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It is important to give your body the essentials it needs. They can be classified into four different categories. To operate properly, your body needs proper hydration; nutrients and vitamins; exercise and physical activity; and sleep (newhealthbasics.com). Although all support basic function throughout the day, sleep is one of the more important functions. As vital as it is for our bodies to function, scientists still have yet to figure out why sleep is so necessary for our bodies (healthysleep.med).
Some of the theories as to why we sleep are the Inactivity Theory, Energy Conservation Theory, Restorative Theories, and the Brain Plasticity Theory. The Inactivity Theory suggests that since remaining unconscious made us safer in our primal times, it is the reason we do it to this day. The Energy Conservation Theory suggests that we need sleep to conserve energy since when we are unconscious we tend to not use as many calories. The Restoration Theories follow the thesis that we need to repair all the damaged cells and release certain chemicals and proteins that only get released while we sleep.
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And the Brain Plasticity Theory says that the structure of our brains move around and change when we sleep (healthysleep.med). All of these theories have reasoning on why it is needed and/or beneficial to the human mind and body. Our bodies go into two stages: REM and NREM sleep. The amount of time you spend each of these cycles can affect your overall sleep, which inturn, affects your health (webmd.com).
Overall, sleep is an equally, if not more vital part to mental and physical health.
Sleep has an overall positive effect on mental health, making a lack of sleep difficult to function throughout the day. While you are sleeping, everything within you is getting well rested and recovering from the long day before (vantagepointrecovery.com). One of the hardest things that many of us deal with throughout our lives, is stress. It can affect how we sleep, operate throughout the day, and our overall mood. With more sleep, a person is less likely to be stressed out and more likely to stay relaxed (verywellhealth.com). That is a benefit for mental health because stress can affect multiple things in your life and make you less happy. Gaining more sleep also can cause you to be more focused on everyday activities.
The more consistent sleep you have, the more focused you are going to be every day. You won't be falling asleep or losing focus due to a dazed mental state. Sleep also helps with memorization. While we are sleeping we go through memory consolidation. There are two types of processes that the brain goes through memory consolidation. While we are sleeping, our brain takes our events from throughout the day and stores them in the long term and short term, using synaptic consolidation and system consolidation (human-memory.net). Lack of sleep is known to lead to lack of focus and concentration, which can make many daily activities, take driving for instance, dangerous (vantagepointrecovery.com). Studies show that depression is linked to a lack of sleep and that the greater sleep you have, the less likely you are to get depression (webmd.com). Lack of sleep affects a person's mood as it is, but with consistent lack of sleep, it is likely to lead to depression. The better the sleep is the better the overall mood of the person is. Sleep has a positive effect overall on the mind.
With many mental effects, sleep also has many physical effects on the body. One of the greatest benefits sleep has on the body is the improved immune system. When we are asleep our bodies release certain bodies that fight sicknesses, and the less time we spend sleeping, the fewer bodies we have to fight viruses and bacterias (valleysleepcenter.com). By getting the sleep you need you will be able to create enough bodies to fight those things, making your immune system healthier. Sleep also keeps your heart healthier. Without sleep, the risk for obesity, heart disease, and infections is higher, causing many cardiovascular problems (newsinhealth.nih). With obesity comes higher blood pressure, and with consistently high blood pressure, you find heart issues. If you get the recommended amount of sleep, it won't have an effect on your appetite, keeping the risk of high blood pressure down. The way lack of sleep affects your appetite, is by altering your hormones that regulate your hunger (psychologytoday.com). Another way it affects your appetite is by the increased amount you eat later at night. The more calories and food you eat, the more weight you possibly can put on. By getting enough sleep your body is able to regulate these hormones, keeping you maintained at a stable, healthy weight.
Overall, sleep has positive effects on not only the mind but the body as well. Not getting enough sleep can change even the slightest things in your day, causing you to throw it off. Sleep is not the only way to keep your body healthy. To be completely healthy, you should be getting enough sleep, hydrating, exercising, and eating properly. Lack of sleep can affect all of those categories, mainly eating properly and exercising. How are you supposed to eat right when your hormones are thrown off from the lack of sleep? The goal is to treat your body like you would treat a friend: respectful. Would you feed horrible food to your friend? Would you deprive them of sleep? If you would do those things, that would make you a pretty bad friend. And you should treat your body the way you want to be treated.
Important Functions of Body. (2019, Dec 17). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/important-functions-of-body-essay
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