I took sleep for granted for a big part of my life. In university I got so accustomed to not having a bedtime from pulling all-night study or party benders that a part of me questions myself when I can’t push my body anymore. I find myself now taking three days to clean my apartment as opposed to one. My body physically yearns for my bed, a point in life I never thought I would reach despite how naïve it sounds. Youth has something magical about it. In a strange way it makes you feel immortal. You know time is always moving, but your youth feels permanent.
Regardless of your age, however, sleep is not something to be taken lightly. As our working and living schedules overlap and the stresses of modern society pressure us, a full, good night’s sleep should be viewed as mandatory, just like breakfast in the morning. Those who have the habit of being busy and always on move are praised more than people who stop to recharge, and that’s just wrong.
According to Matthew Walker, founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, in the developed world, sleep is strongly associated with weakness, even shame. “We have stigmatised sleep with the label of laziness. We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming how little sleep we’re getting. It’s a badge of honour. When I give lectures, people will wait behind until there is no one around and then tell me quietly: ‘I seem to be one of those people who need eight or nine-hours’ sleep.’
I have found that personally when something doesn’t have an instant physical/visual effect that doesn’t look stereotypically harmful it is not obvious to see it for what is truly is. Yet, sleep deprivation can cause a multitude of general and mental health problems.
Weight fluctuation
Sleep deprivation prevents the body from regulating appropriate blood sugar control. A study showed that the cells of a sleep-deprived person become less responsive to insulin and by extension can cause a pre-diabetic state of hyperglycaemia making you ever more vulnerable to weight gain.
Weaker immunity
Without a good night’s sleep most of us can hardly function. Our body fails to recharge itself and thus making it more difficult for us to resist flu bugs and colds. There is a reason why we climb into bed when we are ill, it is clearly for our body to reset itself.
It feels unreal to link sleep to things like weight gain, immunity and even chronic diseases, but it is real. Now with phones and screens constantly glued to our eyes, it is equally important to acknowledge how our behavioural patterns have altered our sleep patterns as such devices release a blue light that influences your melatonin, the sleep-inducing hormone.
Sleep, despite how it may be brushed over, should be treated as something critical to our overall health.
