Significance of Sleep Every Night 

By Israt Banna, New York College of Technology 

10 December 2019 

 

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There are people who understands the importance of diet and exercise but believe that sleep is unnecessary and waste of lifetime.  

Sleep is a state of relaxation for the body and brain, which helps to maintain body balance. 

 During sleep state the sub-conscious mind of the brain finds solutions to various problems in our life. Lack of sleep can cause fatigue and sleep deprivation. 

Sleep plays a vital role in regulating mental, physical and emotional heath. We sleep because our body needs to be restored and refreshed. Carl Zimmer said, “our body requires long periods of sleep to grow muscle, repair tissue, and synthesize hormones.”            

Getting enough sleep is important because, “it helps us repair and restore our organ systems including our muscles immune system and various other hormones.” Sleep aids our body to heal and grow by providing our body with enough nutrients and regulating hormonal balance in our body. 

Sleep deprivation causes increase of stress and cortisol hormone in the body, which triggers the skin to produce excessive sebum and results in skin breakouts and acne. 

A case in this point, acne can be caused by lack of sleep and it’s a huge problem that teens encounter. Studies shows that most teen ages need exactly 9 or more hours of sleep, however, the average teenagers only sleeps 7 and half hours or less; nearly estimated that 85 percent of those teenager get acne. 

Though sleep information gets processed in our brain, sleep helps our brain to encode, store and retrieve knowledge. Pevzner, Holly said, “sleep is necessary to consolidate a memory so that it can be recalled in the future.”  

For example, when I sleep enough at night before an exam, I remember better what I studied. When I sleep after studying or gaining new information, the brain intakes and processes the knowledge and sticks to the mind, later it retains it as a memory. 

While we sleep our body produces protein molecules that can be used to fight infection and diseases. As researchers have found that “not getting enough sleep may lead to type 2 diabetes by affecting how your body processes glucose.” Sleep controls blood glucose level, lack of sleep can cause diabetes problems because, as the amount of sleep decreases, the blood sugar level increases. 

REM Sleep 

Rapid Eye Movement sleep is essential. 

During REM sleep dreams can occur, our brain is active, blood pressure and heart rate increases, more oxygen flows to the brain, while information is combined and synthesized as memory.  

“REM is the phase of deep sleep during which most dreaming and memory consolidation is believed to occur.” 

 Scientists say, “our brains require REM sleep each night to function properly.” 

                                    

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 “During non- REM rest, the body has higher activity degrees of cellular division as well as regeneration, which are essential for muscle mass healing.” 

REM sleep can lower PTSD symptoms. Post- traumatic stress disorder is a serious life-threatening mental health condition cause by pervious experiences that can last for years. Study found “REM sleep immediately following a stressful or traumatic event reduces PTSD- like symptoms.” 

Sleep is crucial for reducing stress, lowering blood pressure and improving memory. 

REM sleep directly assists our brain parts to do its jobs. An analogy, hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex process emotions, motivation, memory, attention and logical reasoning during REM sleep. 

Additionally, “sleep can help you keep weight under control by regulating the hormones that affect your appetite and reduce your craving for high calorie food.” Sleep has a link to our appetite; lack of sleep makes us hungrier because, when our brain and body is restless, it releases hormones that makes us hungry and less satisfied of our diet. Proper sleep at night helps to maintain body mass, healthy diet, strong memory and fresh mood every day. 

Lack of Sleep increase Cardiovascular Disease 

Sleep helps to maintain healthy body balance. The hours of sleep that each person needs at every night vary person to person. The average hours of sleep a person need every night is 7 to 9 hours. 

 “Healthy rest physical fitness benefits with proper sleep the body can recuperate from physical anxieties, reconstruct, and procedure and also bear in mind new information.” While lack of sleep causes body function instability and increases the risk of heart disease. 

Charles Czeisler  said, “difficulty falling asleep was associated with a percent increased relative risk for cardiovascular disease.” 

Lack of sleep produces hormone in our body that increases stress, inflammation and resistance  

of insulin in the body; rises the causes of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  

                                            

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The graph shows the difference in physical health between two groups of people affected by sleeping habits more and less than 6 hours. According to the graph people who slept less than 6 hours are 2% less healthy than people who slept more than 6 hours.  Also, people who slept less than 6 hours had a 6% more hypertension and diabetes risk than people who slept more than 6 hours. Lastly, there were 7% more heart disease and stroke rate in people who slept less than 6 hours compare to the group who slept more than 6 hours. 

Insomnia is a sleep disorder, in such situation people have difficulty falling and staying asleep. Insomnia causes high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. Thus, if we don’t get enough sleep, we increase the risk of heart diseases. 

Healthy sleep is essential because, during sleep our body and brain removes toxic material that builds up during the day because of burning energy and “when we go to sleep those toxic materials are flashed from our brains.” 

Sleep plays a fundamental role in our physical, mental and emotional health. Sleep links with repairing and curing of our heart and blood vessels. Continuing sleep deficiency increases the probability of high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, kidney and heart disease. 

Lifestyle factors also makes a difference to healthy sleep at night, so avoid: 

• Blue light exposure in the evening 
• Daytime naps 
• Caffeine late in the day 

• Alcohol consumption 
• smoking  
• Unhealthy food 
• Not doing exercise