3. Sleep restores and energizes
Lack of sleep makes us weak – as you are probably aware of from experience. We tend to get lightheaded and lose our energy when we’ve only had a few minutes of shut-eye. And then once we focus on the importance of rest and sleep and let ourselves get enough sleep, everything will get to back normal.
Why is this so?
Here’s the explanation from Mother Nature Network:
“When you sleep, your body and brain re-energize cells, clear waste and create memories. These processes are key to protecting your overall health and regulating specific functions that guide your mood, appetite, cognitive abilities, and libido.”
The article furthered that “hormones, including growth hormones, cortisol, thyroid-stimulating hormones, and insulin peak in the night hours.” These hormones “repair tissues and build muscles, and they’re also essential in functions like appetite control, mood regulation, and sex drive.”
This is why you are usually hungry when you wake up – because your body is at work while you sleep.
4. Sleep stimulates creativity
Most often, people in the workplace struggle with creativity … and lack of sleep might be the culprit. Studies say that REM sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep, actually contributes tremendously in making people become more creative.
Here are studies to prove this:
“At the University of California at Davis, researchers used a protocol called a Remote Associates Test (RAT) to quantify increases in creativity. They divided test subjects into three groups right before taking the test.
“One group was allowed to rest but not sleep, another was allowed to experience NREM sleep but was roused before REM, and the other was allowed to reach the REM stage. Those in the rest and NREM groups showed no increase in creativity as measured by RAT, whereas those recently woken from REM sleep showed an increase in capacity.
“UC San Diego scientists also found that participants scored 40% better on a creativity test after REM sleep. REM seems to spark solutions to new creative problems better than any other stage of sleep, suggesting that “sleep on it” may, in fact, be sound advice.”