Why is getting your sleep in order vital for your health, happiness, and success?
Scientifically Proven Sleep Benefits
Better Physical Image
Sleep-deprived people look less healthy, less attractive, and more tired (source).
Optimal Cognitive Performance
Being alert, attentive, and vigilant. Leading to faster reaction times, called also psychomotor vigilance (source).
Longer cognitive attention span (source).
Decreased number of errors (source).
Increased creativity. This means having mental flexibility for creating new neural connections. You can process information in a divergent, inductive, and innovative way besides the rudimentary, simpler, convergent, and logical deduction (source).
Increased learning and memory recall. This doesn’t mean only the efficiency of learning from books in school, but - the ability to store any new data you received through any sensor and retrieve that information when needed. Furthermore, you can correctly consolidate information and integrate the newly learned information into the existing memory structures (source).
Better management of emotions
Persons with sufficient sleep manage their short-term (feelings) and long-term emotions (moods) better. This leads to:
fewer and less intense emotional swings. Specifically: being calmer, less irritated, and emotionally volatile (source).
to an improvement of self-esteem, empathy, interpersonal dynamics, impulse control, and the ability to delay gratification – all of them the hallmarks of good emotional intelligence.
an overall increase in positivity, optimism, and ability to experience humor (source).
Less hungry & fewer cravings
Overall, but also for unhealthy food.
Better overall health
Lack of sleep leads to poorer metabolism and functioning of the endocrine system due to lower glucose tolerance and inefficient carbohydrate metabolism (source).
A Few More Second-Order Benefits
The above-listed sleep benefits lead to the following secondary positive spillovers:
Clearer Judgement, Better Decision Making, and a Reduction of Unnecessary or at least Uncalculated Risk.
Ability to Perform Complex Tasks.
Increased Personal Safety. The cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation, combined with decreased psycho-motoric abilities while conducting potentially riskier activities (e.g. usage of machinery, driving) can lead to dangerous, if not even fatal outcomes for the individual or his surroundings.
So sleep will improve your cognitive and physical performance, how you react and are perceived by the environment, increase your emotional stability, enhance your decisions, and improve your health already in the short term.
If the whole world is constantly looking for that magic tonic that would give them an edge, then you do not need to look further than just ensuring a sufficient amount of sleep.
But what about the long-term consequences of insomnia?
Keep in mind that daily sleep deprivation aggregates into a sleep debt. Depending on the severity and duration of such a trend, the long-term insomniacs also have an increased risk of (source):
depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues,
high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity,
cognitive decline, dementia, and potentially even Alzheimer’s disease,
mortality, particularly from cardiovascular causes (heart attack or stroke), and
mistakes at work or while driving.
If you want to reap all the sleep benefits, upgrade your life, and function at your peak state, you need to master your sleep!
If you do not have full control over sleep yet then get in contact with a sleep coach so that we can remove all obstacles and train you to be able to fall asleep anytime and anywhere you decide without any reliance on aids, supplements, or similar crutches.
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Get in touch and we'll find a way to improve your sleep.
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