help support your immune system, as the body produces infection-fighting cytokines during sleep. The foundation also reports that research suggests sleep is important for muscle growth, protein synthesis, tissue repair and growth hormone. These functions occur mostly, if not solely, during sleep.
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