Why is Sleep so Important for our Health and Wellness? Plus 10 Tips on how to get Some Sleep Tonight

Let’s talk about sleep. We are a society that keeps going going going and getting adequate rest has fallen to the bottom of the priority list. We have considerably decreased the number of hours of sleep that we’re getting so that we can “fit it all in.” As a result, the number one complaint that Americans have when they reach a doctor’s office is fatigue. There are a few reasons why we are so exhausted. You can read more about some of those reasons here, but what we will focus on in this article is our need for more rest and why sleep is so important for overall health and wellness.

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When we talk about being tired, there are two ways to categorize this. There is the feeling of fatigue, to which we feel it in the body, vs. sleepiness in which we feel in the head, and you are just simply tired. Emotionally they are very much connected. You feel like you’ve just run out of gas.

Why Sleep Is Important For Health And Wellness

Resetting the Body

When we are sleeping, our bodies are resting while performing important jobs. One is the resetting and replenishing of our cells. It’s also a time for detoxification. All that is in your “gut” (intestines) are either absorbed and utilized or processed as waste for the body to eliminate.  What does this mean? Part of our digestive process is the act of absorbing the nutrients from our food to be assimilated and distributed to our cells for our bodies to utilize for all of our important functions. When we don’t allow this to occur, there is a disruption in all of this and proper breakdown and distribution can’t occur. This can lead to things like weight gain and digestion issues, and further down the road, other conditions, and diseases.

Honoring our Circadian Rhythm

You may have heard of circadian rhythm, which is also called the sleep and wake cycle. This becomes the rhythm your body is accustomed to when you are sleeping. When we have a regular sleep/wake cycle, our body knows when to perform the important work needing to occur while sleep is occurring. It is called a rhythm because there needs to be some pattern and regularity to this cycle. Going to bed and waking up around the same time every day becomes a key part of your health and is extremely important.

Not Getting Enough Sleep Can Cause Weight Gain

How does lack of sleep can cause weight gain? When we do not get enough rest, this can actually increase the hunger hormone called ghrelin. Your stomach produces this hormone, and it gives you the cue to seek out food. Ghrelin will act on your pleasure receptors in the brain to urge you to reach for that 5th cookie. You have these pleasure receptors, and they have learned how yummy those cookies taste and love the feeling of that reward.

Lack of Sleep Can Lead to Unbalanced Blood Sugar

When we do not get enough rest, we run low on energy. When we run low on energy, we tend to seek out sugar and caffeine to give us that boost we need. This will spin you out on an uncontrollable blood sugar cycle. We eat these things to help us feel better, but what it really does is lead us on high and lows, where we crash, and the cycle happens repeatedly. When we are tired, our choices for food are typically poor ones. Furthermore, developing a regular meal pattern becomes daunting when we’re tired all of the time. This can also alter our proper blood sugar patterns.

Tips To Get you Sleeping Tonight

Get on a Regular Sleep Schedule

When we are all over the place with our bedtime and wake-up patterns, our bodies become confused about when it can get to work with detoxifying and replenishing and the production and balance of certain hormones, i.e., cortisol and insulin. This, again is why sleep is so important for health and wellness. When you’re sleep-deprived, your cortisol level rises, and then you get the stress response happening, which gets your blood sugar involved. This is probably to blame if you’re waking up in the middle of the night. Your body is in stress response. Being in this response and having your blood sugar on a roller coaster causes things like weight gain, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and depression, just to name a few. The consistency of your sleep really helps normalize your body’s function, promoting better overall health and wellness.

Get to Bed at a Decent Hour

In addition to a good circadian rhythm and getting enough quality sleep for our overall health and wellness, we really need to take a good look at the hour to which you are headed for dreamland. This is not only beneficial to the number of hours but also your hormone processes. The one I am specifically referring to here is cortisol. Not only do we have a circadian rhythm for sleep, but also into cortisol levels. There are natural peaks and troughs to these levels throughout the day, and typically cortisol is higher in the morning and at the lowest in the evening. For some, however, we tend to get a spike at a certain time of night. This can be from a blood sugar increase from a late meal or snack or just the natural rhythm.

For example, do you ever get so tired at 10 pm, and you want to crash in bed, but you decide to keep going, and then you have this burst of energy sometime around 1130-1200? Well, this is your cortisol kick, and the key is to get to bed before this happens. You want to try to chase the curve if you will.

Don’t Eat Too Close to Bedtime

As mentioned above, our body needs to rest and digest while we are sleeping. When we eat too close to us falling asleep, our body is like, “ok, we can’t detoxify and clean up in here because now there is work to be done,” which is the digestion and detoxifying process. The body only has so many resources to devote to all the jobs it needs to do. The detoxifying and removing of waste are critical tasks. You can think of it as the cleaning crew coming in to clean things up. When we introduce the food right before bed, that cleaning crew needs to get to work on that and not the cleaning and detoxifying, which gets put on hold.

The key is to eat no later than 2 hours before bed. If you must get something in, make it a fruit because most fruits take the least amount of time to break down. Ultimately, if we eat a meal too close to bedtime, it leads to a bad night’s sleep and impedes the body’s overnight detoxification processes.

Limit Caffeine and Sugar Consumption

I know you do not like this one, but here’s the thing; we are looking for a quick fix, and the problem with caffeine and sugar is that they are stimulants. Caffeine and sugar are the most common ways we try to get our energy levels up. The problem is, it is not working. It’s actually making things worse. Am I going to tell you to stop drinking your morning cup of coffee? No. Would you be better off without it? Maybe. The issue is most are not having 1 cup of coffee. Furthermore, we are dropping many other things into our coffee (sugar) that are wreaking havoc on our bodies. Both of these stimulants take us on that blood sugar roller coaster ride again, leading us to have huge peaks and troughs, and over time this can cause sleeplessness and a laundry list of health conditions.  

 Avoid Alcohol Before Bed

This may seem somewhat surprising because alcohol can be considered a good sleep aid. However, it affects our quality of sleep, and if you’re waking up in the middle of the night, this is probably not the best idea. Alcohol will ultimately affect your REM sleep cycle, causing an individual to have a less efficient rest with more sleep interruptions. In addition to the disruptions in REM, the liver takes quite a bit of time to break down large amounts of alcohol, which will affect other detoxifying processes.

Get Outside

What does this have to do with you getting some zzz’s? Well, regular sunlight exposure, for at least 20 minutes per day, will release needed hormones and chemicals that we require to have adequate energy during the day. Yes, I will bring up cortisol again. The proper level during the day will keep us more alert. Furthermore, melatonin (the natural chemical released to help us sleep) is released during the day when we don’t get any exposure to daylight. When melatonin is up, cortisol dips. Conversely, when our cortisol levels are up at night, our melatonin is low, and we have trouble getting to sleep.

The Power Down Hour

When we are stimulated before going to be, it becomes difficult to shut our brains down for the night. So how do we do this? We need to look at what time you’re getting to bed. Additionally, this should be planned around getting at least 7 hours of sleep. This is what our body truly needs to replenish and detoxify. So, if you get up at 6, you need to be asleep by 11 o’clock. You should start powering down at 10 o’clock. This consists of turning off the TV, your cell phone, your computer. During this hour, you want to create a routine that is going to set you up for success in getting you a good night’s rest. This hour should consist of activities that will get your system ready emotionally and physically, for sleep. For more ideas on creating your “power-down hour”, check out our guide here.

Getting Regular Exercise

Why can getting regular exercise lead to a better night’s sleep? When we exercise, we excrete an important hormone called serotonin, which is very much involved in our sleep/wake cycles.  This helps you overall in establishing a healthy circadian rhythm (body clock). Careful to not exercise too late in the day. It will have the opposite effect, as exercise gives you energy, as it increases endorphins. The key here is to exercise 2 hours before bed.

Don’t Charge Electronics Close by Where you are Sleeping

We are a society that is very much attached to our cell phones. It is many people’s primary form of entertainment and communication. We commonly keep our smartphones near our beds to charge during the night. Many of us use them as alarm clocks to wake us up in the morning. There are a few things to consider with this habit. First, the constant buzzing or vibrating from notifications or messages becomes a distraction and disrupts our sleep cycles. Next, the blue light to which it is illuminated can often result in decreased melatonin production, impeding our ability to fall off to sleep. Consider putting the cell phone on the opposite side of the room or in another room while sleeping. Get a conventional alarm clock to wake you up in the morning.

Avoiding Certain Medications and Using Natural Supplements

You may be tempted to use medications to fall asleep. These include sedatives, antihistamines, cold meds, and steroids. You may also be taking certain medications that act as a stimulant, and these should not be taken at bedtime, as they will cause you to stay awake. When talking about sedatives for sleeping and treating insomnia, they can lead to dependence and ultimately disrupt your regular sleep and wake cycle. A good alternative would be adding something natural, like melatonin, relaxing herbs and teas, or pure essential oils to help relax you. In this article, discover some essential oils that will help get you to sleep tonight.

To summarize, sleep is important for health and wellness. Your body must rest to perform vital functions. Getting too little rest will ultimately affect one’s health in the short and long term. Here’s to a good night’s sleep!