For a healthy lifestyle, a few essential daily routines are necessary, such as adequate sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Most people know about these things but usually don’t know the right way to take care of them. People often blame poor health, bad genes, or poor environmental quality when cognitive function, mood, and physical health suffer, but rarely talk about sleep.
Sleep plays an important role in our daily lives and health, as it is essential for our cognitive function, mood regulation, and overall physical health. Chronic sleep denial can cause many health issues including memory loss, inflammatory conditions, mental disorders, and an overall drop in well-being. Quality bedtime is a priority for optimal health and vitality.
Health of the mind
A complex relationship exists between the mental process and the brain’s glymphatic system, cleverly designed to eliminate metabolic waste during deep sleep. While we are sleeping, cerebrospinal fluid enters the brain and washes debris products such as beta-amyloid away. The abnormal accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques disrupts neuronal communication, resulting in memory loss and cognitive decline.
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia are diseases characterized by inflammation. Chronic sleep deprivation can increase inflammation, and supplements like curcumin can help, but they cannot substitute for sleep. The process of caring for cognitive health typically begins later in life, but Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are progressive diseases. Sleep quality and lifestyle have a significant impact on your cognitive health in the future.
Disorders of the mood
When we lack sleep, it affects all aspects of our mood, such as motivation, willpower, and energy levels for the next day. Lack of proper management can lead to anxiety, stress and depression. We can benefit from good sleep in terms of clarity, ideas and mental performance. As sleep disruption compromises the fundamentals of well-being, it may lead to depression.
The effects of jet lag are well known to those who underwent it or are currently experiencing it. These include changes in meal timings, hunger levels, energy levels, sleep patterns, and moods. When you are chronically sleep-deprived, this disruption is a part of every day. Depriving yourself of sleep cannot be remedied by consuming coffee and energy drinks.
Good physical health
A person’s entire body depends on sleep for growth, repair, cleansing, rejuvenation, regeneration, and many other functions. Sleep restores hormone balance, rebalances gut bacteria, restores immunity, rebuilds collagen, repairs DNA, and resets metabolism. The body’s intelligence improves throughout the sleep cycle as it repairs, recognizes, and resolves.
A flat stomach is often ascribed to people waking up with less bloating, acidity, reflux, or constipation. Maintaining a healthy gut is important because of the complex relationship between gut health and overall health. If sleep is not taken care of, a healthy diet, regular exercise, yoga, pranayama, mantras, and other practices become meaningless.
The change in your lifestyle is important, but it is not more important than being healthy. Don’t take sleep for granted, make proper sleep a priority.