The benefits of a good night’s sleep impacts every area of our daily life.  While it may be obvious that sleep is beneficial, most people don’t realize how much sleep they need and why it is so important.

The amount of sleep each person needs depends on many factors, including age. For most adults, 7 to 9 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day.

Sleep is essential to our health, it affects our mental, physical, and emotional well-being.

When you are asleep, your body is…

Fighting disease| repairing your body

Your body produces protein molecules while you’re sleeping that helps strengthen your ability to fight infection. These molecules help your immune system mend your body at a cellular level when you are stressed or have been exposed to compromising elements such as pollutants and infectious bacteria.  Think about the last time you had the flu….. all you want to do is sleep… that’s your body repairing and fighting the virus.

Strengthening the Heart

Sleep helps to reduce the levels of stress and inflammation in your body. High levels of inflammatory are linked to heart disease, hypertension and strokes.

Reducing Stress

A good night’s sleep can help lower blood pressure

Repairing Memory and Cognitive abilities

When deprived of sleep, it becomes difficult to concentrate, hard to recall tasks, and impossible to find your keys! Research suggests that sleep helps learning and memory by consolidating the days memories and tasks, which is essential for learning new information.

Controlling your body weight

Sleep helps regulate the hormones that affect and control your appetite.

Helping in the fight against Diabetes

Researchers have shown that lack of sleep may lead to type 2 diabetes by affecting how your body processes glucose, which is the carbohydrate your cells use for fuel.

The benefits of sleep are extensive and can make a difference in your quality of life, as well as the length of your life. Therefore, sleep like diet and exercise, is important for our minds and bodies to function normally.  So, like our natural health practitioners don’t underestimate the power of sleep.