Life would be a lot easier if you didn’t have to sleep.
Just imagine what you could do with all of the time you spend in bed. The potential is limitless, and a lot of people already push the amount of time they spend awake to make the most of it.
Of course, though, you wouldn’t be able to live a very healthy lifestyle without this crucial element. Instead, you would be tired all the time, would struggle to concentrate, and would eventually find yourself in an early grave.
But why exactly does your body work this way?
To give you an insight into the power of sleep, this article will be exploring this part of your life. A luxury for some, getting enough sleep is an excellent way to improve your lifestyle, though it’s easy to ignore this part of life when you have a lot on your plate.
What Happens When You Have A Sleepless Lifestyle?
You’ve probably experienced this many times before; you can’t get yourself off to sleep until the sun is rising, but you have far too much to do to stay in bed.
Today is going to be a difficult one.
As you roll yourself out of bed, willing yourself to get on with the day, one of the first things you’ll notice is the way your body feels. Your limbs will be heavy, balancing will be a challenge, and you will face an almost overwhelming urge to flop back into a state of slumber.
Thankfully, these physical effects will wear down a little throughout the morning, and you will slowly regain your ability to handle normal life. At least on a physical level.
Of course, though, you will still have to use your mind to study or go to work. This is one of the biggest issues which comes when you don’t sleep; your mind won’t have had a chance to rest properly.
This can make it extremely difficult to concentrate, keep up with fast lectures or conversations, and will often leave people in a bad mood. Some people use coffee and energy drinks to try and overcome this, but this attempt is a feeble one. Your mind simply won’t be able to function correctly when you haven’t slept enough.
As the years go by, living without enough sleep will have an impact on your overall health. Failing to get the sleep you need will have a negative effect on your lifespan, with those who sleep the most often living far longer than those who don’t get enough time in bed.
Behind The Scenes: What’s Happening To Your Body
In reality, most people have a good idea of what they will feel like when they don’t get enough sleep. This doesn’t mean that they understand why they feel like this, though, and this is crucial when you’re trying to improve this side of your life.
It’s hard to know what to do right when you don’t know what’s going wrong.
Your Mind: Your mind is very delicate. It doesn’t take much to throw it out of whack, and a lot of people don’t realise quite how much sleep can influence this. You won’t be able to concentrate properly, as your mind won’t have had a chance to reset and handle the memories you made the day before. Concentration will slip, as your mind will cluttered and filled with information which it hasn’t had a chance to sort. A lack of sleep is now recognised as one of the leading contributors in the increase of mental health issues.
This will all have an effect on your studies and work, making it crucial that you get enough sleep each and every night. If you let this go on for a long time, things will get even worse, with conditions like dementia being recognised to have causal links with a lack of sleep throughout someone’s life.
Your Body: Like your mind, your body is also very complicated, and will be heavily influenced by the changes your lifestyle thrusts upon it. Poor sleep has been connected with obesity in a lot of different studies, as your digestive system relaxes when you sleep, and it needs this opportunity to process the food you eat properly.
Alongside this, though, there are some far more serious issues which sleeplessness can cause for your body. It will impact your cardiovascular system, making you more likely to suffer with heart disease and heart attacks. You could also increase the chances that you will have to deal with diabetes, infertility, and cancer, as not getting enough sleep can also be linked to these conditions.
Ultimately, living without the sleep you need will lower your lifespan, while also making you feel bad all the time.
Using Science For The Perfect Sleep
It’s not always easy to make sure that you have enough time to sleep. This should be kept to a minimum, though, and most people should be working hard to get as much sleep as they possibly can each week. You can use science to help you with this.
There are four stages to sleep; light, REM, deep, and wake. Understanding these can make it much easier to ensure that you’re always getting quality sleep, while also giving you an opportunity to wake yourself up at exactly the right time.
Let’s take a look.
Light: The light sleep stage bridges the gap between being awake and entering a deep sleep. During this stage, you will be able to wake up very easily, and it will make sense to avoid interruptions to your sleep during this stage. Some scientists believe that people go through this to ensure that they can wake up to threats.
REM: REM stands for rapid eye movement, and this occurs as your body shuts down for the night. The muscles which control your eyes are some of the only ones which function during this time, hence the movement which is often seen. You need the REM stage of sleep to give your mind a chance to soak up memories and cement the skills which you’ve picked up through the day. This stage is essential for students.
Deep: The deep sleep stage is one of the most important. Muscles repair and grow during this time, and your body will produce 95% of its growth hormones when you’re in a deep sleep. If you wake up during this stage, you’re likely to feel very tired.
Wake: This stage of sleep happens throughout the other stages, with most people waking up as many as 20 times each night. You’re not conscious of this, and it usually comes at the end of a sleep cycle.
A healthy adult will go through three to five cycles of these stages each night. Waking up at the right point can make you feel far more rested than waking up during the wrong stages, and it’s always worth spending the time to figure out how many cycles you have time to go through.
Alongside this, you can also think about other ways to improve your sleep. Eating the right food, taking part in enough exercise, and working to make sure that you’re not stressed will all contribute to healthy sleep.
Sleep is crucial to your work, studies, and general wellbeing. This makes it well worth putting time into it, even if you feel like you get enough of the stuff. Just about everyone has what it takes to improve their sleep.