Why is sleep Important?
Sleep plays a vital role in your health and well-being. Getting enough sleep for your body helps protect your mental and physical health, along with your quality of life. During sleep our body is working to help support brain function, while affecting your productivity level and reaction time. While we sleep, our brain is firing new pathways to help us remember and learn information. Sleep also helps to enhance our problem solving skills, including paying attention, making decisions and being creative.
Did you know, the part of the brain signalling urination should shut off during deep sleep? If you find yourself often rising during the night, this means you are not sleeping well. When you miss out on deep sleep, your body and brain are deprived of essential repair time. Sleep deficiency may raise the risk of chronic health concerns, such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Our sympathetic nervous (fight-or-flight) system is in relaxed mode during sleep, but if you are sleep deficient its activity can increase. This may lead to such conditions as higher blood pressure.
While sleep deficiency may contribute to more serious mental health concerns, it can also be linked to decision making, controlling your emotions, behaviour and coping with change. Lack of sleep often lowers mood, increases anxiety and contributes to brain fog.
Your immune system is supported by an optimal sleep cycle too. An excellent night’s sleep may enable your body to fight common infections. During sleep the immune system releases cytokines, and these help your body fight inflammation, injuries, infection and trauma.
Hormones and Sleep
Do you ever feel a “second wind” giving you a boost in the evening? The hormone cortisol is responsible for that common feeling. It is a natural spike to give you more energy. Working with your glands, cortisol is responsible for helping to regulate your fluctuations of energy. We all have a natural cortisol curve, and at night it goes down while melatonin rises to help us feel sleepy. However in the late evening, cortisol can spike, usually around 11 pm. And when this happens, we get a small surge of energy, often keeping us up past our optimal sleep stage, pushing us into a wired and tired phase. This is why aiming to go to bed by 10:30 pm can make a big difference in your body’s ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. When cortisol is high at night it suppresses the release of growth hormone, which is important for daily tissue repair and growth. This then affects how quickly our bodies age.
A healthy sleep cycle supports growth and development. Slow wave sleep, referred to as non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM stage 3) affects hormones and their release. Melatonin is released by the pineal glands during sleep. While in NREM, the pituitary glands release growth hormone, helping the body grow and repair.
Here are seven great tips to incorporate into your sleep routine, even trying two or three out of the seven can benefit your sleep.
7 Tips for Better Sleep
- Watch your vitamin intake. Your vitamin B complex and vitamin C can be gently energizing, so intake is recommended before 2 pm.
- Avoid or limit caffeine and stimulants like coffee and alcohol late in the afternoon. Having these late in the day can set you up for a disturbed sleep pattern.
- Try to avoid late evening or high intensity night time workouts. Instead try yin or restorative yoga, walking, or a low impact workout to help calm rather than stimulate your body before bed. Try a calming tea like chamomile or a lavender epsom salt bath to relax your body for the night.
- Aim to have your evening meal at least by 7 pm. This way your body has enough time to rest and digest as it winds down for the night. This will help promote optimal cell repair during sleep.
- Eliminate blue light from screen time at least half an hour before bed. Blue light can act as a stimulant and reduces the release of melatonin. Try reading a book you enjoy instead, this can help lower our stress hormones and promote gentle transition into sleep.
- Journaling before bed can also have amazing mental and spiritual health benefits. Unloading thoughts and experiences helps let your day flow out, clearing the mind of external stressors. Try focusing on gratitude and a positive experience that took place during the day, even the smallest event is a victory!
- Aim to be sleeping by 10:30 pm. As mentioned before, catching our body’s natural signals for sleep is key to falling asleep easier and staying asleep longer.
The mentality of “work, work, work, you can sleep when you’re dead” has been officially debunked. Your body needs this valuable time to repair and regenerate! Stopping long enough for an intuitive check in and genuinely listening to your body at night time can make the difference between a broken night’s sleep and restorative rest. Your energy and productivity the next day will be up, and from the inside to the outside your body will be set for success.
I had the privilege of diving into all of this amazing information and putting this post together with my friend Ashika. If you have any questions or would like to work closely one on one to get individualized support with personal development and productivity, sleep and mental wellness please contact Ashika Lessani, RHN, Personal Development Coach or myself and we would be happy to help! Click here to check out Ashika’s website or tap Book Now in my menu to chat. We would love to hear from you!
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (1)
Nhibi.nih.gov (2)
https://www.health.qld.gov.au/news-events/news/7-amazing-things-that-happen-to-your-body-while-you-sleep
http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/science/what/sleep-patterns-rem-nrem
