Why Do We Need Sleep
- Learning & Memory - Sleep can help to solidify new information you've learned in your brain. It can also recover and organize memories.
- Mood Enhancement - The part of your brain that controls your emotions and decision making slows down while you sleep allowing optimal performance when awake. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) is especially important for a good mood during the day. Those who lack sleep can get easily frustrated and grumpy.
- Immune System - Without adequate amounts of sleep, the immune system becomes weak, making you vulnerable to infection and disease.
- Growth & Development - When you sleep well, your body produces human growth hormone. A drop in your natural production of HGH is a scary path to getting fat. HGH stimulates the metabolism and increases the body's ability to burn fat and increase muscle size.
The amount of sleep that you need depends on many factors - your genetic make up, your daily activities, the amount of exercise you get, your age and the quality of your sleep.
Most adults, on average, need between 7-8 hours of sleep. Some may be able to function on as little as 5 and some may need closer to 10.
Sleep deprivation will be felt both physically and mentally. Listen to your body and give it the sleep it needs. Getting on a regular sleep schedule is best especially if you have problems getting a good nights rest.
3 comments:
A little known fact is that your body keeps track of "sleep debt" for about a week. A lot of people wonder why they can sleep in so late on Saturdays while others get up at their regular time. The reason is that those peoples' bodies are taking advantage of the available time to make up for sleep that they have forfeited over the last week.
Other people think sleep debt lasts forever. Like "I went through this year of school averaging 5 hours of sleep per night so I'm going to sleep in everyday all summer to make up for it." Wrong. After 7-10 days your body and mind write-off the lost hours and all debt is forgiven.
Basic rule of thumb is, if you're tired all day, you need to force yourself to go to bed earlier. Missing a few hours one night due to a sick kid or a big report is one thing, but consistent sleep deprivation is going to jack you up long term.
Wendizzle - May use this post on the Fitness Ridge blog?
Woo whoo!!! I found it! It love it, i have not even looked at it all! Tony will also love that I found it--Help me cook more variety of food. We seem to always eat the same thing over and over. So this will be good! Thanks so much. See ya tomorrow!
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