The Benefits of Sleep and How to Sleep Better

At the end of a long day we all eventually go back to the place where all of our days started: the bed. From the bed we begin our day and back on the bed we end it; getting a good nights sleep before waking up the following morning to begin a new day in our lives. We sleep so often and so regularly that we sometimes take it for granted. Whenever we go without sleep we often feel tired at best and half dead at worst. Sometimes we get a lot more of it if we can get away with it. Whether we’re sleeping during the night or taking a brief nap in the afternoon we all love our sleep.

Here we’re going to explore the benefits of sleep and how to improve our slumber. As we will learn the impact that sleeping has on our physical and mental health cannot be overstated. We need sleep and plenty of it especially if we are going to be very physically active. The more we work during the day the more important  sleep will be for us to recover.

The Benefits of a Good Sleep

There are many benefits to getting enough sleep each day. These benefits inlude:

• Muscle Recovery
• Weight Loss
• A Healthy Immune System
• Improved Mood
• Mental Clarity

Muscle Recovery

As it so happens sleeping is important for muscle recovery. Part of the process of training is getting  plenty of rest so your body can recover post-workout. Your body needs time to recover in order to repair the muscle tissue that is often damaged during workouts. The way that sleeping helps is by producing human growth hormone or HGH while you sleep. HGH is what your body uses to promote muscle growth. In addition to producing HGH your body will also use dietary proteins that you consumed through out the day to help repair muscle tissue along with any other nutrients stored as fat in your body. Speaking of which…

Weight Loss via Better Sleep

During sleep your body enters a fasted state. When fasting your body will utilize it’s fat stores to produce the energy it needs to keep you alive. In case you were not aware your body is always burning calories. Usually your body will prioritize burning calories from the food you ate for the energy it needs to function. Because you aren’t eating during your slumber your body will burn it’s own fat instead. Your body will continue to do this until you eventually break the fast. This is the reason we call the first meal of the day breakfast.

If you want to practice intermittent fasting  you can use your bedtime to help extend the length of your fast. Even if you don’t fast during the day you will still fast when you sleep. Thus you will still get the benefits of fasting every time you go to bed.

A Healthy Immune System

If want to ensure that your body has better chance at fighting diseases you need to get plenty of sleep. During your slumber, your immune system releases proteins called cytokines, some of which help promote sleep. Certain cytokines need to increase when you have an infection or inflammation, or when you’re under stress. Sleep deprivation may decrease production of these protective cytokines. In addition, infection-fighting antibodies and cells are reduced during periods when you don’t get enough sleep.

Your body needs sleep in order to help fight off infectious diseases. Without sleep your body will ultimately become weaker. As a result you will become increasingly vulnerable to more serious health problems. Do yourself a favor and get plenty of sleep. It’s the very least you can do to improve your health.

Improved Mood

If you’ve ever had a night without sleep than you know how miserable your day can be as a result. The less sleep you get at night the worse off you’re going to feel. The thing that often  gets overlooked is how a negative mood can affect your sleep. Simply put a good  mood is the more likely to make you relaxed enough to make sleeping easier. Conversely the more negative your mood is that day (i.e stressful) the more active and alert your brain is going to be when you decide to go to sleep.  This in turn makes it harder to fall asleep. The longer it takes to fall asleep the less time you’ll have to sleep at night.

This problem has a tendency to repeat itself over time as you find yourself becoming more sleep deprived because of your negative moods. On the plus side the inverse is also true. If you’re in a positive mood throughout the day you will be much more relaxed. This sense of ease will make falling asleep easier. This in turn improves helps improve your mood the following day.

Mind you this doesn’t mean that if you have a bad day you are doomed to a life of insomnia. You just need to be mindful of your mood before you go to bed. If you’re feeling particularly anxious or stressed try to relax yourself before you go to bed. This will make going to sleep much easier. Once the quality of your sleep improves your mood will also improve as a result. 

Mental Clarity

It’s no secret that sleep deprivation makes it much harder for your mind to stay focused and alert. Your mind, like the rest of your body, needs sleep in order for it to function properly. Lack of sleep hampers your ability to perform tasks that require logical reasoning and complex thought. It impairs your judgement which in turn makes good decision making more difficult because your mind isn’t able to think clearly.

The problems do not end there. Your memory is something that can also be negatively affected because of sleep deprivation. Without sufficient sleep you will have a much harder time remembering certain details of what happened at a particular time. Just think back to a time you were studying for a test and didn’t get any sleep the night before. I’m sure the brain fog  and the drowsiness you felt that day didn’t do you any favors at that time.

Finally another issue related to lack of mental clarity due to sleep deprivation is slower reaction times. Being sleep deprived is like being drunk except without the buzz you normally feel when you are actually drunk. Your ability to make snap decisions on the fly is severely hampered because your mind is weary. We’ve all known someone who got himself into trouble because they were so sleep deprived that they weren’t even aware of what was going on around them. You do not want to be in that situation if you can avoid it.

The bottom line is this; if you want to maintain mental clarity throughout the day you need to get plenty of sleep. You don’t want to find yourself driving a car into an accident because you haven’t slept in days. It will save you a lot of trouble if you allow yourself to get the  sleep you need ever night.

How to Sleep Better

Given how important sleep is to our health it is important that we improve the quality of our sleep as much as possible. Thankfully there are many things you can do to improve the quality of your sleep. Some examples include:

• Going to bed and waking up at a consistent time
• Taking melatonin
• Avoiding alcohol/caffeine at night
• Avoiding exercising before bed
• Optimizing your sleeping environment
• Avoid blue light exposure at night
• Cold showers

There are probably many more ways you can improve your sleep. The ones listed above are just some of the simplest ways to get better sleep. For now let’s go over each one briefly.

Go to Bed and Wake up at Consistent Times

If the subject of sleep has ever come up in a conversation before than you’ve probably heard of something called the circadian rhythm come up at some point. The circadian rhythm is the natural internal process that regulates and repeats the sleep-wake cycle. To put it in plain English, it’s the internal clock your body uses to get itself ready to either fall asleep or wake up depending on the time of day.

Your circadian rhythm is not set in stone however. You can adjust it to fit your daily schedule. For example if you decide to consistently go to bed at 7:30 pm and wake up 5 am your body will  eventually adapt to this new schedule. Likewise if you go to bed at 2:30 am and wake up at around noon that will eventually become your new sleep schedule.

The thing is often times we have very inconsistent times that we wake up or go to bed at. This isn’t always a problem per say as often times these variations in the times we get in and out of bed isn’t all that much different from the average time we normally wake and/or go to sleep. A radically inconsistent sleep schedule, however, can make getting good sleep very difficult. This irregularity can even effect the quality of your sleep depending on the circumstances. For this reason it would be wise to stick to a consistent sleep schedule.

If you normally get to bed at 8:30 pm and wake up at 6 am it would be wise to stick to that schedule rather stick to an inconsistent schedule were one day you get 10 hours of sleep and another day you get 4 hours of sleep, and then the next day you get 8 or 12 hours of sleep, etc. Over time this schizophrenic sleep schedule will make getting quality sleep very difficult. A consistent sleep schedule will help you utilize you sleep more efficiently. 

Take Melatonin Before Going to Bed 

Melatonin is a sleep hormone your body naturally produces to regulate the sleep-wake cycle. It’s normally produced via the pineal gland in your brain, however you can buy over-the-counter melatonin supplements at your local grocery or drug store. They are often used by people who suffer from sleep disorders such as insomnia. However you don’t need to be suffering something as serious as insomnia in order to make use of them. They are among the most popular and readily available sleep aids you can find.

There are other types of sleep aids you can purchase besides melatonin. Melatonin, however, is the most natural option you can use to help you sleep. You can also try taking magnesium or lavander supplements as an alternative as those supplements can also induce relaxation. Both can be found in the vitamin section of most drug stores.

Avoid Caffeine/Alcohol Before Bed

You want to avoid drinking caffeinated beverages such as coffee late in the day. The reason being that caffeine is a stimulant that causes you to be more alert by stimulating your central nervous system. The result is that you become much less drowsy and much more awake. This boost in energy is fine if you’re just waking up in the morning. A caffeine boost at night, however, is counter productive. The caffeine will undermine your ability to quickly fall asleep.

The same is true of consuming alcohol at night. There is a common misconception about alcohol being a good sleep aid. This comes from the drowsiness that alcohol induces early on as you get more and more buzzed and eventually drunk. The truth is that the early drowsiness you experience is very misleading. While you will undoubtedly fall asleep faster as you get more and more buzzed alcohol has a negative affect on the quality of your sleep. The problems start to occur during the second half of your sleep cycle, namely during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase of your sleep. This is the period of your sleep were your sleep is at it’s deepest (it’s also the point in your sleep were you start having dreams).

If you have alcohol in your system when you hit the hay, you may not sleep very deeply, or for very long, throughout the night. That’s because as the alcohol in your body starts to metabolize, the sedative effect it had on you early on will wear off. This prevents you from getting the deep sleep you need because the alcohol in your system keeps you in the lighter stages of sleep. You’ll likely wake up easily and more often, especially in the later half of the night. Not to mention you really don’t want to rely too heavily on alcohol to help you fall asleep. The last thing you want is to become a dysfunctional alcoholic who has a hard time falling asleep.

Avoid Exercise Before Bedtime

Exercise is one of the best ways to improve your sleep and health. It can enhance all aspects of sleep as long as you don’t exercise before hitting the sack. At first this may sound confusing. After all wouldn’t exhausting yourself with some intense or even moderately intense exercise be a good way to make you fall asleep?

Although daily exercise is key for a good night’s rest, performing it too late in the day may cause sleep problems. This is due to the stimulatory effect of exercise, which increases alertness and hormones like epinephrine and adrenaline. The result is that you go to bed exhausted but not drowsy. You’re better off exercising after you wake up or at least a few hours before you go to bed. Rather than exercise for a few minutes before you go to bed read a book instead. It’s more relaxing and will help you fall asleep much faster than getting another good workout in before bedtime.

Optimize Your Bedroom for Sleeping

If you want to get a good night’s rest than making sure your bedroom is as ideal a place to sleep as possible will go a long way to helping you get that good night’s rest. These improvements can be done in several ways. You can insure that your room is cool as a cool room will make it much easier to fall asleep at night. One other thing you can do is  make sure you have a comfortable bed in your bedroom. For this reason you might want to invest in a high quality mattress. You can also make sure that your room is as dark and quiet as possible.

These are just some examples of what you can do to optimize your bedroom environment. If you can find other ways to improve your environment for sleeping you should consider utilizing these options whenever possible. The more comfortable you can make your bedroom for sleeping the better and easier it will be for you to fall asleep at night.

Avoid Blue Light Exposure at Night

Exposure to light during the day is beneficial, but nighttime light exposure has the opposite effect. Again, this is due to its effect on your circadian rhythm, tricking your brain into thinking it’s still daytime. This reduces hormones like melatonin, which help you relax and get a deep slumber. Blue light — which electronic devices like smartphones and computers emit in large amounts — is the worst in this regard.

The simplest way to reduce blue light exposure of course is to simply avoid sitting in front of an active screen at nighttime. This is the best way to avoid the disrupting effects that blue light has on your slumber. That being said that may not always be possible. Thankfully there are other ways to reduce blue light exposure at night. You can purchase special glasses (sometimes called gaming glasses) that are specially designed to block the blue light emitted from TVs or smartphone screens. Some electronic devices even have an option in their settings menu to activate a “night time mode” which makes the screen of your electronic device stop emitting blue light while this feature is activated.

Check your devices settings menu and see if you can find a “night time” or “low light mode” or something similar that you can activate on your electronic devices during the night time. This will help reduce your exposure to blue light at night. You should still try to  avoid screen time before going to bed. Your eyes will thank you for it.

Take a Cold Shower 

Our circadian rhythm functions as our internal clock and one of its main functions is to regulate our sleep-wake cycle. When your bedtime starts to draw near, your circadian rhythm starts to send signals to your body prompting the system to prepare for sleep. Part of this process is lowering your core body temperature.

One way to stimulate the lowering of body temperature is by taking a cold shower. If you take a cool or cold shower, it will naturally start to reduce your body temperature and will send a signal to your brain that bedtime is fast approaching. Even though it may wake you up a bit mentally, this adjustment in body temperature is still more ideal for sleeping. Drowsiness will eventually take over and will ease you off into a deep and peaceful slumber.

It will take a while before you get used to the initial shock to the system you’re going to experience when you expose yourself to a cold water. That being said however, your body will get used to the sudden chill over time. Think of it like jumping into a swimming pool or the ocean. At first you’ll feel cold but after a few minutes your body adapts to the temperature change and you can stay in the water without feeling like you’re going to freeze to death.

In conclusion sleep is vital for our health and recovery. The more we can improve the quality of our sleep the better our lives will be for it. You should aim to have at a minimum of 6 hours of sleep a day. Ideally you should be getting 8 hours of sleep each day. While it may be tempting to try and get even more than the usual 8 hours of sleep you really don’t want to oversleep too often. The purpose of sleep is to recover from the previous days activities so that we may be more productive the following day (and maybe have some fun when and where we can along the way). Never take your bedtime for granted. The better your sleep was that night the better your day be when you wake up later that morning.