Getting a good night’s sleep is critical when it comes to having better health. Actually, its importance is right up there with exercising and eating healthy. The sad thing is that there’s so much in our daily lives that can interfere with our natural patterns of sleep. We absolutely must do what we can to get the sleep we need and here’s a look at a few reasons why.
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Weight
If you have trouble sleeping and then getting up feeling energized and are looking for a natural sleep aid, ashwagandha might be a good option…especially if you’re trying to keep a handle on your weight. Of course, you want to speak to your physician before you start taking it just to ensure it won’t interfere with other medications you may be taking.
People who have a short duration of sleep can weigh much more than those who get enough sleep. That means that if you want to lose weight, getting enough good quality sleep is critical.
Productivity and Concentration
Sleep isn’t just great for those who want to improve their health, it’s also something that a few aspects of brain function depend on. That includes things like performance, productivity, concentration, and cognition. Each of these things can be negatively impacted by getting poor sleep or not enough sleep.
Alternatively, good sleep can help with things like enhancing memory and improving problem-solving skills.
Stroke and Heart Disease
Sleep duration and quality can each have a massive effect on quite a few factors for our health. A lot of these factors are believed to be the ones that drive chronic conditions, including heart disease. People who tend to not sleep enough are more prone to things like stroke and heart disease than those who do get enough sleep. It’s recommended that we each get between 7 and 8 hours of sleep each night.
Diabetes and Glucose Metabolism
Did you know that there have been studies that show when sleep is restricted, it can have adverse effects on your blood sugar? It can also reduce the sensitivity of the body to insulin. In this study, young men restricted their sleep to only four hours each night and did this for six consecutive nights. After this, they showed signs of prediabetes! That said, those symptoms vanished after the young men increased the amount of sleep they got.
Athletic Performance
When it comes to athletic performance, if this is something that’s important to you, get enough sleep. The amount of sleep you get can have an effect on things like your mental well-being, reaction times, accuracy, and even speed.
Not getting enough of it can also lead to poor exercise performance and even a limitation of function. However, the more sleep you get, the more you can improve many aspects of your physical and athletic performance.
Mood
We’ve talked a lot about the physical benefits of getting good sleep, but what about the mental ones? Sleeping disorders and poor quality of sleep are both linked to a variety of issues with mental health, such as depression.
Just think about how many people you personally know who struggle with depression and talk about how they don’t sleep well or have trouble sleeping. People who suffer from sleep disorders like sleep apnea or even insomnia have also been known to report being depressed more than those who don’t suffer from these issues.
Hit the Sack!
Along with things like exercise and nutrition, sleep happens to be one of the building blocks of good health. It just isn’t possible for you to achieve your best possible health if you neglect to take care of your sleep first. Sleeping more isn’t being lazy, it’s being smart.