Sleep is good for you. At this point, the research is pretty clear: sleep is crucial for good health.
- It supports memory and mood,
- helps keep you trim,
- sleep strengthens your immune system and fights inflammation,
- it also helps to keep your heart and blood vessels in tip-top shape,
- the body repairs damaged tissue during sleep time,
- produces crucial hormones,
- strengthens memories and processes called consolidation.
Research suggests that a lack of sleep could be contributing to problems like diabetes and weight gain, both serious health dangers. Some studies have linked shorter sleep to a greater likelihood of obesity. It is known that sleep deprivation reduces sensitivity to insulin, (the key blood-sugar-regulating hormone) thus making it harder metabolize blood sugar properly. Research found that short sleep also boosts levels of hormones that make you hungry, while reducing secretion of the hormones that help you feel full. It therefore makes sense that being starved for sleep could lead to weight gain even if only for the fact that being awake longer will give you more time to eat.
"When you're sleeping you're regulating hormone levels, you're regulating insulin levels, your blood pressure is being kept under control, there are a lot of things going on, and if you're not getting enough sleep you're throwing these things out of whack," says Shelby Freedman Harris, PsyD, director of behavioural sleep medicine at Montefiore Medical Centres Sleep-Wake Disorders Centre in New York City.
How to get better sleep
- Go to bed around the same time every night.
- "Exercise is great for sleep, especially falling asleep," Harris says. “You'll get the most benefit by working out five to six hours for bedtime. A hot shower or bath about an hour and a half before bedtime can also be helpful.
- Virend K. Somers, MD, a professor of medicine and cardiovascular diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who studies sleep and heart health says people are “spending more time being connected to technology than sleeping. Texting friends, playing computer games, or just watching TV stimulates our brains and bodies at a time when we should be winding down, and the extra light we expose ourselves to when we peer at a screen could be throwing off our body clocks.” He continues to say, “this is because when it gets dark, our bodies release a hormone called melatonin that helps make us sleepy, and pre-bedtime bright light exposure especially exposure to the blue light emitted by screens large and small weakens melatonin release.”
