This is a collaborative post
You may be glad to hear that sleep is one of the most important parts of your day. It’s where our bodies recover and wind down from the day before, helping us to relax and fully revitalise. It can also help you avoid some serious health implications along the way.
Sleep experts, Bed Guru stated that sleep is an integral part of our daily routine and we need to take our sleep pattern seriously. As we sleep, incredibly important mental and physical processes take place within our body. Sleep benefits our day to day functionality and also improves our emotional well-being. If you’re a gym-goer, it also helps your muscle recovery and overall physical health.
Research suggests that on average an adult needs 7-8 hours sleep a day to be able to function fully. This figure does vary depending on age though.
What actually happens whilst we sleep?
A lot of important processes take place both physically and mentally. Our blood pressure decreases, and we conserve important energy supplies. Your brain does remain active as this is the time it starts to log memories and restore your brain to its full day to day functionality.
Sleep is broken up into 5 different stages, they are the following:
- Stage 1, Light Sleep: You begin transitioning in and out of sleep. We can be easily woken, and our eyes move slowly.
- Stage 2, Eye Movement Stops: Our eye movement stops and we go into a light dream state.
- Stage 3, Deep Sleep: We enter a deep sleep state and it’s hard to wake us. Our body temperature starts to rapidly reduce.
- Stage 4, Deep Sleep: Our body temperature starts to reduce further, and our brain’s energy reduces. If you’re a sleepwalker, this is when that tends to occur.
- Stage 5, Rapid Eye Movement (REM): This isn’t when the popular rock band play you a concert as you sleep, this is when your eyes start to move rapidly, and most dreams take place. Our limbs become paralysed and our heart rate & blood pressure increases.
How much is enough?
The amount of sleep you need depends on your age and can also vary from person to person, depending on your specific needs. New parents need to make sure their babies are getting as much sleep as possible. Babies between 4-12 months usually need between 12-16 hours of sleep a day. As they get older, teenagers need around 8-10 hours and the other ages land in the middle.
Adults from 18+ tend to need around 7-8 hours of sleep to be able to function to their full capacity the next day. Our bodies can’t function without it so make sure you get all the sleep you can!
What happens if we don’t get enough sleep?
If you don’t get enough sleep it can actually be quite dangerous for your body. This is called sleep debt and essentially, the more sleep you lose the more sleep debt you’ll build up. So if you lost 2 hours of sleep a night for a week, you’d have a sleep debt of 14 hours!
As we mentioned, losing sleep can be very dangerous and you can encounter some of the following problems:
- Excessive tiredness in the daytime
- Headaches and difficult focusing
- Poor memory logging
- Mental health problems
- Chronic health issues
- Mistakes at work
These are just a handful of the issues that happen if you don’t get enough sleep. Hopefully this post has shown you just how important sleep is! So, grab that duvet and head to your pillows for a good night’s sleep and really enjoy every minute of the sleep you can get.
Disclosure: This is a collaborative post