Gemeinsam verändern wir Leben im Schlaf

Wie wichtig ist Schlaf?

A lot of people are not aware of how important sleep is, they do not give sleep the amount of attention it actually deserves. I would like to change that. I want to explain the important aspects of sleep and how to optimize them. So why do we sleep at all? It is a tricky question, but we have many more answers than people commonly think.

The optimal sleeping time for humans is around eight hours. At least that’s the theory right? This means that when we’re ninety, we’ll have spent thirty years sleeping. This already indicates the importance of sleep.

At night our brain processes what we have learned and experienced during the day. Sleep will always boost the knowledge or abilities we acquired while awake. This means if you sleep between learning and testing, your performance is better compared to not sleeping in between. We can also tell our brain what to keep during sleep and what to dismiss.

Not getting enough sleep diminishes cognitive functions like attention, reasoning, language and decision-making. Creativity and problem-solving also strongly depend on sleep.

Sleep is tremendously important for our immune system. Several studies show that sleep helps recovery from a cold. But if we get enough sleep we won’t even catch a cold as easily in the first place.

The relationship between sleeping and dreaming is important, too. Current research indicates that our dreams do not replicate what happens during the day. They rather mirror emotions from the previous day. It is assumed that the brain tries to separate emotions from experiences while dreaming. Dr. Rosalind Cartwright has demonstrated that we dream in order to resolve our emotional past. The reason why dream sleep is so successful in separating experience from emotion is probably a stress hormone called noradrenaline, or better said, the absence of this hormone during REM sleep. Reexperiencing emotions in the absence of this hormone seems to help people get over them. There is a therapy for patients with a post-traumatic stress disorder. Their levels of noradrenaline are lowered in order to let them process negative emotions overnight. Most people know that things seem much less worrying after having slept. Now you now the scientific explanation for this long-known observation

So, if sleep is so important, what do we need for a night of good sleep?

Start with a good mattress that is comfortable and ergonomic. Your spine and intervertebral disks are equilibrated. Why is this important? Your intervertebral disks lose liquid during the day because of the load they carry. They replenish while you sleep. Ergonomics are as important as your sleeping habits.

I’d like to close with a quote from Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post: “A way to a more productive, more inspired and more joyful life is getting enough sleep.”