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Sleep is the best recommendation to start taking care of your health

14 March 2022

Persona en su cama manteniendo la salud del sueño

Key points

  • Restful sleep has great benefits for your physical and mental health.
  • Sleep improves your organs’ function by reducing your stress levels.

A good rest when sleeping is essential for your health as well as maintaining a balanced diet and exercising regularly. Sleep can improve your mood by allowing you to meet the demands of daily life, helping you manage stress, improving the health of your skin and organs, as well as helping you be alert.

Even when your routine is very hectic, you should not forget that sleep is essential for your body, as you recover energy, which will allow you to be at your best in your daily life. On the contrary, if you do not get enough sleep, you will affect the most basic functions of your body, compromising even your organs.

A good rest when sleeping implies complying with the necessary hours according to your age: some specialists recommend that an adult should sleep an average of 8 hours a day.

You can adopt simple habits to achieve this, such as establishing a fixed time to go to sleep, avoiding “heavy foods” and not exposing yourself to screen light such as television, computer, or cell phone, at least one hour before going to bed.

The lack of restful sleep can affect your body in various ways, some of the most common are:

  • Vision difficulty.
  • Hypersensitivity to light.
  • Reduction in your reading ability and concentration.
  • Feeling of constant tiredness.
  • Gastric problems
  • Lack of energy.
  • Bad mood and irritability.

In addition, it can trigger more severe conditions that could affect your daily activities. Among the most frequent are:

  • Narcolepsy.
  • Apnea.
  • Insomnia.
  • Nightmares.
  • Sleepwalking.
  • Sleep talking.
  • Bruxism.

By establishing a sleep routine and eliminating distractions (such as cell phones), you can achieve restful sleep, benefiting your body physically and mentally by eliminating the presence of primary ailments such as headaches of varying intensities.

If you are still not convinced that sleeping well will make you perform at your best, check out these 6 benefits:

  1. Increase your creativity
    When the brain rests, the production of hormones is balanced and your memory works perfectly. That potentiates imagination and you are more creative.
  2. Helps you lose weight
    Lack of sleep causes adipocytes (fat cells) to release less leptin, the appetite-suppressing hormone. Insomnia causes your stomach to release more ghrelin (the appetite hormone). Both actions cause poor sleep to be associated with obesity.
  3. Makes you healthier
    Our immune system uses sleep time to regenerate itself, allowing it to effectively fight toxins and germs that continually threaten us.
  4. Improves your memory
    Sleep strengthens neural connections, as the hippocampus, the storehouse of our memory, is restored by transforming short-term memory into long-term memory.
  5. Protects your heart
    If you suffer from insomnia you are three times more likely to suffer from heart failure, as you increase the level of stress hormones in the blood, increasing blood pressure and heart rate.
  6. Reduces depression
    When you sleep, your body relaxes by facilitating the production of melanin and serotonin. These hormones counteract the effects of stress hormones and help us to be happier and emotionally stronger.

So now you know, when you finish reading this article, prepare your best pillow, look for your favorite pajamas, leave your cell phone, and you will see how little by little you will be able to sleep like never before. Your body will thank you!

At ABC Medical Center’s Neurology Center, we can provide you with specialized care. Contact us!

Fuente:
https://www.achs.cl/home

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