5 Reasons Why Sleep Is Essential to a Healthy Life

We feel as though sleep is often overlooked when it comes to self-care. We want you all to realise how important sleep is to a happy and healthy life. Getting a good night’s sleep is so essential to your self-care routine. Your body needs rest and it needs time to recharge its batteries. In this blog post, you’ll find five reasons why sleep is so important to a healthy life.

1. Good Sleep Can Improve Productivity and Concentration

Sleep is absolutely paramount for numerous areas of brain function. These areas are inclusive of: concentration, performance, productivity and cognition. Sleep deprivation can negatively impact these functions, causing you to become unproductive and experience an inability to concentrate. In fact, a study previously found that sleep deprivation can impair certain areas of brain function in a similar way to alcohol intoxication – which definitely doesn’t sound too good to me…

Good sleep, however, has been proved to enhance memory performance and problem-solving skills in both children and adults.

2. Inadequate Sleep Has Been Linked to Depression

People with sleeping disorders such as obstructive sleep apnoea and insomnia have reported significantly higher rates of depression than those who get sufficient rest. 90% of people with depression state that their quality of sleep is very poor, which has even been linked with an increased risk of suicide.

This is why it is so important to try to get into a routine of having adequate sleep at night time. Get into bed at a reasonable hour, read a book if you don’t feel very tired and then try your best to fall asleep. Make sure there’s an alarm set for the morning so you’re not oversleeping and try to do this until it becomes a happier and healthier routine. It might be difficult at first, but we are always rooting for you and we want what’s best for you.

3. Sleep Impacts Social Interactions and Emotions

Many researchers believe that inadequate sleep negatively impacts your ability to process emotional information and to pick up on social cues in certain situations. This belief has been proven several times. For example, one study discovered that people who had poor quality sleep experienced a reduced ability to recognise other people’s expressions of happiness and anger. It is therefore clear that sleep loss can reduce your ability to interact socially – and we certainly do not want that; positive social interactions are key to leading a happy and fulfilled life.

4. Sleep Enhances Your Immune Function

In a previous study, it was shown that people who had less than seven hours sleep were almost three times more likely to develop symptoms of a cold than people who had an good night’s sleep, i.e. 8 hours or more. Even a small loss of sleep has been proven to negatively impact immune function. If you find that you are suffering with colds quite frequently, try to ensure that you are getting at least eight hours of sleep each night. Your body needs adequate rest, so this will be extremely beneficial in helping to boost your immune function.

5. Poor Sleep Is Linked to Inflammation in the Body

Professionals suggest that sleep deprivation activates unwanted markers of cell damage and inflammation in the body. Poor sleep quality has been increasingly linked to numerous inflammatory bowel diseases. One study even discovered that sleep-deprived people that suffer with Crohn’s disease were twice as likely to relapse as those that got a sufficient amount of sleep each night.

We hope this blog post has shown you just how important getting a good night’s sleep is. We all need time to rest. Stay tuned for a new blog post on the items you’ll find in your August Lemonade Box and make sure you're getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night!

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you again very soon with our August Lemonade Box post!