by Richard Galochkin
I’ve battled with a tendency to resist sleep for years. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy sleeping, but I tend to fight it because it gets in the way of things I’d rather be doing. It interrupts my desire to study, read, work and even watch TV. But as my health deteriorated over the years due largely to poor sleep habits, I became a little less resistant and a little smarter about the very real importance of sleep relative to the merely perceived importance of all those other things.
Unfortunately, I’m hardly the only one who has set aside a few hours of sleep every night. In many cultures such as the US, the demands of our jobs practically require less sleep and more time at the office. Funny how, in the pursuit of more creature comforts we find ourselves sacrificing the greatest comfort of all. On occasion, that’s alright. As a matter of habit, it’s terrible. Aside from the direct impact to our health, poor sleep contributes to a chain reaction that can lead to a dramatically diminished quality of life.
You don’t need to be a doctor to recognize some of the benefits of good sleep. Quality rest contributes to better concentration, moods and productivity for example. But there are less obvious benefits we are beginning to understand. One example you may not know about is that healthy sleep actually helps us maintain healthy weight.
One of the theories behind the association of quality sleep with good weight management is based in evolution. The premise is that our bodies interpret a low stress environment and react accordingly. There must be plenty of food and it must be readily available or we wouldn’t be sleeping so soundly all the time. Poor sleep, on the other hand, triggers stress reactions and our bodies respond differently. We tend to go into a type of horde mode to carry us through tough times. It’s the metabolic equivalent of a squirrel packing away nuts to carry it through the winter.
Whether or not you agree with the popular science behind the association of sleep and weight management, what isn’t up for debate (it’s been well studied) is that there really is a relationship between them. “Why” isn’t as important as the simple acceptance that symptoms such as weight gain, depression, fatigue and mood swings are legitimately tied to our sleep habits and the message is clear. Sleep is important.
But recognizing the medical consequences of lost sleep doesn’t necessarily prepare us for the very real ways it can influence our lives. We see that lost sleep can cause us to be moody but may fail to make the intuitive leap that those moods can hurt our relationships. We don’t further connect the harm to our relationships with the inevitable difficulty we’ll have in getting good quality sleep. One leads to the other and then comes back to compound the first. The cycle repeats until we find ourselves feeling trapped in hopeless circumstances from which we struggle to escape.
Imagine, for example, a tough day at work following a few nights of poor sleep. As a result, you botch a very important proposal. Your boss isn’t the least bit happy. It’s all you can think of that night as you crawl back into bed and your head just won’t let you doze off. Your alarm goes off the next morning after hours of tossing and turning and you drag yourself to the office even more fatigued where, predictably, your performance continues to suffer. Your work doesn’t go unnoticed and when promotion time rolls around, you find yourself passed up after a demoralizing review in which your boss tells you that you’re not living up to his expectations.
Nor does your situation end at the office. The lack of sleep, poor performance at work and growing depression over the direction your life is taking leads to problems on the home front. Your temper is short and your spouse becomes fed up with your unpredictable mood swings. Arguments become more regular and all of it combines into an epic scene of bad circumstances following bad sleep followed by more bad circumstances. If only you could catch a few nights of good sleep.
But it doesn’t happen. You can’t stop thinking about your job, your performance on that proposal and your escalating fights with your spouse. Your career is in shambles, your relationship is a mess and you keep mulling it all over every time you shut your eyes. All because of a few bad nights in which sleep was elusive.
Think that’s all a bit dramatic? Think again. Millions of people who already suffer from depression or who already find themselves facing difficult circumstances can attest to how little it takes to teeter from coping to floundering. A bout of bad sleep over as little as a few days can emotionally and physically cripple a person. If you accept that planes crash due to pilot fatigue and the fact that people die on highways every year due to tired drivers, is it really that much of a leap to accept that sleeplessness can contribute to ruining lives in less final but more prolonged ways?
Our bodies are like machines. Just like a machine, we need maintenance and upkeep to function properly. We need fuel in the form of food and water but we also need energy to convert that fuel into something useful. Without sleep, our battery can’t recharge and we can’t function. We simply break down progressively on both an emotional and physical level.
The importance of sleep is evident in one of those questions your parents and doctor routinely ask; “how are you sleeping?” That question isn’t motivated by an interest in how you like your mattress, but because the answer can point to so much more. Difficult circumstances at home, at work or in life will often dictate a negative response. Just knowing the answer to that question can tell you a lot about the person’s physical and emotional circumstances. The question could just as well be, “how is life treating you?”
So when you burn the midnight oil and find it becoming routine, ask yourself what you’re really gaining. A few more hours, sure, but what’s the cost? Are they quality hours? Are you performing as well as you could be? Do you find yourself depressed or struggling during your slightly lengthened day? Are you short with your kids? With your spouse? The little you gain each day you sacrifice sleep may be costing you far more in terms of quality of life.
Richard Galochkin Health benefits, Family, Fitness, Health, Home, living, sleep