The Role of Sleep in Your Overall Wellness
How much sleep are you getting?
Many people, especially in our production-driven society, simply aren’t getting the amount of sleep that they need, which may be causing more issues than they know about.
Whether it’s because you start your workday early and work late into the evening, or you’re trying to fulfill all of your responsibilities to friends and family members, most of us simply aren’t getting enough sleep.
While it’s easy to assume that insufficient sleep doesn’t do anything but increase your need for caffeine, that’s not the case at all. Sleep is every bit as important to your overall health and wellness as diet and exercise.
Understanding the importance of sleep is crucial to those who are trying to become a better, healthier version of themselves.
Today, learn more about the science of sleep, how sleep impacts wellness, and pick up some tips for how you can improve your sleep quality, and in turn, improve your health.
The Science Behind Sleep
Before we delve into why sleep is important and how to improve your sleep quality, we need to understand what’s really happening when you’re sleeping. When you go to sleep, your mind and body go through cycles.
On average, these cycles last for around 90 minutes, and experts encourage people to try to get their bodies through five to seven cycles each night.
The first three stages of sleep all take place during a period called NREM, which stands for non-rapid eye movement.
Stage one is perhaps the easiest level of sleep to achieve, as that’s where you’re at in the cycle when you’re just starting to doze off. Not yet fully asleep, your body is slowly winding down, and you may be able to hear what’s going on around you, even if you’re not completely attuned to it.
During stage two, your heart rate slows down and your body temperature decreases. Brain activity also slows during stage two, but there are still some random bursts of brain activity known as brain spindles. This is your brain’s way of prepping your body for sleep.
During stage three, which is also known as slow-wave sleep, your body starts healing itself. Tissue and muscle are healed, your immune system begins to regroup from the bacteria that it fought off the day before, and your bone density improves.
Finally, stage four sees the brain go from NREM to REM sleep, which is the deepest point of the sleep cycle. It is during REM sleep that you begin to dream.
Additionally, the brain relies on this sleep cycle to improve mental health by working through some of the emotional and mental stress that you’ve dealt with during the previous day. At the end of stage four, your body goes back into the first stage.
Ultimately, the more cycles that your body goes through, the better you feel when morning comes. If you ever wake up feeling like you’ve barely slept, it’s probably because you didn’t complete enough four-step sleep cycles the night before.
How Does Sleep Impact My Health?
Now that you know what goes on in your mind and body while you’re sleeping, let’s take a deeper dive into how your sleep impacts your health. Sleep means just as much to your body as the food you eat and the exercise that you get, even though the way that it impacts your health is a bit different.
Let’s start with how sleep impacts your physical health. While you're sleeping, your body produces cytokines, which help your body fight off inflammation and infection.
These proteins are crucial for the health of your white blood cells, which are the most important part of your immune system. This is why you’re more prone to picking up minor infections like the common cold when you’ve gone several nights in a row without sufficient sleep.
Your sleep also impacts your cardiovascular health. According to numerous studies, poor sleep leads to an increased risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease.
As we already established, your heart rate decreases when you’re asleep, which also leads to a decrease in your blood pressure. This gives your cardiovascular system time to rest and renew itself.
Finally, sleep is directly linked to your metabolism, which is the most important part of weight management. Poor sleep disrupts the balance of several hormones in your body, including those that regulate hunger. This leads to an increased appetite. This means that poor sleep has the potential to lead to weight gain and all of the physical problems that excess weight gain causes.
Additionally, sleep impacts your mental and emotional health. When it comes to cognitive function, sleep is one of the most important parts of the equation. This is why people who don’t get enough quality sleep struggle to pay attention at work or school.
During a routine sleep cycle, your brain gets to take a break from all of the things that it had to process the day before.
Sleep also gives your brain an opportunity to consolidate information that you acquired during the day, moving it from the part that stores short-term memories to the part that’s responsible for long-term memories. Sleep deprivation keeps those pieces of information with short-term memories, and then the information that you acquire the next day has to compete for space.
Quality sleep is also a pivotal part of regulating your emotions. The concept of being tired and cranky isn’t just a cliché. When you don’t get enough sleep and your brain and body can’t recover like you need them to, it’s harder to control your emotions which leads to severe mood swings and general irritability.
These aspects of sleep’s role in your overall health make it easy to see how important sleep is for your social well-being. Sleep is one of the most effective stress relievers, which means getting inadequate sleep makes it harder for you to manage stress.
While you may not be able to control how you react to others when you’re not getting enough sleep, it’s safe to assume that relationships are going to suffer if others don’t know what type of mood you’re going to be in from one interaction to the next.
How to Improve Sleep Quality
Now that you know what your mind and body do while you’re asleep and how sleep impacts every part of your overall health and wellness, it’s important to understand how to improve your sleep quality.
One of the most important steps you can take if you want to get better sleep is to develop a consistent sleep pattern.
This means going to bed around the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning, even on days when you could sleep in. It also means that you do your nightly routine around the same time, as this helps your brain recognize that it’s time to get ready for sleep.
It's also important to consider what you eat and drink in the hours before you go to bed. While many people think of a glass of wine as a good option when it comes to “winding down,” some studies indicate that alcohol before bedtime can be just as detrimental as drinking caffeine.
Additionally, if you need a late-night snack, try to avoid sweet, sugary snacks that can interfere with your sleep quality.
Creating an environment that’s conducive to sleeping helps you get to sleep and stay asleep. If you need a cool space to sleep in, make sure that your bedroom is cool.
Also, it’s a good idea to invest in a comfortable mattress and quality pillows. If you live in an area where noise often disrupts your sleep, consider investing in earplugs, headphones, or a white noise machine to help you sleep uninterrupted.
Finally, getting regular exercise during the day is a great way to get deeper, quality sleep. Since so much of your sleep cycle involves the body healing itself, getting regular workouts, even if it’s something as simple as a walk around your neighborhood, can help facilitate the need for deep, healing sleep.
Go Get Some Rest!
If you’ve been guilty of putting off sleep because you need to get a few more things done, it’s time to rethink how you’re treating your mind and body. Sleep is crucial to your overall health.
Stop thinking that you don’t have time to sleep, and realize that you don’t have time to neglect your sleep. Your mind, body, and the people around you will thank you.