Getting a good night’s sleep has often been considered an important pillar in a healthy lifestyle.
For a long time, there wasn’t any specific scientific evidence that supported any of the believed benefits of sleeping well. Lately, more rigorous studies have been done to understand exactly what it is that sleep does for your body. This article will give you six reasons why you should never skip sleep.
Sleep Boosts Your Immune System
If you are constantly finding yourself under the weather or very susceptible to colds, there is a chance this is due to your sleep habits. These viruses thrive in bodies that are under stress and having inadequate sleep can play a big part in your body’s health. You have to get a full night’s sleep to be able to fend off illnesses effectively. If you are unsure how long you should be sleeping, you can follow this link to find out what you need. As you are sleeping your body repairs itself and it is not able to do this if you skip a night’s sleep. The way sleep boosts your immune system is one of the main reasons you should never skip sleep.
Sleep Can Help You Lose Weight
In the past, the science behind weight loss and its link to healthy sleep has been a bit unclear. People mistook what studies were saying and assumed that it was the sleep itself that made you lose or gain weight. What is now believed to be true, is that sleep affects the production of two different hormones that relate to hunger and the feeling of being full. If you are sleep-deprived, the chemical leptin is produced less in your body, and leptin is what makes you feel full. At the same time, when sleep-deprived, your body produces more ghrelin, which is the chemical that makes you feel hungry. This double action means that if you are sleep-deprived you are likely to overeat and then put on weight. So, it may not be completely true to say that getting a good night’s sleep helps you lose weight, but it can certainly help you not gain weight.
Sleep Improves Your Mental Health
The links between mental health and sleep have been known for some time. Recent studies showed that people who suffered from anxiety or depression were usually sleeping less than six hours a night. Although this might seem like a small difference to the average recommended eight hours a night but over time, those hours add up. In simple terms, most people don’t feel great when they wake up from a bad night’s sleep. If you compound those feelings over months or years then it can have a serious impact on your mental wellbeing. If you are already suffering from a mental health issue it may be difficult to just sleep more. However, making sure you don’t skip sleep should help you not get any worse, or stop mental health problems from occurring.
Sleep Can Prevent Diabetes
This might be hard to believe, but there is a significant connection between sleep deprivation and diabetes. If you only sleep for 5 hours a night, or less, your body actually changes the way it processes glucose. This change in process can lead to type 2 diabetes, especially if you continue to deprive your body of sleep. Studies into the link between sleep and diabetes are relatively new but the evidence shows a strong connection. Changes in sleep affect the way your body behaves and one of the side effects of this is potentially type 2 diabetes. Reducing your risk of developing this disease is a really good reason to never skip sleep.
Sleep Increases Your Sex Drive
You might be thinking this is related to the old cliche of being ‘too tired’ to contemplate sexual intercourse. The reality is that the quality of the sleep you have has an effect on your libido in general, not just when you are tired at the end of the day. Studies have shown that men who suffer from sleep apnoea produce less testosterone. Sleep apnoea is a disorder that affects breathing and generally leads to heavily disrupted sleep patterns. Improving your quality of sleep and making sure you get enough sleep every night, might just help you get busy.
Sleep Can Improve Your Fertility
Speaking of getting busy, getting a good night’s sleep can also help in conception. Trying to have a child can be a stressful process which could lead you to have a less good sleep. This cycle can be hard to break but by taking some of the pressure off you might make the process easier for yourself. Sleep deprivation has been claimed as one of the causes of difficulty conceiving. This happens due to the lower production of reproductive hormones that allows conception to happen. Melatonin and testosterone both play a part in reproduction, whether it’s healthy eggs or sperm creation. If you are in the process of trying to have children, make sure you never miss a night’s sleep.
Rest Yourself Well
Sleep is such a crucial component of a healthy lifestyle. Only recently have scientists come to realize just how important it is. With one in three people suffering from lack of sleep, it is more important than ever to address poor sleep habits and make sure that you never skip a night’s sleep. The six main reasons why you should always get a decent rest are; to boost your immune system, to lose or not gain weight, to improve your mental health, to prevent diabetes, to increase your sex drive, and to make conceiving a child easier. You might be suffering from any of these things and not realize that actually, your sleep habits are to blame. It can be hard to believe that getting an hour or two less than you are supposed to each night would really make a difference. Over time, these ‘sleep debts’ add up and can have serious consequences. Make sure that you never skip a night’s sleep to keep your body as happy and as healthy as possible.
