Why is sleep important?
We all know how it feels to stumble through your day after a bad night’s sleep, but sleep is important for so much more than just not feeling a bit rubbish the next day.
Sleep is as important to us as eating, breathing, and drinking, in fact it even enables those processes to work better.
If we focus on mental health for a minute, poor sleep habits are linked to mental health issues such as depression & anxiety. But also, mental health issues often lead to poor sleep and insomnia, so the two things are linked and improving one is likely to improve the other.
The occasional rubbish night might make us tired and irritable but won’t have any major impacts but after several nights we experience brain fog, low mood, confusion, and higher stress levels. In turn this makes accomplishments and exercise even harder which has further impacts on our mental health.
But what about physical health?
We’re often told about the benefits of a healthy diet and exercise for our physical health but it’s not often we hear about how important sleep is when the truth is, it’s incredibly important.
For example, did you know that sleep can actually keep you a healthy weight? Sleeping less than we need increases the risk of gaining weight and obesity. It also increases the risk of type 2 diabetes and the risk of heart disease because it can increase your blood pressure.
The reasons to get quality sleep don’t stop there though. Sleep deprivation reduces our immune system meaning we’re more at risk to colds, bugs, and infections.
Sleep isn’t a perfect science and how much sleep we need varies person to person but as a rule of thumb, aim for 7 hours.
8 TIPS FOR A BETTER NIGHT’S SLEEP
Getting better sleep is about making small, manageable changes that work for us as individuals, some of these ideas will work, others may not.
Weekly Wellbeing Tip
Look through your phone contact list and catch up with someone who you haven’t spoken to in a long time. Catching up with old friends can give us a huge boost.
