Here's Why Getting Enough Sleep Should Be Your Top Priority

Oct 29, 2018

Alarms are more than just a signal for the time to wake up. If you can’t get up without one, it might be a sign that you are not getting enough sleep.

With the New Year coming up, make it one of your resolutions to improve your health by getting enough sleep. Your mind, your belly and even your employer will be grateful that you did!

Our minds need sleep to sort through the daily experience of being alive. Sleeping and dreaming allow the brain to get rid of the information we simply don’t need. However, if you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t leave room for new memories or knowledge.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you will make big mistakes at home and in the office. For example, go for 17 hours straight without sleeping, your thinking ability will be impaired just as if you were drunk!

You start acting as though you have a blood alcohol concentration level of more than 0.05. After spending a whole day away, your cognitive ability goes down to the point where you would clock in at a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10

If you are trying to keep your waistline slim and lean, you need to make sure you are getting enough sleep. Sleeping enough hours in the night is good for your hormone regulation, allowing you to manage your food intake better. Those who only get a few hours of shut-eye every night will be more likely to go for the candy jar or the giant bag of potato chips.

When the body does not get enough sleep, it will have higher glucose levels. If you aren’t getting enough sleep and you are eating poorly because of it, your glucose could rise to dangerously high levels.

Sleep isn’t just necessary for you to function as a healthy individual, but people are more likely to need all their sick days when they are not getting enough sleep. According to the study, people are more likely to take a sick day because their energy levels are not up to speed compared to those who do get enough sleep.

According to the American Sleep Foundation, each adult needs between seven and nine hours every night. If you are between the ages of 18 and 64, you need seven to nine hours to function at your best. However, if you are older, you can aim for seven or eight hours each night.

The perfect amount of sleep is unique to each person, though it should fall somewhere between seven and nine hours. To discover how much sleep you need as an individual, try this sleep experiment for a week.

To know how much time you need, get rid of your alarm clock, so your body can wake up naturally.

You might also want to consider dropping some things from your evening to-do list to help your body wind down.

It’s important to put your technology away or even in a different room, so you don’t start scrolling through social media in the middle of the night.

Dark sleeping spaces are necessary for healthy sleep.

You might want to look at recording your sleep times and energy levels throughout the week to see what makes you feel the best.

You might discover that you need more sleep than you thought the first couple of nights. However, you need to remember that this experiment is to help you discover how much sleep you need to improve your energy levels, not just how much you can sleep. The pressure of the experiment might cause you to stress out and sleep poorly.

Even though you might wake up a bit groggy, you should feel energized and ready to go when you get out of bed.

By testing it, you can discover just how much sleep you need to feel your best.

Here are a few great ways to make sure you get more sleep.

Sleep in the Dark

Exposure to bright lights in the evening might mess up your circadian rhythm. Your body responds to light by making you think you need to be awake.

By reducing the number of lights in the evening, including the lights from screens like TV’s or smartphones, you can help increase your melatonin levels which help you sleep in the evening.

Make a Nighttime Routine

Some people might fall asleep without a hitch, but many people need a routine to help signal to the body that it is time to go to bed.

Talk to Your Doctor

If it seems like you can never feel refreshed no matter how long you sleep, you might need to talk to your doctor. You may have a form of sleep interruptions like sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome or insomnia that can affect how well you sleep.

Do you think you're getting enough sleep? Let us know in the comments and show this article to another sleep-deprived friend!

Our content is created to the best of our knowledge, yet it is of general nature and cannot in any way substitute an individual consultation by your doctor. Your health is important to us!