Health resolutions arrive hand-in-hand with the new year, but while everyone focuses on increasing physical activity, it may be more beneficial to work on getting more sleep.
It seems counterintuitive; physical health comes from physical activity, and sleep demands inactivity, so it must not be very important. But for anyone looking to be healthier in 2022, sleep should be at the top of their to-do list.
Behold the Restorative Properties
No matter the physical activity, every workout plan has one thing in common: rest days.
Doesn’t matter if you’ve resolved to run a 5k, loose 20 pounds, or deadlift a moving van. Every workout plan calls for time off. But while many people interpret “time off” to mean “don’t go to the gym on this day,” rest days should also mean allowing more time to sleep.
Why take the time to get more sleep? Sleep allows the body to naturally repair itself by way of mending muscles, encouraging tissue growth and protein synthesis, and clearing out body impurities. If you’ve ever gone to bed early after a day doing heavy manual labor, odds are good your body felt better the next morning because you allowed yourself more time to sleep and recover.
Sleep doesn’t act as a one-stop solution for all physical ailments, but if you’ve ever had a bad cold, you know all the body wants to do is sleep. So keep an open mind about getting more sleep for better health.
More Stress? More Sleep
To say the last few years have been a little stressful would be a tremendous understatement. So rather than doom scrolling and binge watching, consider the stress reduction services offered by 8 hours of sleep.
Stress can rob a person of their concentration, their mood, and their judgment. This is due, in part, to the impact of chronically high levels of cortisol. Poor sleep, or a complete lack of sleep, raises a person’s cortisol levels. High cortisol levels can stimulate alertness and raise heart rate and blood pressure, which can be managed in small doses. Keep this up over time, however, and a person can experience systemic inflammation.
According to VeryWellHealth.com, not getting enough sleep also impacts the rapid eye movement stage of sleep (REM), which governs the processing of emotions and memories. Losing out on the restorative benefits of REM sleep directly impacts a person’s mood, making them more irritable and more stressed out.
To summarize: more sleep, less stress. Get some sleep and get those cortisol levels down.
Illness Suppressor
Finally, getting more sleep might help a person keep illness at bay.
Sleep deprivation has been linked to some chronic diseases, mostly because a person’s immune system cannot function at full strength without enough rest. With all the emphasis on immune systems in the past two years, getting enough rest might be the single biggest passive action a healthy person can take.
Why passive? Because sleep costs nothing. No gym membership, no haggling with insurance agents, no expensive diets. Just more sleep.