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Clients of mine will know how much I go on about getting those 6-8 hours in every night because of the importance of ’emptying our stress buckets’. The specific reason is that we need to get sufficient REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep): a process where our brains convert emotional memories into narrative memories (Its a physical process where the brain makes sense of stuff in our lives and moves those memories from our limbic brain into our cortex).
Anyhow lets stop with the neuroscience and read below for a rather motivating list of other reasons we need to be more disciplined in our sleeping patterns.
Comment by Mark Jones Hypnotherapy
Sleeping is essential for a healthy life.
Think you don’t need a lot of sleep? I was the same way until I was so tired I collapsed from exhaustion, hit my face on my desk, and broke my cheekbone. I decided to make sleep not just a personal priority but a cause. Consider these eye-opening facts from my research on the topic. Take them to heart—or, even better, to bed!
1. More sleep equals more sex. You read that right. After tracking how long women slept and their levels of sexual desire the next day, researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor found that an extra hour of sleep means you’re 14 percent more likely to have sex the day after. That’s motivation to hit the sack!
2. Sleep is like a dishwasher for your brain. While you get shut-eye, your body clears out toxic waste proteins that build up over the course of a day. “The brain has limited energy and must choose between two different states—awake and aware, or asleep and cleaning up,” says neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard, M.D. If you don’t get this critical recharge, your brain misses out on its cleanup cycle and literally shrinks over time. Then, guess what: You’re not as smart as you used to be.
3. Lack of sleep is nothing to brag about.In much of our culture, especially in the workplace, going without sleep is considered a badge of honor. Yet 24 hours without sleep is the equivalent of a blood alcohol level of 0.1 percent—at which point you are more than legally drunk. No politician would brag about smoking, so why do they regale us with tales of their other terrible habit, not sleeping?
4. Naps make you smarter. In one small study German researchers asked volunteers to learn word pairs. After that, half the group watched a DVD, and the other half took a catnap. The second group retained significantly more word pairs than their DVD-watching counterparts. Naps are an incredible performance enhancer; we should be more open to napping at work. At the Huffington Post, we have designated nap rooms!
5. Dreams really do come true. Many geniuses have said they first envisioned their inventions in their dreams, including Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine; Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of the periodic table; and Larry Page, Google cofounder. Page’s advice: “When a great dream shows up, grab it!”
6. Sleep comes when you stop fighting it. If you find yourself worrying about not falling asleep, you may suffer from what researchers call “fear of sleeplessness.” When I’m in this vicious circle, I remember this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, which helps me silence my mind: “Finish every day, and be done with it…you have done what you could.”
Read the original article from Glamour here