Sleep is a miracle. Humans are designed to spend a third of their lives in sleep. That is eight hours every single day. It is a universally fundamental need: every species studied to date sleeps!
- Physical activity is not complete without sleep
When you sleep, your bones, digestive system, muscles, heart and all other tissues recover from the damage you inflicted on them during the day. Physical activity without sleep leaves you more prone to injury and illness.
- Learning requires sleep
Memories consolidate and new information is processed during sleep. New skills are assimilated not during the learning process or during practice, but during sleep. Without sleep, your skills and memories would actually decline.
- Emotions are not processed without sleep
In one study, individuals who got inadequate sleep were rated by their peers as having lower emotional intelligence. Sleep heals emotional pain and releases raging emotions.
- Relationship satisfaction is linked to sleep
Recent studies show that lack of sleep increases conflict between spouses and heightens reactivity to conflicts and their partner’s complaints.
- Humans can die of sleep deprivation
This happens through physiological reactions similar to starvation. When researchers deprived rats of sleep for 2 weeks, the rats’ immune systems were compromised to the extent that their blood became infected and they died of septicemia. (this has never been proved experimentally in humans)
- Poor sleep is a causal factor in every common cause of death
Including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, immune dysfunction and Alzheimer’s – increasing risk by up to 45%. Insomnia worsens depression and predicts suicidal thoughts even in people without depression. It is also responsible for 20% of serious car accidents.
- Inadequate sleep impacts the brain
It causes a decline in literally all brain functions including decision making, hand-eye coordination, logical reasoning, memory and creativity. People who have been awake for 19 hours are as impaired in cognitive and motor functioning as a person who is legally intoxicated.
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