The brain stays up all night telling stories. Just call them dreams.
Sleeping is overall an extremely positive action that greatly impacts our lives. When you hit the pillow, your body doesn’t turn off. It begins an intricate cycle of rejuvenation that is vital to your health and well-being
It helps our brain work faster
Lack of sleep causes the human body to fall behind and be more tired leading to making mistakes or simple errors that one would not otherwise make. Quality and regular sleep leads to our brain working at maximum potential and helps us making fewer mistakes and responding faster during our day.
For example, according to one study published in the National Library of Medicine. City University of New York researchers challenged students to a series of math problems after a night of good sleep and after a night of little sleep, the students did equally well after each night. But after not getting enough sleep, students tended to choose less challenging problems. This shows that the students were aware that after not getting much sleep they would be less sharp and make more mistakes as a result.
It helps you be more creative
Following the concept that a lack of sleep makes us less sharp, researchers have found out that less sleep also leads to lower creativity, therefore it could bring people to have less ground-braking ideas.
According to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, after a night of restful sleep, “study participants were 33% more successful at completing tasks that required them to make creative connections in their brain compared to people who hadn’t slept yet”.
Furthermore, to back this up, researchers have also found out that “REM sleep”, the part of sleeping that involves dreaming, is necessary to increase creativity. For example, the American Psychological Association discovered that “people who took 90-minute naps featuring REM sleep performed 40% better on word problems that required them to see connections between seemingly unrelated words than people whose naps didn’t feature REM sleep or people who didn’t nap at all”.
How do we get the right amount of sleep?
During this article we explained the importance of sleep; but how do me make sure to get it done?
Of course the hours of sleep needed vary with each person, some need nine while others may be fine with seven. According to researchers an amount of hours that lies in that range can be considered a healthy amount.
If you’re having trouble falling asleep or you’re not sleeping enough due to stress, a solution could be to create a sleep routine, like drinking a herbal tea, not exposing yourself to too many stimuli before going to bed, having a room not too hot or cold and sleeping on an excellent mattress cool in the summer and warm in the winter. These are all factors that contribute to the achievement of an invigorating and healthy sleep.
Source: EarlyBird