December 18th, 2019 by Chris Chapman

The cliché of the high-flying businessman who doesn’t have time for sleep is a popular one, but it’s not a good idea to try and copy them! Depriving yourself of sleep doesn’t give you more time to work – in fact, it can seriously harm your productivity and presents some serious health risks. There plenty of reasons why you should prioritise getting more sleep – here are 5 of the biggest!

Sleep Affects Your Weight and Diet

It’s happened to us all at some point – you’re working hard in the gym and eating all the right food, but you aren’t seeing the results you want. Why is this? The answer probably lies in the amount of sleep you’re (not) getting! Sleep deprivation severely affects your motivation, hunger cravings, and even the way your body processes and stores fat. If you aren’t sleeping, your brain constantly searches for quick sugar rushes to make it feel less tired. This means those large, sugary coffees and energy drinks become much more tempting! You’ll have less impulse control, so you’re also more likely to give in to the temptation.

Normally, having a sweet treat every now and then won’t have too much impact on your body as it’s able to process sugars and fats quite easily. However, when you’re sleep-deprived, your body won’t remove sugar and fat from your bloodstream properly, and will instead store them as fat around your internal organs. Whether you’re trying to lose weight or simply tone up for the summer, depriving yourself of sleep is one of the worst things you can do!

Poor Sleep Affects Your Productivity

No matter what you do through the day, whether you go to work, take care of the kids, or simply enjoy your retirement, getting a poor sleep will affect how productive you are. When your mind and body aren’t well-rested, all they ever want to do is sleep, so your motivation to do anything else will be hugely reduced. You’ll also find it hard to focus on anything and be very easily distracted.

A lack of sleep can seriously affect you physically as well as mentally, too! Your brain does a great job of keeping your organs and muscles working in perfect harmony, but it struggles to do this when you’re sleep-deprived. Your workouts will be less intense, you might start to notice more aches and pains after a hard day at work, and you’ll be more prone to sprains and strains. It doesn’t matter whether you spend your days doing DIY around the house or sitting at a desk – sleep deprivation will make you less productive!

Poor Sleep Affects Your Memory

Through the day, our brain has to deal with a lot of information. Some of this information is important to us and some of it is useless. When we go to sleep, our brain sorts through all our thoughts and memories of the day. It files away the stuff that’s important and discards the stuff that isn’t! Studies have shown that a good sleep helps your brain do this more effectively, moving memories from your short-term to your long-term memory. This means getting a good sleep helps you remember important facts and information as well as new skills (such as learning to play a musical instrument).

When you’re tired, your brain can’t do this as effectively. This leads to important things being simply forgotten or distorted, so your memories can be incomplete or inaccurate. Obviously, if you’re misremembering important details, this can affect your judgment at work or in your personal life, so you need to help your brain out by getting a good rest at night!

Sleep Helps Ease Pain

If you have a painful injury or a medical condition that causes chronic pain (like arthritis), getting a good sleep can actually make the pain more manageable. It isn’t clear exactly why this is, but getting a better sleep has a pain-relieving effect that’s comparable to taking 60mg of codeine twice a day!

Unfortunately, while better sleep does help ease pain, being in pain makes it harder to get to sleep in the first place! This means that conditions like arthritis or fibromyalgia can cause a vicious cycle of sleep deprivation and increased pain. Try light exercises or use an electric blanket or heat pad on a low setting to improve circulation and provide some pain relief so you can get to sleep faster – you’ll find your improved sleep quality will help ease pains throughout the day, too!

Better Sleep Helps You Fight Off Disease

If you get a healthy amount of sleep, you’re roughly three times less likely to get ill! Researchers have tested groups of people with different sleeping habits by monitoring their reactions to being exposed to a cold virus. The people who slept poorly were much more likely to get ill than those who were sleeping well.

Again, the specific reason for this isn’t known, but it makes sense that your immune system would be affected by sleep deprivation. Your body’s immune system is a fine-tuned machine, and a lack of sleep can throw off how it works! If you find yourself coming down with a lot of sniffles, try to make sure you’re getting a healthy amount of sleep to help fight them off.