We all know sleep is important and we all know we’re not getting enough sleep, but exactly how much sleep do we need and why exactly is it so important to our health and well-being? Read below to find out more.
Sleep Helps You Learn
Yup, you’re reading that right. No, sleeping with a book under your pillow won’t help you ace your math quiz, sorry. That said, Researchers have found that your brain is actually very busy when you sleep and can evil help you reinforce what you learned while awake. This phenomenon is called consolidation. Ever worked really hard a few days before a test, wake up the next day, ace t and get on with your life? Well, that’s consolidation in action. You studied hard and then you consolidated what you knew while you slept. We still don’t fully understand how this works, but it happens and it can only happen if you’re getting enough sleep.
Sleep Protects Your Heart
A big part of sleep is that it gives your muscles and blood vessels time to repair. Without enough sleep, you increase your odds of coming down with heart disease. I don’t think we really need to go into why heart disease is so bad, but suffice to say that it is the leading killer of people in the western world well ahead of cigarette-related illnesses and shark attacks.
Make sure you’re getting enough sleep and your heart will thank you for it by pulling through the hard times.
Sleep Makes You A Winner
Yup, you read that correctly. If you are getting enough sleep then you will perform better than people who aren’t getting enough sleep. This is very important for those who are musicians, athletes and other high-performers who need to eek out every bit of themselves that they can to be successful.
Sleep Makes You More Creative
Sleeping enough makes you creative. It should not come as a surprise that a relaxed brain is a brain that is at its most creative. Sleeping allows your brain and body to relax which can put you in a creative mood.
Sleep Can Help You Lose Weight
This one is very interesting. Sleep can help you lose the right kind of weight. When most people want to lose weight, they usually try to lose fat, but many times they end up shedding muscle as well. The irony is that muscle helps burn fat and keep it off. What does sleep have to do with this? Scientists have done studies and those who slept enough and exercised properly burned more fat, while those who didn’t sleep enough and still exercised ended up losing the equivalent weight in muscle!
Sleep Can Combat Depression
This one was also a shock for us, but it turns out that a lack of sleep can cause depression and irritability and that the cure is, you guessed it, more sleep.
Sleep Can Affect Your IQ
No, before you try to convince your family that you should be able to sleep in every day, we must say that this one automatically increase your IQ, but scientists have learned that IQ tests administered to sleep deprived people tend to come out worse than the IQ tests given to people who have had enough time to sleep.
So, have we been able to convince you to get enough sleep? Remember, people who don’t sleep are probably making themselves depressed, lowering their IQ, damaging their creativity and even their heart. Sleep truly is the foundation of a good life.
If you’re looking for a way to help you relax and get the sleep you need you should check out our article on stress relief methods.
