Sleep to keep your pep!
There are people who love it and people who hate it, but one thing’s for sure, we all need it. Sleeping is crucial to our well-being and it is as important as eating healthy or doing exercise. What do you know about it? You may have heard a lot of opinions, most of which lack of prove and real knowledge. That’s why we have done this article, so that you can have a clear idea of the importance of sleep in our life. Sleep to keep your pep!
Why is it important?
How do we know if it is important? Well, we know it based on our own experience. When we are tired and deprived of sleep we start feeling bad and we are strongly motivated to do it. Also, by observing animals behavior we can find even clearer evidence, as animals can actually die if deprived of sleep. We can say, then, that it has an important role in our lives as it influences our functioning in many ways. For instance, it helps us maintaining a healthy brain function and emotional well-being. It also improves our immune function, concentration and productivity while maximizing athletic performance.
How many hours are necessary?
The amount of hours we need to sleep change over the course of our life and it is different from person to person. That’s the reason why we cannot say a concrete number of hours, but recommend an average number depending on your age, health, exercise and multiple variables.
If you are one of those persons who routinely lose sleep or choose to sleep less than what’s needed, the sleep loss adds up. The total lost is called sleep debt. For example, if you lose 2 hours each night, you’ll have a sleep debt of 14 hours after a week. Some people nap as a way to deal with sleepiness thinking it is a good solution, but it clearly isn’t. Although naps may provide a short-term boost in alertness and performance they do not provide all of the other benefits of night-time sleep. Thus, you can’t really make up for lost sleep.
This table reflects recent American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommendations that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has endorsed.
Which are the effects of sleep deprivation?
There are many effects among which we find a higher body weight, a greater risk of heart disease and stroke, increased inflammation, a negative effect on glucose metabolism and type two diabetes risk. As we can see, it can greatly affect our physical health, but what about our psychological health? It makes no exceptions. Sleep deprivation affects our psychological health too as it is clearly linked to depression and stress and it also affects emotions and social interactions.
Physical consequences
Psychological consequences
Make a change
As you have seen, sleep is very important for us. Some people have no problem falling asleep. However, many others have serious difficulties and find it hard to stay asleep all night. Therefore, it is important to have a deeper knowledge about ourselves. Only then, we will be able to improve our sleep and feel much better during the day. There are many ways to improve it, but we must be persistent and try our best to change our habits. You can take steps to improve your sleep habits. The following ideas can help too:
If you have any doubt or need personal advice to improve your sleep and start feeling energized, don’t doubt contacting us, as we are always happy to help!