People often overlook the link between better breathing and truly restorative sleep. But respiratory conditions that disrupt normal sleep patterns, such as sleep apnea and nocturnal asthma, can deprive your body of a good night’s sleep regardless of how many hours you’ve spent in bed. According to a range of scientific research over the past 50 years, maintaining overall good health depends not only on the quantity but also on the quality of the sleep you get each night.

Sleep affects nearly every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. While you’re taking your nightly break from working, running errands, and caring for your family, your brain is hard at work. It’s rebuilding and repairing the neuron connections that govern everything from hormone production to immune system function. Sleep is so essential for basic health that even one night of insufficient sleep can lead to difficulty concentrating, impaired memory, and decreased eye-hand coordination the next day. The National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research estimates that sleep deprivation costs Americans billions of dollars in accidents and lost productivity each year.

How much sleep is enough?

That depends on how old you are. Infants need about 16 hours a day. People over 65 often require only six or seven hours. Most adults need seven to eight hours of sleep, though some need as little as five or as many as ten. Teenagers, whose bodies and brains are still developing, should try to get about nine hours of sleep each night.

During a single night’s sleep, our bodies go through a series of sleep cycles that last from 90 to 110 minutes each. There are five stages of sleep in each cycle, from stage 1, or light sleep, through increasingly deeper, more restorative stages. Stage 5 is REM or “rapid eye movement” sleep, the part of the cycle when we dream. As the sleep cycle repeats throughout the night, the periods of deep sleep and REM grow longer and longer. Those who don’t get enough sleep, or sleep only fitfully, are deprived of the deepest, most restorative periods of sleep.

Without enough sleep, you’ll end up with a sleep debt, like an overdraft on a bank account. Research suggests that people don’t adapt to less sleep. You may get used to operating in a sleep-deprived state, but your body pays the price in the form of memory problems, slow reaction time, and impaired judgment.

Getting enough sleep is just as important as all the day-to-day responsibilities that often keep us from our beds at night. The fact is, a good night’s sleep can help improve performance on all your waking activities. If you’re truly concerned about “having enough hours in the day,” you can’t afford to lose any sleep.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 8:27 am and is filed under Sleeping & Snoring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.