A good night of sleep always makes you feel amazing, but did you know that sleep has even more effects than just having energy?
Sleep helps to:
- Strengthen the immune system
- Sharpen your ability to focus
- Provide mental clarity and strong decision making
- Reduce stress levels
- Help maintain healthy weight
- Increase your positive outlook and mood
When we sleep, our brains and bodies go through important processes necessary for growth, learning and memory, and recuperation of our body systems. Without sleep our bodies cannot effectively make more white blood cells, create neurons, repair muscle, produce antioxidants, or generate nerve pathways, making sleep as important for survival as food and water.
Poor sleep (especially chronic poor sleep!) triggers a cascade of negative consequences – from insulin resistance to heart disease to difficulty concentrating to anxiety (and more).
But as important as sleep is for our physical bodies, it is even more important for our brains. Having enough quality sleep is essential for our brains to function correctly and for us to feel emotionally stable.
Think about a toddler who needs a nap. Let’s visualize it.
They are whining, cranky, and every little mishap sends them into a downward spiral.
They trip and the tears start flowing.
The banana breaks in half and they start crying harder.
A sibling looks at them and they just lose it completely.
Their brains truly cannot function properly at this point. They don’t have access to the prefrontal cortex where logical thinking occurs because they are tired.
This exact same thing happens to us adults, especially in the presence of chronic poor sleep.