How Does Sleep Benefit Mental Health? ‘The Sleep Revolution’ Book Review

“It’s clear that if we’re going to truly thrive, we must begin with sleep. It’s the gateway through which a life of well-being must travel. From the moment we’re born until the moment we die, we’re in a relationship with sleep”. – Arianna Huffington


How important is sleep? And what can happen if we don’t get enough sleep? I recently read ‘The Sleep Revolution’ by Arianna Huffington and it was chock full of facts and hard-hitting data about how important sleep really is. Arianna discusses how we live in a culture that constantly fights sleep and views it as an unavoidable annoyance that gets in the way of our work and relaxation time. Find out why she thinks we should we reprioritising sleep and valuing it, preparing adequately for it and giving it the attention it deserves as the foundation of our well-being plan! – B xx

Getting to sleep and then staying asleep can be a huge issue for women throughout different stages of their lives. At Everyday Young we often talk about getting enough exercise, taking in adequate nutrition and engaging in self-loving practices as being the foundation to health. They are of course! But so is resting and sleeping well of equal importance! Actually doing all of these things that we recommend can also help us to get a great nights sleep.

FIVE REASONS why we all need to get more sleep from ‘THE SLEEP REVOLUTION’!

1. SLEEP FIGHTS DISEASE:
Sleep helps us to detoxify and repair our bodies. It also helps to fight disease and inflammation. In fact, women who regularly only get less than five hours sleep are at risk of more serious diseases and unfavourable outcomes (1). Sleep also boosts our immunity and helps us to recover from infections faster (1). Often when we are sick or run down we will feel the need to sleep which enables our bodies to repair themselves faster (1). Sleep is the best way that we can regularly boost immunity and fight disease!

2. SLEEP HELPS US TO STAY AT A HEALTHY WEIGHT:
Studies show that great sleep can help our bodies maintain a healthy weight. In fact, the less sleep that you regularly get the more likely you are to be overweight. When we don’t get enough sleep our bodies actually produce more ghrelin – a hunger hormone which increases appetite. Want to lose weight? The answer is getting more sleep it seems! When we sleep well we also produce more leptin, which is a hormone that suppresses appetite.

3. SLEEP MAINTAINS MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH:
Being mentally and emotionally healthy is highly correlated with sleeping well. Women who don’t sleep well report higher feelings of stress, depression, hostility and anger (1). Sleep can also help us with self-control and to make more positive choices in regards to our nutrition intake, exercise and lifestyle. It also helps us to reduce stress. When we have a bad nights sleep more of the stress hormone cortisol is found floating around in our bodies the following day (1). Chronic sleep deprivation is said to be a leading factor and cause of depression and other anxiety related disorders.

4. SLEEP BOOSTS BRAIN POWER:
Sleep is amazing for our memory – that ‘mummy brain’ that affects mothers of new babies could be a real thing! Getting a good nights sleep can as much as double our recall rate of newly learned information (1). Sleep is also crucial to brain detoxification and ageing and surprisingly women need more of it than men! A study shows that women need more sleep on average than men at least 20 minutes to half an hour. Why is this? Apparently, we use more of our brains than men due to our multi-tasking natures! And we need more deep sleep which enables our cerebral cortex which is responsible for language, thinking and memory recall to recover (2). Less sleep is also linked with faster brain ageing and damage.

“Your brain is the most expensive real estate in your body” – Dr Amen

5. SLEEP HELPS US TO LOOK YOUNGER:
It turns out that getting your beauty rest is no fairy tale and is very much a fact! A study commissioned by Estee Lauder showed that there is a definite link between poor sleep and increased skin ageing. It is our bodies repair systems which also could be at play as women who sleep well show faster recovery times against environmental stressors that could affect our skin like pollution, poor air quality and UV damage (3). Another interesting finding from this study is that sleep can also affect our perception of self with the better sleeping women in the study showing more positivity to their own self-image and perceived beauty! (3).

The quality of our sleep is also of equal importance. Regularly using ‘sleep aids’ like sleeping pills and alcohol can become a bad habit and the quality of sleep that we will get while using these substances will not have the same life-sustaining and renewing properties for our bodies that a real night’s sleep will give! Sleeping well is an importantly learned process and we should give it the attention it deserves.

“Similar to other healthy behaviours, sleep is not a tradable commodity but rather is a life-sustaining physiological function”. – Arianna Huffington

Struggling to sleep? Don’t worry – next month we will be sharing all of our get-to-sleep secrets! ♥

(Photo: Alexandre Vanier)

Links:

1 – The Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington
2 – Why Women Need More Sleep by Medical Daily
3 – Skin Aging Linked to Lack of Sleep by Medical Daily

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