The Health Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep

What difference could an extra hour of sleep make in your life?

  • Sleep health is becoming an important issue in our increasingly fast paced lives.
  • An excellent article from WebMD discusses 9 Surprising Reasons to Get More Sleep, and goes on to point out significant areas of our life effected by poor sleep health.
  • Studies show that the gap between getting just enough sleep and getting too little sleep may affect your health, your mood, your weight, and even your sex life.
  • Health - Getting a good night's sleep won't grant you immunity from disease. But study after study has found a link between insufficient sleep and some serious health problems, such as heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes, and obesity.
  • Clearer Thinking - "Sleep loss affects how you think," Mindell tells WebMD. "It impairs your cognition, your attention, and your decision-making." Studies have found that people who are sleep-deprived are substantially worse at solving logic or math problems than when they're well-rested.
  • Better Mood - "Not getting enough sleep affects your emotional regulation," says Mindell. "When you're overtired, you're more likely to snap at your boss, or burst into tears, or start laughing uncontrollably."
  • Weight Control - Sleep loss goes along with an increased risk of weight gain. The hormone leptin plays a key role in making you feel full. When you don't get enough sleep, leptin levels drop. Result: people who are tired are just plain hungrier, and they seem to crave high-fat and high-calorie foods specifically.

A Good Night’s Sleep is the Secret to Success

Research suggests our brains depend on a nightly bath to keep them functioning at their best.

The cognitive skills we depend on in our professional lives are affected when we fail to get good sleep. Our abilities to focus and concentrate, reason, remember and make good judgment calls all suffer.

  • Productivity - Getting some shuteye can benefit your productivity and overall health. US News Health cites this interesting study. "Evidence from University of California–San Diego researchers suggests sleep times are directly linked to earnings.
  • Earnings Increase - Their findings, currently under review, found that sleeping one extra hour each night increased average earnings by 16 percent. For their average study participant, this meant an extra $6,000 per year."
  • Sleep and Your Mind - The cognitive skills we depend on in our professional lives are affected when we fail to get good sleep. Our abilities to focus and concentrate, reason, remember and make good judgment calls all suffer.
  • The Glymphatic System - “It’s been coined the glymphatic system,” says A. Thomas Perkins, a sleep expert and director of the Sleep Medicine Program at Raleigh Neurology in Raleigh, North Carolina. “This system sort of flushes the brain of all metabolic waste, and it does this every night, getting in between the cells and neurons, purging the brain of the metabolic byproducts of the day.”
  • Nightly Flush - Perkins explains that not getting enough sleep or not sleeping deeply enough hinders your brain’s ability to perform this nightly flush, possibly leading to the cognitive effects you experience the next day.