While a good diet and some physical activity go a long way into keeping you fit along with boosting your overall wellness, there is another pillar of health that a lot of people don't pay much attention to or can't help but neglect – adequate and quality sleep.
While nutrition and exercise can help you physically be healthy, sleeping for 7-8 hours daily can help improve your mental health while significantly increasing the impact of your diet and physical activities.
Ask yourself, when was the last time you slept like a baby and woke up fresh and ready to conquer the world? Quality sleep is a treasure that is getting rarer and rarer by the day, thanks to our busy lifestyle, workload, and our continuous strive to live a quality lifestyle.
In light of this, we're going to discuss what sleep is, why it is important, and the adverse health consequences of sleep deprivation.
Understanding the How Sleep Functions
To understand what happens when you sleep, you need to first know that there are four essential levels of your slumber. From initially closing your eyes to falling asleep and slipping into more relaxing sleep to incurring something called REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement).
This is the last and most vital level of sleep – where you're in a state of dreaming while your eyes are rapidly moving, indicating that you are fast asleep.
While getting to the first couple of stages of sleep is something many of us achieve, we often can't make it to the final level (the most important one). This alone indicates that your sleep quality is gradually deteriorating as you're not giving your body and mind enough time to slip into that state.
It takes around 6-8 hours for the full sleep cycle to occur, but sadly, a lot of us roam sleep-deprived after getting only 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Moreover, it is equally important to know that sleep deprivation doesn't just immediately hit you. The effects are gradual. You'll start feeling more tired, your hormones will be all shot out of order, and you'll feel more stressed and demotivated.
The more serious effects include gradual deterioration of your mental function, which may lead to other health problems such as depression, anxiety, and much more.
A Scenario That Many Can Relate To
Imagine this for a minute: after going to bed at 3 AM, you painstakingly get up around 7 AM. You had to sleep late because you needed to complete a project, and the deadline was tomorrow, something that could be important for your career upscaling. But around 3 AM, you felt you would collapse, so you went to bed.
Not only do you know that you may potentially be late for work in the morning, but you went to bed wondering just how groggy and irritated you would be in the morning. At 7 AM, you get up, wash your face, and go straight into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.
But now, after revitalizing a bit, you can't find your keys. You're frustrated and annoyed because you're already late and you need to present the project to the manager. Now you have to spend 10 minutes looking for them. After you expend some energy, you suddenly crave something sweet to eat and have a couple of tablespoons of ice cream.
This is something that a lot of us may relate to with the kind of lifestyle we are living. And it is going to have a pretty serious impact on our health if things don't change. Sleep deprivation is a big problem for society en masse.
Just try asking your co-workers or friends how much they sleep every day. They may say that they wish to just fall asleep on the company recliner chair!
But because you have to drink a lot of coffee just to function throughout the day, try as you may you will never be able to go to bed as early as you want. This is because
drinking coffee can be counterproductive and can ruin your sleep patterns.
The Advantages of Quality Sleep in a Nutshell
If you're sleep-deprived, all you need to do is try and get more hours of sleep. The answer to sleep deprivation is quality sleep – no medication is required! Restoring your sleep patterns may have immediate health benefits that you may recognize. For example, you will feel rejuvenated in the morning, you'll have better focus, you'll be more energized, and you'll be more attentive at work.
On the other hand, sleep deprivation can cause a lot of problems. If you are tired all the time because of lack of sleep, you can be at risk of car accidents, you'll feel agitated and irritated all the time, and you'll notice a drop in your productivity and motivation levels.
How To Know If You Are Sleeping Enough
As per research, adults need at least 7 hours of good sleep every day. Not getting quality sleep can lead to numerous health consequences over time, some of which include:
1. Fatigue and chronic tiredness.
2. Impaired focus and drop in attention span.
3. Anxiety and stress.
4. Impaired memory.
And much more.
If you're facing any one or numerous side effects mentioned above, you may be sleep-deprived.