Benefits of Sleep for 7 to 8 Hours for Body Health
If you have maintained a diet and exercise routine but are not balanced with adequate rest every night, then all your efforts to live a healthy life are just in vain. This is because the length and quality of sleep plays an important role in the development of your body’s health. So, how sleep can affect the body and what are the benefits of getting enough sleep for health?
Why do I need sleep?
Reporting from Healthline, a recent scientific study shows that lack of sleep can cause significant changes in the body. The reason is, lack of sleep can increase your risk of experiencing a number of serious health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, sleep apnea, until premature death.
Sleep duration of seven to eight hours is actually recommended only for adults, including the elderly. Meanwhile, young people such as children and adolescents have longer sleep hours than adults. The following are the recommended lengths of sleep according to age categories:
- Infant or toddler: 16-18 hours
- Preschooler: 11-12 hours
- Elementary school children: 10 hours
- Teenagers: 9-10 hours
- Adults and seniors: 7-8 hours
List of benefits of sleep enough for health
Sleep is included in an activity that has a myriad of benefits. When you sleep, your brain releases hormones and compounds that help with several processes in the body, including:
1. Sleeping for seven to eight hours can make you live a long life
Too much or not enough sleep can be linked to a person’s life expectancy, although this can also be influenced by various things such as illness. However, at least the length and quality of sleep plays a role in extending your lifespan.
This is evidenced by researchers from England and Italy who analyzed data from 16 separate studies. This study involved more than 1.3 million people by looking at their sleeping habits. A surprising fact shows that people who sleep less than six hours each night are 12 percent more likely to experience premature death.
They also found that people who cut sleep time from seven hours to five hours or less had a 1.7 times faster risk of dying. So indirectly, this shows that one of the benefits of getting enough sleep is to extend life expectancy.
2. Control your appetite
When you sleep at night, your calorie needs will decrease due to the lack of movement. This is what makes energy needs decrease. However, when you are sleep deprived, the brain organs will lower levels of leptin, a hormone that creates feelings of fullness. As a result, you become hungry easily.
Then, you will be encouraged to meet the energy needs of the body so that in the end you decide to eat more. This will be made worse if you do not exercise enough so that your weight becomes increasingly uncontrollable.
Not only for adults, lack of sleep can also affect children’s health. A 2014 study showed that children who are sleep deprived are at risk of obesity and an increase in body mass index (BMI). If allowed to continue, this effect will continue until they are adults. To find out whether your current body mass index is ideal, calculate it with this BMI calculator or at bit.ly/bodymassindex.
3. Boosts the immune system
When you sleep, your immune system releases compounds called cytokines. These compounds have a protective effect on your immune system by helping to fight inflammation and infection. Without getting enough sleep, you may not have enough cytokines to keep your body from getting sick.
A 2013 study found that lack of sleep can increase the amount of inflammatory compounds in the body. This condition is the same as when you have asthma or allergies.
4. Improve memory
Do you often forget? Well, it could be because you are not getting enough sleep. The reason is, one of the benefits of sleep is that it can strengthen your memory. A study shows that sleeping after studying can help improve memory. If you don’t get enough sleep, it’s easy to forget the things you’ve been through before.
Seven to eight hours of sleep can allow you to experience all stages of sleep. Two phases of sleep, namely REM and slow wave sleep can facilitate the process of remembering and creative thinking. Meanwhile, people who are sleep deprived will experience several things that can interfere with memory, including:
- Difficulty receiving information, because the neurons in the brain are working too hard.
- Tend to interpret events differently.
- Tend to lose the ability to recall certain information.
How to get enough sleep
Difficulty getting enough sleep is usually influenced by several factors. I don’t know because I was busy playing gadget, excessive anxiety, or stress. So, here are some quick sleep methods that you can apply starting today, including:
- Create a sleep schedule. Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day of the week, including weekends. This is useful for shaping your sleep cycle.
- Avoid sleep disturbances, such as caffeine, chocolate, nicotine, and alcohol.
- Create a comfortable sleeping atmospherefor example, by adjusting the coolant temperature and turning off the lights to create a quiet environment.
- Get regular exercise. Avoid exercising too close to bedtime as this can keep you awake.
- Reduce stress. Experiencing stress after activity often makes it difficult to sleep. Well, you can do yoga, meditation, massage, or take a walk to reduce stress.
Hello Health Group does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
