Understanding the Importance of Sleep

If there’s one thing I’ve really learned about myself in these past two weeks, it’s just how important an even sleep cycle is on my body.

Each night it seems I’ve been going to bed late and waking up even earlier. I used to think I could function on only 4-5 hours of sleep and still get through my day, but I’ve realized that unless I get a full 8-9 hours of sleep, I’m just not as energized as I could (or should) be. Different people may require less sleep than others, but I think the more you exhaust yourself mentally and physically, the longer it’s going to take to recharge your internal battery.

The problem is, like most American’s, I fell into the pattern of trying to sleep less and accomplish more. While it’s not a particularly enjoyable pattern to fall into, I can certainly understand why so many people DO fall into it. Even if we’re not consciously aware of it, we see this pattern all the time around us.

Look at the popular practice of college students staying up all night and cramming for an exam. Instead of sleeping an extra two hours that night, they’ll forego sleep altogether so they can put in extra study time. Smart? Definitely not. A wise time investment? Nope. At least beneficial for the sake of the exam….? Doubtful.

We don’t need to be a doctor to understand just how important sleep is for our body, but in case you’re wondering, let’s take a look at this example here:

Hours in a day – 24
Hours spent awake on average: 16-20
Hours spent asleep on average: 4-8

Now let’s assume you’re fully charged and ready to go. You just slept all night long like a baby and you’re ready to tackle the world. You’ve just slept a solid 8 hours, and so that gives you 16 hours of “awake” time to accomplish whatever it is you need to do.

Curious to see how productive you can be with that amount of sleep? It’s easy if you follow this simple formula:

First of all, determine what your OPTIMAL sleep time is. For me it’s a solid 8 hours, for other people it may be more or less.

Use your optimal sleep time as a reference, which is going to be the number 1.

So if I’ve just slept 8 hours, my optimal level, meaning I’m awake for 16 hours of the day, then 1 x 16 = 16.

My “productivity” rating is going to be 16. The higher the rating, the better. What if I had only slept 6 hours instead though? Since 8 is my optimal sleep number, all I have to do is: 6/8 = 3/4

Since I’ve been awake for 18 hours now instead of 16, that means: 3/4 x 18 = 13.5

Which means my productivity has gone DOWN! Surprised? You really shouldn’t be, as the less you sleep, the more impaired your cognitive and physical skills are going to be throughout the day. Instead of being fully charged, you’re only partially charged and unable to operate at your full capacity. Sure, you may be able to perform mundane tasks in the same fashion as you could under optimal sleep conditions, but circumstances which require you to exert additional brain power or physical will are going to leave you severely lacking.

Another big myth is that you can just “catch up” on your missed sleep at once. If I decide tonight that I’m only going to sleep for 2 hours, and then tomorrow night that I’m going to sleep for my normal 8 hours, when I wake up on the third day I’m still going to be extremely tired. Two nights of sleep should leave me with 16 hours, but instead I’ve only received 10 hours, which is putting me 6 below my optimal level.

In theory, I could sleep for 14 hours in an attempt to make up for that missed sleep, but sleeping for 14 hours at once is more than likely not going to happen. Even in my most exhausted state, 8-10 hours of sleep is all my body can manage to produce.

With that being said, obviously if we missed a few hours of sleep last month it’s not going to be still plaguing us to this very day; our bodies eventually adjust to it and we move on. How big is that adjustment window though?

In my experience, usually a few days at most is all I need. If I only manage to get 5 hours of sleep one night, then the next few nights I’ll make sure to get an additional hour or two and before I know it I’m completely caught up. If you want a medical explanation, the actual answer is that it can last for up to two full weeks. Granted that’s mostly in extreme cases, but it can still plague people for quite some time.

The influence it has on our physical fitness abilities.

For one, we only build muscle when we’re asleep. You can spend all day long working out at the gym, but if you don’t get a good night’s sleep then it’s all going to go to waste. When we exercise, specifically in strength training, we’re actually tearing down our muscle fibers so that our body can rebuild them, this time bigger and stronger. However that process of rebuilding is done when we sleep, and starving our body of proper sleep is essentially starving it of the proper resources to finish the job.

At best we won’t get the full benefits of our workout, and at worst, lack of sleep can actually cause us to gain weight. When the body is tired it makes every attempt to naturally conserve energy, with one of those attempts being a decrease in your metabolism.

Instead of relying of caffeine so much to get you through the day, how about just getting enough sleep for once? Sure, nobody said you can’t enjoy your morning coffee now and again, but using it as a crutch to get through the day is both detrimental to your body and cutting you off from your own natural resources. Understand the importance of sleep, and you can easily understand the importance of a productive day.

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