Sleep Training is a great way to improve your sleep. Sadly, sleep is commonly taken for granted until you lose it. Don’t wait for it to change.
There’s a reason humans sleep a third of their life away. Sleep is vital for health. And with more than 70 million Americans suffering from a sleep disorder, our healthcare system needs all the help it can get. Sleep training can turn these statistics on their head.
Sleep disruptions can have significant short-term consequences, ranging from increased stress responses, heightened levels of pain, reduced overall quality of life, emotional instability and acquired mood disorders, and decreases in cognition, memory, and mental performance.
The long-term consequences can be even more damaging, causing high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, increased blood sugar levels and Type II diabetes, and higher rates of colorectal cancer.
Sleep training is a great way to maximize sleep and optimize your quality of life. Getting a good night’s rest is a portal into the next day. It has far more of an influence on our daily behaviors and general health than we initially thought.
Sleep Training – Sleep Today to Think Tomorrow
Sleep is essential for high-level cognitive processing and mental performance, which can carry over the following day. Cognitive performance and vigilant attention to tasks decline quickly after 16 hours of continuous wakefulness. This is apparent when performing high-risk procedures such as operating industrial equipment and surgery.
And the scary part about all this is that those who suffer from disrupted sleep and continuous interruptions at night are often unaware of their altered cognitive performance and emotional instability.
Your Memories Depend on Your Time Spent In Bed
Sleep is good for the body and the brain. Research into memories and sleep has uncovered a significant relationship between the consolidation of memories and sleep quality. The belief is that during the day, the brain focuses on encoding memories, flipping its focus to consolidating those memories while asleep.
This process makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, as sleep is the perfect time to run through the previous day’s events and assess what memories need to stay and what needs to go.
The Brain Takes Out The Trash While Sleeping
Your brain uses up 20% of your body’s blood and oxygen levels. During bouts of higher-level physical and mental activity, they can peak at 50%! Sleeping allows the brain to use a mechanism to clear out the trash accumulated throughout the day.
Increased cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) flow within the brain has been documented and researched as a mechanism of increased brain metabolism and arterial flow, allowing self-maintenance and the regulation of various internal house-cleaning processes to occur while the brain sleeps.
The proposed mechanism is that the glymphatic system (immune system of the brain and support cells) becomes affected. These internal cellular repair processes fail when sleep-deprived, causing a build-up of toxins and subsequent cognitive deficiencies.
Sleep Traning Is Your Best Bet for Success
As you can see, sleep is essential for health and high-level cognitive processing. Without it, the brain slowly breaks down and turns on us. Eventually, overcoming our daily struggles and stressors is even more difficult.
Sleep does far more than recharging the batteries. It plays a pivotal role in our physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
If you are one of the many who suffer from poor sleep, it’s time to find answers to your questions. There are many tools in the healthcare toolbelt to help you find solutions to your health problems. Sleep training is one of the many ways to help you sleep better.
It starts with a quick conversation and honest feedback from a qualified medical provider. We understand the importance of sleep, the brain, and your health. Let us help you train your sleep and create an individualized program that fits your needs.
