Why is sleep so important?
As life gets busier and we try to squeeze more into less time, there’s one thing that can quickly get left behind – sleep.
Whether you’re working on goals, staring at the TV, or bingeing on Netflix, getting enough sleep can be a real challenge for many of us. In fact, we have something of a sleep crisis taking place at the moment.
Almost 74% of Britons surveyed in The Great British Bedtime Report, for example, reported that they sleep for less than seven hours each night.
From obesity to Alzheimer’s, social isolation and anxiety, studies are continually linking a lack of sleep with new and alarming health risks.
In the past, we’ve seen a macho attitude towards sleep, and over time the degradation of its worth and value. Sleep is seen as a weakness and a sign of laziness. It’s becoming increasingly clear that lack of sleep across society is a real problem and can have real consequences on our health.
The NHS says poor sleep puts you at risk of a variety of health problems, including obesity, heart disease and diabetes – and it shortens your life expectancy. It also affects our ability to concentrate in the daytime, energy levels and our decision-making functions.
And as smartphones and laptops keep us up later and later, the problem is only likely to get worse.
Many of us understand the need to sleep, but we suffer from poor quality, sleep and are unable to drift off at night, or continually wake up. This poor quality can sleep can be just as damaging, as the body only isn’t getting the rest and recovery time it needs.
If you’re not getting enough sleep, it’s practically impossible to be at your best.
An often-quoted study compared the effects of sleep deprivation with alcohol consumption, finding that lacking sleep for 24 hours gave participants the equivalent performance as someone with a blood-alcohol level of 0.1. They also found that a consistent failure to sleep enough could have similarly significant effects.
Forgetting the long term health effects, if not getting enough sleep is effecting your work, relationships and general happiness, then it’s time to start taking sleep seriously.
We’ll be looking in detail at the issues that lack of sleep can cause, and helping you to come discover strategies to consistently get enough sleep, improve the quality of it, and generally feel better, and be at your best.
Stay tuned for our next blog!
Our song to help you sleep sounder at night
Here at GBM Music, we’re interested in using background music to help us. That’s why we created our sleep song, a piece of music specially designed to send you to sleep.
Find out more below: