The Benefits of Sleep

Jan 28

Sleep is essential to a healthy life. Your body requires sleep in the same way it needs oxygen, food, and water. There are incredible health benefits that come with a good night's sleep, and severe consequences to go along with a sustained lack of sleep. However, modern life throws myriad hurdles in the way on the quest to a good night's sleep. Whether it's a busy schedule, stress, kids and pets, or the dreaded cell phone notification, we all have something that keeps us from getting optimal sleep.

There is hope, though. There are many simple things you can do to improve your nightly sleep. Even better, many of the fixes for better sleep are simple adjustments to routines, exercise, and diet.

Health Effects of Good Sleep

Everyone knows how it feels to wake up from a night of deep, uninterrupted sleep. You wake up happy, alert, and ready to face the day. There's a reason for that: sleep is a restorative process that benefits the entire body, from your brain to your heart to your digestive system. Sleep is a time for your brain to restructure itself and form new neural pathways, which improves decision-making and problem-solving skills. Sleep helps regulate your body weight through the production of leptin, an appetite suppressor. When you're sleeping, your vascular system slows down, which decreases blood pressure and improves heart health. Your blood sugar is also better regulated with consistent, restful sleep.

Moreover, a good night's sleep improves your odds of a good day. Being alert, with your blood sugar and appetite balanced puts you in a good place to succeed throughout the day. This is one of those situations where good things create more good things: if you're alert and happy, you're less likely to make mistakes or get stressed when things don't go according to plan during your day. Getting a full night of restful sleep is the best way to set yourself up for success each day.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

There's no way around it: you need to sleep seven to eight hours a night. Some would even suggest it's more like eight to ten hours of sleep.

Sleep is not a uniform state. Instead, there are four stages of sleep: three non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stages, and then the rapid eye movement (REM) stage. We go through this cycle of NREM and REM stages multiple times in a night. Each cycle lasts anywhere from 40 to 120 minutes, averaging around 90 minutes, and must be completed in order. The best night of sleep you can get is going through multiple cycles without any interruption. Getting eight hours of steady sleep will give you significantly more time to spend in that deep, restful REM sleep than four hours of interrupted sleep.

The Effects of Poor Sleep

Not sleeping enough can have immediate and long-term negative consequences. Acute sleep deprivation can impair judgement, lead to heightened negative emotions, delay reaction speed, make you lethargic, and affect your ability concentrate and remember things. Extended periods of sleep deprivation make each of these conditions worse. One study even showed that sleep deprived drivers have the same poor reaction speed as drunk drivers.

Sustained patterns of poor sleep affect every part of the body. Lack of sleep can contribute to mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. Your immune system uses the time when you're sleeping to produce antibodies and cytokines to fight off illnesses. When your body doesn't have time to naturally strengthen the immune system, you're more likely to get sick, and will stay sick longer. Long-term sleep deprivation has also been shown to contribute to major conditions including obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and some cancers.

Tips to Get Good Sleep

Even knowing why you need sleep, it's often hard to come by. Most of us have busy schedules— work, social lives, kids, family, hobbies, technology— all of these things can throw off your sleep schedule. However, there are things you can do to give yourself better odds.

Ditch your phone: We could all stand to take a break from technology, especially around bed time. One of the best pieces of advice is to keep your phone as far away from your bed as you reasonably can. Ideally, you would leave your phone in the kitchen or another part of the house, and avoid all screens two hours before bed. There are many reasons for this: 1) looking at a phone before bed makes it harder to fall asleep, 2) constant alerts and notifications during the night can wake you up, 3) when you do wake up in the middle of the night, it's far too tempting to reach for your phone to check messages, shop, or look at social media, which will keep you from falling back asleep, and 3) studies show that the radiation emitted by phones can delay the onset of deep sleep, and shorten the time when people stay in the deepest stage of sleep. Some of us have circumstances where we aren't able to be too far from our phone, in which case you should set it to silent and limit all unneeded notifications.
Get blue light glasses: While we're talking about technology, blue light glasses are a great addition to anyone's routine if they use a tablet, watch TV, or work on the computer in the evening or before bed. Blue light emitted by screens can delay your body's natural melatonin release, which will keep you awake longer. Putting on blue light glasses when using technology after the sun goes down filters out the light wavelengths that negatively affect sleep. If you have a job that requires you to use screens for long periods, consider blue light glasses all day long: one study from Harvard researchers showed 6.5 hours of blue light exposure can shift your circadian rhythm back by three hours.
Keep Cool: A cool room, ideally in the upper 60s, will do wonders for your sleep. Your body temperature plays a major role in telling your brain it's time to start producing melatonin and helps maintain the natural circadian rhythm. Cool temperatures also promote rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is the deepest stage of sleep. Staying in the REM stage longer will help you feel more rested the next day.
Make a routine, and stick to it: Our bodies respond well to consistency. Having the same pre-sleep routine and bedtime every day will help your body and mind know it's time to start winding down. Find a time that works for your schedule for going to bed and when to wake up, and stick to those times every day you possibly can, even on weekends. It helps to find a nice wind-down activity for the last hours before bed: do a crossword, read a book, meditate, write in a journal— whatever helps calm your mind, as long as it isn't on your phone!
Have a sleep-friendly diet: Avoid eating spicy or acidic foods, fatty foods, fried foods, sugary or high glycemic foods, alcohol, or caffeine a minimum of three hours before sleep. You can also try to push some of these limits back even further: for example, many people find they need to stop drinking caffeine by lunchtime to get the best sleep.
Drink tea: Herbal teas like chamomile, valerian, peppermint, lemon balm, passionflower all promote sleep.
Do some gentle exercise during the day: Exercise is essential to sleep. While a strenuous workout will wear you out, that isn't necessary every day. A light yoga practice, walk around the neighborhood, or leisurely bike ride will make a huge difference when it comes time to sleep.
Get acupuncture: Acupuncture helps balance the meridians, and can help correct energetic imbalances that lead to poor sleep. Studies show that patients dealing with insomnia saw improved sleep duration after receiving acupuncture treatments, and received even better results when combining acupuncture treatments with herbs.

Good Sleep, Great Outcomes

Making a huge adjustment to your routine is never easy. However, in the case of sleep, it is well worth it. Even changing one habit can make a massive difference in your sleep. It’s important to acknowledge that there are realities of life you can’t change: maybe you really need your phone by your bed, whether you use it as a baby monitor or are on call 24/7 for work. In that case, adjust your routine in other ways, maybe by putting your phone face down and reading a book before bed, or ditching caffeine throughout the day. The important thing is that you take a step towards better sleep.

If you’re not sure how you’re doing with sleep, a helpful first step is to make a sleep diary. Each morning, take note of when you went to bed, and when you woke up. If you can remember, take note of about how long it took you to actually fall asleep once you started making a concerted effort, and every time you woke up throughout the night. After a week or so, you should have a pretty solid baseline of where your sleep is at. Continue taking notes as you make adjustments to your routine, and see what works for you. With a little bit of determination, you should be on your way to restful sleep, and all the benefits that come with it!

Sources:

John Woodruff https://Johnpwoodruff.com