10 Reasons to Sleep Early
by kalyani10
Just as each person is a unique mix of genetic markers and psychological traits, his/her sleep cycle is also bound to be highly individual. Some may prefer to sleep and wake up early while others tend to sleep and get up late. However human beings generally need seven to nine hours of good sleep for optimum functioning and since the usual working since a normal working day begins roughly at six in the morning, this means that sleeping late would deprive a person of valuable resting hours. Here are ten detailed reasons why you should get adequate sleep and ideally turn in early for the night.
- It keeps you mentally alert
A full seven to eight hours of sleep at night is essential if a person needs to be mentally alert the next day – whether it is a student sitting through a class, a professional in the workplace, a blue-collar worker at a factory or a stay-at-home mom running household chores, all busy people need enough night-time sleep if they are to work at their optimum levels through the next day. This is because the amount of sleep you gets directly affects your concentration, problem-solving skills, decision-taking and mood the next day. Lack of sleep not only causes below-par performance at work but can even expose a person to potential dangers like drowsiness while driving or while working with hazardous implements and machines.
- It helps you learn better
Researchers have long believed that sleep plays an important role in memory, but recent evidence1 suggests that getting a good night's sleep can improve learning. In one study, researchers found that depriving students of sleep after learning a new skill significantly decreased memory of that skill up to three days later. Known as the memory consolidation theory of sleep, this notion proposes that sleep serves to process and retain information learned earlier while awake. While the theory is not universally accepted by scientists, there are increasing number of studies that prove how sleep can play an important role in certain types of memory.
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- It makes you a better lover
Lack of adequate sleep can not only ruin your chances of making a stellar presentation at the board meeting but dampen the vibes in your bedroom as well. If you believe that things have been hitting south in your love life, chances are you are not sleeping enough. While common sense suggests that adequate rest is essential for any experience that depends upon co-ordination between psychological and physiological systems as during love-making, researchers have now found a more direct link between sleep and male libido. A study2 has found that men with poor sleep patterns have significantly lower levels of testosterone, which results in a lack of sex drive. Scientists from the university of Chicago found men who get less than five hours sleep a night for a week or longer suffer have far less levels of testosterone than those who get a good night’s rest. Low testosterone levels not only have an inhibiting on male libido but lead to reduced well-being and physical vigor as well.
- It increases fertility in men
Lack of adequate sleep can affect far more than a man’s performance in bed and may in fact ruin his chances of fathering a child too. Sleeplessness is a direct cause of irritability, mood swings and most importantly, stress. High levels of stress in turn cause severe hormonal changes in the body which can interfere with the production of healthy sperm in men. The worst part of this is that the stress itself can be caused by anxiety over infertility so that the resulting tension can worsen the problem, thus leading to a vicious circle stress, whether caused by home-work imbalance or relationship conflict, can impair fertility in men.
- It improves your appearance
Most of the regenerative work of the skin is done when the body is at deep rest, that is during the night. So if you are working till late into the night or partying till the wee hours of morning, the lack of sleep is bound to show up on your face with perhaps dark circles under the eyes and a general look of exhaustion that no amount of foundation can conceal. The only way to stop this from happening is to get adequate sleep which can vary between seven to eight hours, depending on your body’s requirements.
- It boosts your immune system
Sleeping early usually means that you have enough time to let your body rest before you launch into your normal working schedule the next day. But apart from improving mental alertness, sleeping early may also have direct benefit on your health. Sleeping better may help you fight off illness. Sleep deprivation makes your body’s emergency stress system kick in which is then followed by all kinds of physiological problems. In fact, bed rest may make your flu shot work better as well. In a University Of Chicago study, men who were vaccinated while being deprived of sleep (the subjects were not allowed to sleep more than four hours a night) produced less than half the antibodies to the flu virus that vaccinated men who got a full night’s rest did.
- It may keep off diabetes
Studies have also shown a link between sleep deprivation and increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Thus if you are skimping on your sleep by turning in late at night and also possess other risk factors like family history of diabetes or obesity, you had better adopt a regular sleep schedule if you wish to minimize your chances of developing this chronic, incurable condition.
- It keeps your weight in control
Common sense says that someone who's awake and running around should be using up more calories than someone who's in bed. Running around should make them skinnier, a study3 of 68,000 women conducted at Harvard medical school revealed that women who sleep five hours a night are 32 percent more likely to gain 30 pounds or more as they get older than women who sleep seven hours or more. The study, conducted over a 16-year period, revealed that even when the women who slept longer ate more, they still gained less weight than women who slept less.
- It controls your intake of calories
How many calories can an extra two hours of sleep burn? Almost 300, according to a study at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Researchers at the college4 asked 32 summer students to keep diaries noting how much sleep they got and what foods they ate over a three-week period. They found that the students who got an extra two hours of sleep in week two ate nearly 300 calories a day less than in week one. When they returned to their normal sleep-deprived routines in week three, they ate more food.
- It improves your digestion
Like the brain, heart and skin, the body’s digestive system too benefits directly from a good night of sleep. If you eat like most people three meals a day, your body's digestive system is constantly working to break down the food from all the various meals. After a day's eating, your digestive system is tired. It needs a full night's sleep to rest and recover so that it can do its work efficiently again the next day. If you just keep on eating and your digestive system doesn't get rest, it will be overworked and digest food poorly. So remember to get as many hours as needed to rest your digestive system which will also keep you healthy overall.
References:
- Winerman, l. (2006). Let's sleep on it: a good night's sleep may be the key to effective learning, says recent research. Monitor on psychology.
- The Telegraph - Lack of sleep 'kills a man's sex drive', study concludes
- Reader's Digest - Sleep Yourself Thin
- Reader's Digest - Dream a Thinner You
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