Hustle and bustle of our everyday lives often make us compromise our priorities. It doesn’t matter whether your focus lies in pursuing a career, studying for your exams, or being a mother that tends for her children 24/7. The probability is high that you are compromising sleep in order to successfully tend to other tasks. That being said though, out of all things out there, your sleep routine is the one that you should avoid neglecting. First of all, insufficient sleep can only negatively impact your overall performance. Secondly, there are a plethora of negative side effects that can arise due to the lack of sleep – both mentally and physically.
Sure, all of us are, at least to some degree, guilty of not sleeping enough from time to time. But, for those that do invest in a healthy sleep routine, there are a lot of benefits that are worth investing in. That being said, if you want to start working on making your sleep routine better and healthier, this article is a good place to start. Here, you will find more about the most prominent benefits that you can expect if you sleep well.
Your overall health heavily depends on how much you sleep
The first and the most obvious benefit of a healthy sleep routine lies in your overall health. More specifically, the amount of sleep that you get on a daily basis will impact the readiness of your body to fight off certain health issues. So, the next time that you think – what time should I wake up, make sure that you get that recommended amount of sleep. This is especially important considering that we’re currently in a pandemic! So, what benefits regarding your overall health can you expect?
First of all, you can ensure that your body fights off viruses and infections more effectively. Not enough sleep can, on the other hand, make you more susceptible to a variety of conditions. The most prominent ones are diabetes, high blood pressure, and even heart diseases. Another important factor to have in mind is that lack of sleep heavily affects how efficiently your NK cells fight off tumor tissue. So, if having enough sleep means that you can heavily decrease the susceptibility to all these issues – make sure that you sleep enough!
Fighting with depression? A healthy sleep routine can help!
As mentioned in the beginning, your sleep routine heavily affects your mental health as well as physical. This is all that is more emphasized for those that are already suffering from depression.
Getting a good night’s sleep is beneficial for all of us in many ways, but people who suffer from depression may experience an even greater benefit. Studies have shown that, with proper CBT therapy, sleep routine in people with depression can be better. In the same study, higher quality of sleep resulted in lower symptoms of depression. Since depression already causes issues with the quality of sleep, it is all that more important that those that suffer from it seek help for better sleep.
Sleeping well can reduce the impact of anxiety
Anxiety disorders affect an alarming amount of people worldwide nowadays. Since such disorders heavily affect the quality of sleep, many aspects of health are further compromised. Ultimately, even paradoxically so, sleep deprivation due to anxiety can further trigger even higher symptoms of anxiety. That being said though, as with depression, CBT therapy can help you get your sleep routine on track, which can alleviate the impact of anxiety. Other activities can also help, such as yoga. All that said – investing in working on bettering your sleep will result in better management of anxiety!
Lack of sleep is connected with being overweight
Did you notice that when you sleep less, you start gaining weight – even though you may even eat less? Well, you aren’t imagining things, it is indeed proven that there is a link between being overweight and not getting enough sleep. This is especially true for those that are chronically sleep-deprived. And for those that try to compensate for lack of sleep by sleeping in when the work days are over – studies show that this doesn’t really help. So, if you want to avoid the risk of being overweight due to the lack of sleep, make sure that you tend to your sleep routine every day of the week.
Helps With Inflammation
Did you know that chronic inflammation is way more likely to be developed by those with poor sleep routines? Chronic inflammation further has an impact on the risk of several serious conditions, the most prominent being cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Another familiar aspect of inflammation is a wide variety of skin conditions. So, if you want to ensure that you lower the possibility of all that, make sure that you sleep more.
It will heavily improve your overall performance!
Remember the mention of losing sleep in order to focus on other activities? Well, it turns out that this strategy can only harm your overall performance. In fact, if you don’t sleep enough, the probability is high that you will be less capable of completing any high-functioning tasks. This is why driving while sleep-deprived oftentimes can lead to being in a car accident. On the other hand, getting enough sleep is going to boost your efficiency exponentially. You’ll be able to respond quickly, be more motivated and productive, and you’ll have more emotional capacity.
A healthy sleep routine improves memory and learning
Not only can getting enough sleep improve your overall performance, but it can also boost memory and learning. More specifically, sleep heavily impacts your problem-solving abilities, mood, and overall memory. This ultimately leads to the fact that you learn more quickly, but also to enhance how you retain information that you already have. So, if you have a test coming up, instead of pulling an all-nighter – have some good rest.
Ultimately, our physical and mental health is the foundation of everything else that we do in life. So, no matter where your aspirations lie, it is important that you focus your effort on being and staying healthy first. As you were able to see in this article, there is no better and easier way to do so than tending to your sleep routine.
It is indeed true that life makes it hard for all of us to have time for proper rest at times. That being said though, with proper vigilance and planning, you can definitely ensure that you get enough sleep. In the end, it will only help you if you do so, both long term and short term as well.