How Sleep Plays a Big Role in Your Health
Getting adequate sleep plays a vital role in keeping your brain and body working optimally. The best way to get adequate sleep is to have good sleep hygiene. In this read, we are going to look at the several ways sleep plays a role in your health.
Regulates Mood and Improves Social Interaction
Mood changes is one of the most obvious side effects of inadequate sleep and most people have first-hand experience with increased frustration, irritability as well as depression symptoms when overtired.
Sleep plays a vital role in your capacity to regulate both positive and negative emotions and an improvement in impulsiveness. As a matter of fact, sleep deprivation is known to lower responsiveness to emotional stimuli. Also, research has it that sleep deprivation tend to reduce the ability of an individual to pick up vital social cues and respond properly to them like recognizing facial expressions. Bundles together, these impairments make it hard for a person to navigate the social world.
Helps With Weight Loss
Getting adequate sleep is essential for weight loss as well as maintain a healthy weight. Sleep deprivation causes the body to release more cortisol, the stress hormone. Among numerous other impacts, high levels of this hormone tells the body to store more fat.
In addition, lack of adequate sleep affects the release of leptin and ghrelin, hormones that control appetite. These changes cause you to feel hungry more often and less satisfied after eating.
We all know that being overly fatigued makes it hard to stick to diet or exercise regime. When exhausted, you are more likely to feel justified in going out of your program to improve your mood as well as boost your energy levels.
Enhances Memory and Performance
Sleep is vital for your brain to be able to work optimally, affecting everything from your ability to focus and solve problems, to remembering vital information.
Memory consolidation, which is the process of moving information from short-term memory to long term memory stores, occurs when you are asleep. Various kinds of memories are consolidated during varying stages of the sleep cycle. REM sleep tackles procedural memories while Non-REM handles declarative memory.
Reduces Inflammation
Failure to get adequate sleep increases the amount of inflammation you get, thus raising the risk of developing diabetes and heart disease while exacerbating the symptoms of inflammatory conditions like arthritis.
Inflammation increase is usually caused by a surge in the production of inflammatory cytokines and a reduction of inflammation curbing proteins.
Boosts The Immune System
Adequate sleep is vital for your immune system’s ability to fight off infections. Even a little sleep deprivation can greatly reduce your immune system’s functionality, reducing its response and lowering the levels of infection-fighting cells.
People who have a good night’s sleep tend to have higher antibody count compared to those who have restricted sleep.
Removes Waste From the Brain
During sleep, the brain is flushed with fluid in order to eliminate waste products that tend to accumulate during the day. These include beta-amyloid plaques, which are culprits in the development of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders.
An important thing to note is that this flushing only occurs when you are asleep and the fluid barely enters the brain tissue when awake. That’s why most experts believe that this flushing is the primary reason we sleep.
There are other health reasons to get adequate sleep like reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, improving athletic performance and maintaining a healthy heart. As such, it is imperative to ensure that you get a good night’s sleep on a daily basis. Also, ensure you sleep at the same time every night to avoid the disruption of your sleep cycle which could lead to sleep deprivation.
