Everybody is talking about the importance of sleep on your health these days but what are these benefits exactly?
According to Harvard Health Publishing, the average adult requires at least 7 hours sleep per night. This sounds simplistic… but there is much more to this and, actually, the amount of sleep you need varies depending on age and other factors. According to the same source, the amount of sleep you need each night decreases as you grow older with newborn babies needing 16-20 hours, teenagers needing 9 hours and adults needing 7 hours.
In this article, I will go uncover the benefits of sleep and give you top tips on how to improve your sleep quality!
When you Google ‘sleep’ the definition is: ‘a condition of body and mind that typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the eyes are closed, the postural muscles relaxed, the activity of the brain altered, and consciousness of the surroundings practically suspended’.
To summarise, sleep is incredibly important for your body to rest and recover. Therefore, when your body is given all the time it needs you will: improve your immune system, stay at a healthy weight, lowering the risks of health problems like diabetes and heart disease in the long term.
Not only is sleep important for your physical health, but your mental health as well. Clocking up those essential hours, reduces stress, improves mood and allows you to think more clearly, potentially improving your outcomes in school.
As you can see, the benefits are far reaching beyond just feeling well rested and more alert!
Despite all these benefits, getting enough sleep is still a struggle for 1 in 5 adults in the UK with 31% saying they have insomnia and most young people struggle with getting to bed on time.
There are many reasons for being unable to sleep like too much caffeine or stress. Having an unhealthy diet, doing too much or too little exercise can also disrupt your sleep. Finally, too much overstimulation and blue light from your phone before bed also doesn’t allow your brain to rest for sleep.
Now, to have a good night’s sleep, you just have to try and prevent the effects of all the factors I have listed above.
For example, to reduce stress you could:
- journal about your worries
- do no work 30 minutes before bed
- try meditation.
Your brain can be programmed to associate certain activities with going to bed so having a night routine and regular sleep schedule can help your brain to prepare itself for going to sleep.
A good night routine could include:
- some light exercise
- meditation
- self care
- having a quiet and dark bedroom.
Another top tip is to only lay in bed when you want to sleep so that your brain associates your bed with going to sleep and not being awake.
Thank you all for reading and hopefully these tips will be useful!
By Laura Hussein