What’s all the fuss about - Why do we need sleep anyway?
Sleep is the time that our bodies use to restore energy, do repair work, and to build cells, tissues, and muscles. Without proper sleep, the body runs on half empty, which disrupts all functions and most importantly prevents us from feeling the way we want to feel.
Harvard notes the following six reasons why proper sleep is so important to health and performance:
- Learning and memory: Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. In studies, people who’d slept after learning a task did better on tests later.
- Metabolism and weight: Chronic sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates, and by altering levels of hormones that affect our appetite.
- Safety: Sleep debt contributes to a greater tendency to fall asleep during the daytime. These lapses may cause falls and mistakes such as medical errors, air traffic mishaps, and road accidents.
- Mood: Sleep loss may result in irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness. Too little sleep can also leave us feeling too tired to do the things we like to do.
- Cardiovascular health: Serious sleep disorders have been linked to imbalances in hormone levels and cardiovascular issues.
- Immunity: Sleep deprivation alters immune function, including the activity of the body’s killer cells which are essential for limiting the spread of infection inside the body.
Good sleep is so critical to our wellbeing that we spend approximately one third of our life sleeping. Good digestion, balanced hormones, a healthy stress response, strong immunity and more, are all so vitally important to our quality of life.
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