Health Lecture: Benefits of Sleep

Sleep makes you feel better, but its importance goes way beyond just boosting your mood or banishing under-eye circles.  Adequate sleep is a key part of a healthy lifestyle, and can benefit your heart, weight, mind, and more.

Benefits of Sleep

1. Better health

 Getting a good night’s sleep won’t grant you immunity from disease. But study after study has found a link between insufficient sleep and some serious health problems, such as heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes, and obesity.

2. Better Sex life

Not getting enough sleep lowers libido and can make people more likely to have sexual problems like erectile dysfunction. And sleep itself is restorative – it increases testosterone levels, which boosts sexual drive for both men and women.

3. Improve memory

Your mind is surprisingly busy while you snooze. During sleep you can strengthen memories or “practice” skills learned while you were awake (it’s a process called consolidation).

4. learn better

This isn’t just about kids. Adults who get enough sleep do better on tests of short-term memory.

And when researchers had adults do a task once, get a good night’s sleep, and then try the task again, they showed improvement. But participants who stayed awake 30 hours after learning the same task had a much harder time improving their skills – even if they practiced and had a chance to catch some recovery shut eye later. Something about the initial sleep deprivation impaired their ability to learn.

5. Less pain

If you have chronic pain — or acute pain from a recent injury — getting enough sleep may actually make you hurt less. Many studies have shown a link between sleep loss and lower pain threshold. Unfortunately, being in pain can make it hard to sleep.

6. Look more attractive

Regular shut-eye actually makes you look healthier and more attractive, according to a 2010 study published in the British Medical Journal. Researchers photographed 23 people after a period of sleep deprivation and after a normal night’s sleep of eight hours. The photos were shown to 65 people who rated each photo based on health attractiveness and tiredness. The sleep deprived group scored lower in all three categories.

 7. Best way to stay fit

Multiple studies show that people who sleep less are more likely to be obese. One study that followed 500 people for 13 years found that people who regularly slept less than seven hours a night were 7.5 times more likely to be overweight – even after controlling for physical activity, family history, and demographic factors.

8. Keep your figure

Watching your weight can be as simple as getting a good night’s sleep. Lack of sleep can make you put on weight by drastically slowing your metabolism down, according to a study by scientists at Uppsala University in Sweden. The researchers suggested getting plenty of sleep might prevent weight gain.

9. You’ll live longer

Regularly sleeping less than you should is associated with a shorter lifespan, although it is not clear whether little sleep is the cause, or an effect of other illnesses. Studies have found people who routinely sleep for fewer than six hours a night have a higher risk of dying sooner than people of a similar age who sleep for seven or eight hours a night.

10. healthy skin

Along with mood disorders, sleeping poorly is also associated with chronic skin conditions. Some research shows that poor sleep, depression, anxiety, and chronic skin problems all go together.

11. Better mood

Getting enough sleep won’t guarantee a sunny disposition. But you have probably noticed that when you’re exhausted, you’re more likely to be cranky. That’s not all. “Not getting enough sleep affects your emotional regulation,” says Mindell. “When you’re overtired, you’re more likely to snap at your boss, or burst into tears, or start laughing uncontrollably.”

12. Clearer thinking

Have you ever woken up after a bad night’s sleep, feeling fuzzy and easily confused, like your brain can’t get out of first gear?

“Sleep loss affects how you think,” Mindell tells WebMD. “It impairs your cognition, your attention, and your decision-making.” Studies have found that people who are sleep-deprived are substantially worse at solving logic or math problems than when they’re well-rested. “They’re also more likely to make odd mistakes, like leaving their keys in the fridge by accident,” she tells WebMD.