Sleep affects your overall health and well-being. Getting enough quality sleep at the right timing can help protect your mental health, physical health and quality of life.
How you feel when you're awake is dependent on what happens while you're sleeping. When sleeping, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health. For children and teens, sleep helps to support their growth and development.
Damage sustained due to sleep deficiency can occur in an instant (such as a car crash), it can also cause harm to you over time. For example, ongoing sleep deficiency can raise your risk for some chronic health problems. It also can affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.
Sleep affects your brain functions
Sleep helps your brain to work properly. Studies have shown that a good night's sleep can help to improve one's learning abilities. Be it math, guitar, or how to drive a car, sleep helps to enhance your learning and problem-solving skills.
Sleep deficiency can alter the activity that goes on in some parts of the brain. If you're sleep deficient, you may experience some trouble in making decisions, controlling your emotions and behavior.
Children and teens who are sleep deficient may have problems getting along with others. They may feel angry and impulsive, have mood swings, feel sad or depressed, or lack motivation. They also may have problems paying attention, and they may get lower grades and feel stressed.
Sleep affects your physical health
Sleep plays an important role in your physical health. Sleep is involved in the healing and repairing of your body and muscles. Prolonged sleep deficiency is linked to an increased risk of heart diseases, high blood pressure, and stroke.
Lack of sleep also increases the risk of obesity. Adequate amount of sleep helps to maintain a healthy balance of the hormones that make you feel hungry (ghrelin) or full (leptin). When you don't get enough sleep, the ghrelin levels goes up and leptin levels goes down. This causes you to feel hungrier as compared to when you're well-rested.
Sleep supports healthy growth and development. Deep sleep helps to trigger the release of hormones that promotes growth in children & teens. It also boosts muscle mass and helps to repair cells and tissues. Sleep also plays a role in puberty and fertility.
Your immune system relies on sleep to remain strong. This system defends your body against foreign or harmful substances. Ongoing sleep deficiency can affect your immune system and cause it to be weakened.
Daily Performance & Safety
Having adequate amount of quality sleep at the right timings helps you function better throughout the day. People who are sleep deficient tend to be less productive, taking more time to finish tasks, having a slower reaction time, and tendency to commit more mistakes.
Many people, especially teens, aren't aware of the risks of sleep deficiency. In fact, they may not even realize that they are sleep deficient. Even with limited sleep, they might still go on thinking that they are well rested and have the capabilities to function as per normal.
Sleep deficiency can affect people in all lines of work, including students, health care workers, taxi drivers, mechanics, and the list goes on.
How much sleep do we need? What are the timings that we should be asleep?
It is recommended that we get at least 7 hours of sleep per day to ensure that our body have sufficient amount of rest to repair our body and be in a good shape the next day, all ready to function.
Based on a human's organs repair cycle, you should be asleep by 11pm (If you want to fully maximise your body's repair capabilities). 11pm to 1am is the time where your body's gall bladder starts to function and repair. Its purpose is to release bile. However at the same time, your body engages in cellular repair as well as build blood cells. Thus this period of time would be the best for us to be asleep.
Believe it or not, you can give it a try! And see if you feel more energised the following day (Try doing this for at least a week to see results)
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