Why Is Sleep Important?

Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being throughout your life. Getting
enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental health,
physical health, quality of life, and safety.
The way you feel while you're awake depends in part on what happens while you're
sleeping. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and
maintain your physical health. In children and teens, sleep also helps support
growth and development.
The damage from sleep deficiency can occur in an instant (such as a car crash), or it
can harm you over time. For example, ongoing sleep deficiency can raise your risk
for some chronic health problems. It also can affect how well you think, react, work,
learn, and get along with others.
Healthy Brain Function and Emotional Well-Being
Sleep helps your brain work properly. While you're sleeping, your brain is preparing
for the next day. It's forming new pathways to help you learn and remember
information.
Studies show that a good night's sleep improves learning. Whether you're learning
math, how to play the piano, how to perfect your golf swing, or how to drive a car,
sleep helps enhance your learning and problem-solving skills. Sleep also helps you
pay attention, make decisions, and be creative.
Studies also show that sleep deficiency alters activity in some parts of the brain. If
you're sleep deficient, you may have trouble making decisions, solving problems,
controlling your emotions and behavior, and coping with change. Sleep deficiency
also has been linked to depression, suicide, and risk-taking behavior.
Children and teens who are sleep deficient may have problems getting along with
others. They may feel angry and impulsive, have mood swings, feel sad or
depressed, or lack motivation. They also may have problems paying attention, and
they may get lower grades and feel stressed.
Physical Health
Sleep plays an important role in your physical health. For example, sleep is involved
in healing and repair of your heart and blood vessels. Ongoing sleep deficiency is
linked to an increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure,
diabetes, and stroke.
Sleep deficiency also increases the risk of obesity. For example, one study of
teenagers showed that with each hour of sleep lost, the odds of becoming obese
went up. Sleep deficiency increases the risk of obesity in other age groups as well.

Sleep helps maintain a healthy balance of the hormones that make you feel hungry
(ghrelin) or full (leptin). When you don't get enough sleep, your level of ghrelin goes
up and your level of leptin goes down. This makes you feel hungrier than when
you're well-rested.
Sleep also affects how your body reacts to insulin, the hormone that controls your
blood glucose (sugar) level. Sleep deficiency results in a higher than normal blood
sugar level, which may increase your risk for diabetes.
Sleep also supports healthy growth and development. Deep sleep triggers the body
to release the hormone that promotes normal growth in children and teens. This
hormone also boosts muscle mass and helps repair cells and tissues in children,
teens, and adults. Sleep also plays a role in puberty and fertility.
Your immune system relies on sleep to stay healthy. This system defends your body
against foreign or harmful substances. Ongoing sleep deficiency can change the
way in which your immune system responds. For example, if you're sleep deficient,
you may have trouble fighting common infections.
Daytime Performance and Safety
Getting enough quality sleep at the right times helps you function well throughout
the day. People who are sleep deficient are less productive at work and school. They
take longer to finish tasks, have a slower reaction time, and make more mistakes.
After several nights of losing sleepeven a loss of just 12 hours per nightyour
ability to function suffers as if you haven't slept at all for a day or two.
Lack of sleep also may lead to microsleep. Microsleep refers to brief moments of
sleep that occur when you're normally awake.
You can't control microsleep, and you might not be aware of it. For example, have
you ever driven somewhere and then not remembered part of the trip? If so, you
may have experienced microsleep.
Even if you're not driving, microsleep can affect how you function. If you're listening
to a lecture, for example, you might miss some of the information or feel like you
don't understand the point. In reality, though, you may have slept through part of
the lecture and not been aware of it.
Some people aren't aware of the risks of sleep deficiency. In fact, they may not even
realize that they're sleep deficient. Even with limited or poor-quality sleep, they may
still think that they can function well.
For example, drowsy drivers may feel capable of driving. Yet, studies show that
sleep deficiency harms your driving ability as much as, or more than, being drunk.

It's estimated that driver sleepiness is a factor in about 100,000 car accidents each
year, resulting in about 1,500 deaths.
Drivers aren't the only ones affected by sleep deficiency. It can affect people in all
lines of work, including health care workers, pilots, students, lawyers, mechanics,
and assembly line workers.
As a result, sleep deficiency is not only harmful on a personal level, but it also can
cause large-scale damage. For example, sleep deficiency has played a role in
human errors linked to tragic accidents, such as nuclear reactor meltdowns,
grounding of large ships, and aviation accidents.
What difference could an extra hour of sleep make in your life? Maybe quite a lot,
experts say. Studies show that the gap between getting justenough sleep and
getting too little sleep may affect your health, your mood, your weight, and even
your sex life.
If you're getting less than the recommended seven or eight hours of sleep a night,
here are nine reasons that you should shut down your computer, turn off the lights,
and go to bed an hour early tonight.
1. Better health. Getting a good night's sleep won't grant you immunity from
disease. But study after study has found a link between insufficient sleep and some
serious health problems, such as heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes,
and obesity.
In most cases, the health risks from sleep loss only become serious after years. That
might not always be true, however. One study simulated the effects of the disturbed
sleep patterns of shift workers on 10 young healthy adults. After a mere four days,
three of them had blood glucose levels that qualified as pre-diabetic.
2. Less pain. If you have chronic pain -- or acute pain from a recent injury -getting enough sleep may actually make you hurt less. Many studies have shown a
link between sleep loss and lower pain threshold. Unfortunately, being in pain can
make it hard to sleep.
Researchers have found that getting good sleep can supplement medication for
pain. If pain is keeping you up at night, there are alsomedications available that
combine a pain reliever with a sleep aid
3. Lower risk of injury. Sleeping enough might actually keep you safer. Sleep
deprivation has been linked with many notorious disasters, like the destruction of
the space shuttle Challenger and the grounding of the Exxon Valdez. The Institute of
Medicine estimates that one out of five auto accidents in the U.S. results from
drowsy driving -- that's about 1 million crashes a year.

Of course, any kind of accident is more likely when you're exhausted, says Jodi A.
Mindell, PhD, a professor of psychology at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia and
author of Sleep Deprived No More. "When you're overtired, you're more likely to
trip, or fall off a ladder, or cut yourself while chopping vegetables," she says.
"Household accidents like that can have serious consequences."
4. Better mood. Getting enough sleep won't guarantee a sunny disposition. But
you have probably noticed that when you're exhausted, you're more likely to be
cranky. That's not all. "Not getting enough sleep affects your emotional regulation,"
says Mindell. "When you're overtired, you're more likely to snap at your boss, or
burst into tears, or start laughing uncontrollably."
5. Better weight control. Getting enough sleep could help you maintain your
weight -- and conversely, sleep loss goes along with an increased risk of weight
gain. Why? Part of the problem is behavioral. If you're overtired, you might be less
likely to have the energy to go for that jog or cook a healthy dinner after work.
The other part is physiological. The hormone leptin plays a key role in making you
feel full. When you don't get enough sleep, leptin levels drop. Result: people who
are tired are just plain hungrier -- and they seem to crave high-fat and high-calorie
foods specifically.
6. Clearer thinking. Have you ever woken up after a bad night's sleep, feeling
fuzzy and easily confused, like your brain can't get out of first gear?
"Sleep loss affects how you think," Mindell tells WebMD. "It impairs your cognition,
your attention, and your decision-making." Studies have found that people who are
sleep-deprived are substantially worse at solving logic or math problems than when
they're well-rested. "They're also more likely to make odd mistakes, like leaving
their keys in the fridge by accident," she tells WebMD.
7. Better memory. Feeling forgetful? Sleep loss could be to blame. Studies have
shown that while we sleep, our brains process and consolidate our memories from
the day. If you don't get enough sleep, it seems like those memories might not get
stored correctly -- and can be lost.
What's more, some research suggests that sleep decreases the chances of
developing false memories. In several experiments, people were asked to look over
a series of words. Later they were tested on what they remembered. People who
didn't sleep in between were much more likely to "remember" a word that they
hadn't actually seen before.
8. Stronger immunity. Could getting enough sleep prevent thecommon cold? One
preliminary study put the idea to the test. Researchers tracked over 150 people and
monitored their sleep habits for two weeks. Then they exposed them to a cold virus.

People who got seven hours of sleep a night or less were almost three times as
likely to get sick as the people who got at least eight hours of sleep a night. More
research is needed to establish a real link; this study was small and other factors
may have influenced the results. Still, you cant go wrong getting eight hours of
sleep when possible.