Benefits of Sleep
7 Health Benefits of Sleep
“Sleep is the best meditation” Dalai Lama
1- HEART HEALTH: 7-9 hours of sleep nightly is known to reduce risk of heart disease and stroke. Lack of sleep worsens blood pressure and cholesterol, so nourish your heart and take some good long naps these days.
2- LOWERS RISK OF CANCER: Those working the night shift have higher risk of breast and colon cancer. Researchers have recognized that the varying levels of melatonin produced in those exposed to light at night contributed to this. They noted that exposure to light reduces levels of melatonin in the body, a hormone that makes us sleepy and protects against cancer. Melitonin also appears to suppress tumor growth, so a dark bedroom contributes to producing the melatonin necessary to have a good long sleep
3- SLEEP & STRESS: The body will naturally respond to sleep deprivation with physiological stress. It goes into high alert which increases our risk for heart attacks and strokes.
4- SLEEP & INFLAMMATION: Increased stress hormones raise our levels of inflammation and can contribute to cancer and diabetes. It is also thought to causes major deterioration of the body through the aging process
5- NAPPING & BRAIN FUNCTION- studies have shown that napping improves memory, cognitive function and overall mood. Although the exact mechanism is not known, learning and memory can be described in terms of three functions:
Acquisition- refers to the introduction of new information into the brain
Consolidation- represents the processes where the memory becomes stable
Recall- ability to access the information, both consciously and unconsciously after the memory has been stored.
Fascinatingly, acquisition and recall occur during wakefulness and according to research, memory consolidation takes place during sleep helping to strengthen all of the neural connections that form our memories.
6- SLEEP & WEIGHT LOSS: Lack of sleep increases the stimulus to consume more food and increases appetite regulating hormones, which can contribute to overall obesity and weight gain
7- BEAUTY REST- lack of sleep ages the skin and chronic sleep loss can lead to lackluster skin, fine lines and dark circles under the eyes. According to sleep expert Phil Gehrman PhD. “It’s during deep sleep- what we call slow-wave sleep- that growth hormone is released, it seems to be part of normal tissue repair, patching the wear and tear of the day”
Just a quick line to make you smile…in the words of Ernest Hemingway:
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”
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