Sleep Health - How Important Is It, Really?

Those looking to make a significant health impact, or those who have already undertaken a health makeover, but still lack complete vitality, should consider the impact that sleep habits make on your body’s system.

The amount and quality of sleep that you get has a great impact on your health. To understand exactly what sleep does for you, think about this. All the changes, repairs and upgrades you think you make to your body during the day actually occur almost exclusively at night. At night, your brain is dedicated to managing all those little things needed to keep your body healthy. Your muscle tissue is rebuilt and growth hormones are distributed. And it really is “beauty sleep,” as it freshens your skin, sheds dead cells, and grows your hair and nails. And you though you were resting!

Your brain is not “shut down” during sleep- exactly the opposite. We can make the comparison to your computer’s “suspend” mode- your firewall is still up, and your virus scan is still going.


However, psychological functions are at work while you sleep, too. You know that you’re not exactly thinking about nothing while sleeping, your dreams evidence that. So what is the mental health piece to this sleep business?

Many neurologists and psychologists see dreaming activity as your brain at work, either categorising or processing new information, or possible cleaning out old information, if not both. And we all know that sleep, or lack of it, has a huge impact on mood and cognitive function.

So you can imagine what happens when you’re brain lacks that downtime needed to do all the housecleaning…. Not only are you grouchy, and probably dealing dull skin and weakened musculature, but you may also be permanently negatively affecting your health.

Here are some possible health impacts that result from lack of sleep:

Obesity: In 2005 Columbia University found that those people who sleep the least are the most likely to be overweight or obese. Further studies are in the works.

Blood Sugar: Sleep deprived people have erratic blood sugar levels, causing a higher risk of diabetes development.

Heart Disease, Stroke, Heart Attacks: Since lack of sleep send the message to your brain that something is wrong, your systems are then put on “high alert.” This high alert leads to an increase in production of stress hormones and other issues, which in turn can be detrimental to your circulatory health.

Hypertension: In accordance with the above, those who lack sleep have a higher resting blood pressure.

One caveat in regard to sleep health: in the late 1990s, several international studies seemed to find a connection between people who worked at night and a higher risk of colon and breast cancer. However, it was later discovered that this connection was due to lack of sunlight and melatonin production, and not lack of sleep.

And of course, there are the interaction dangers that come from lack of sleep. Many motor vehicle accidents can trace their cause to this particular issue. Reaction time can almost double when the brain is working on less than 7 hours of sleep.

Health fanatic should never take their rest time lightly. Deep, refreshing sleep is absolutely essential to an over all health plan and should be given top priority.

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