We all know how important a good night’s sleep is for our body and the functioning of our brain. Being sleep deprived can leave us dropping things; pour orange juice on cereal, and the worse frantically hunt for things lying in front of us. And if nothing of this happens, at least being exhausted and tired throughout the day can simply be one affect. But did you know that these frustrations can be avoided by just getting more sleep.
And of course this involves sleeping on the right bed too! If your bed is not right, you will not have sleep anyways!
Before getting on to the bed part, let’s discuss (even if you know), the effects of sleep deprivation on your body and brain. The effects should help you understand how crucial sleep is for you:
The Drastic Effects of Sleep Deprivation
If you have the slightest of interest in history then read about the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl 1986, it occurred due to engineer’s sleepless shift of 13 hours. And there are more of these kinds. The accidents left everlasting impact on people in that environment. More, the deaths that are caused by fatigue driving are more than numbers. The point here is that, sleep deprivation has disastrous effects on the human brain.
So, how does the brain suffer due to sleep deprivation?
When you lack sleep, the brain starts automatically switching off certain areas of the brain. This clearly means that the brain function is impaired which in return affects the body functions. Lack of sleep also impairs our ability of remembering things that we have learnt from the previous day (this process generally occurs during deep sleep).
The worse that can happen from sleep deprivation includes: memory and cognitive dysfunction, mood fluctuations, and accidents. If you take the example of college students here, sleep deprivation in their case means losing out on learning. So, the students who lose out on sleep will eventually fall behind in studies.
Body becomes slow in producing hormones due to prolonged sleep deprivation. Stress hormone is over-produced; cortisol breaks in the skin putting years on face and adding fine wrinkles and eye bags. Low libido is another effect where you become unable to recognize positive facial expressions, body language, and other factors.
Lack of sleep affects the health in many ways. Obesity is another major affect of sleep deprivation where appetite stimulating hormone, grehlin is decreased and appetite suppressing hormone, leptin is increased. This we believe is quite a lot, and a body with all such abnormalities can eventually collapse!
Why Avoid Sleeping Less Then Required?
Sleeping less is majorly not an issue for people, in order to achieve the set targets, people cut down on sleeping hours. But after all these drastic affects of sleep deprivation on brain, body, and physical appearance as facial expressions, it seems vital to have sufficient amount of sleep. This however means that your sleeping cycle is set for daily routine. The time should be the same every day, this way the body and brain starts adjusting to the set time and will not even need an alarm clock.
Isn’t Every Bed Right For Sleep – As Long As it’s Comfortable?
Yes, a good bed is good enough for sleep. But did you ever find yourself awake in the mid of the night due to sweat during sweltering hot days? Did you wake up with a bad back and blamed a tiring routine for that? Did you ever have a stiff neck? There are many questions to ask, and we believe most of us will say yes to all these questioned asked above.
So, a good regular bed that you bought and have used it for years is probably good enough for you. But the truth is that, we hardly pay attention to the mattress we sleep on. No matter how many times we wake up during the night, we’ll still blame the room temperature for that. The fact is that regular beds might have stamps of being the most comfortable and suitable for your bad back, but they are actually not.
The local in Japan have centuries of beliefs in their traditional Japanese futons. According to Japanese and many other sleep experts, a good mattress is a no mattress! This means that a firm surface, as close as possible to the floor, and one made out of natural elements is the best. Authentic Japanese futon mattress is made out of 100% cotton; it leaves your body perfectly elevated, corrects the posture that can cause bad back, allows proper circulation of air due to cotton fibers which prevents the body from sweating, and even protects the body from allergies.