When your body is aching for sleep, don’t fight it. Give in to sleep because you deserve it. In a generation obsessed with getting on a busy or hustle mode, sleep becomes a distraction. People avoid it like the plague. However, sleep isn’t a weakness or a villain. Sleep is the secret weaponry of successful people. This is in fact one of the advocacies at memory care in Macomb, MI.
Getting enough hours of sleep at night is crucial to waking up refreshed and your brain performing at peak levels. Sleep does not just enable your body’s natural ability to heal and recharge, but it also keeps your brain or memory sharp and robust – and this is precisely what you need to up your game.
While sleeping, your body can rest, but that is also a crucial time for your brain to get busy processing information. This is the exact process that allows you to store and retain new information.
Sleep deprivation is an enemy in stealth mode. When you lack sleep, you are at risk of contracting severe health complications like cardiac problems, hypertension, diabetes, depression, cancer, and the like. You also experience forgetfulness or memory loss which can often start at an early age.
Why Sleep Is a Superpower
You don’t have to skip sleep to become successful. While you may put in extra hours each week to complete deadlines for school, work, or business, sleeping for at least eight hours a day is non-negotiable at any age.
If you decide to sleep for just two hours each night, you’ll see how it negatively impacts cognitive performance. Lack of sleep results in poor reaction time, sluggish motor skills, memory decline, and can even lead to stress and irritability.
Sleep is essential for the human body. It’s a superpower! In fact, sleep is even more critical for brain health. The Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) stages are vital in sharpening the saw or cognitive performance. It helps boost memory retention and recall, focus, judgment, emotional control, mood, and analytical or problem-solving skills.
People who are often sleep-deprived experience high levels of stress which could lead to anxiety and depression. Lack of sleep can also result in sleep disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia. Recent studies have also linked lack of sleep to memory loss, cognitive decline, and dementia.
Sleep is an antidote to memory loss. It boosts cognitive performance and allows you to absorb and learn new information like a sponge would readily.
Sleep Sharpens Memory
There is a direct connection between lack of sleep and memory loss. It’s hard to concentrate or even retain new information when your mind is foggy due to lack of sleep. Sleep can even affect speech and reaction time. It dulls your daily performance and can even affect relationships.
Sleep is connected to memory, as stressed in these two points:
- Sleep sharpens a person’s ability to learn and focus.
- Sleep is pivotal to making a memory stick long-term to enable easy recall.
Sleep is fundamental to creating memories. Memories are categorized into the following:
- Episodic – Remembering life events such as losing a loved one or details of your first kiss.
- Facts – Remembering or memorizing birthdays or historical figures.
- Instructional – Remembering procedures or instructions on how to bake a cake or how to play golf.
Sleep is essential for consolidation, absorption, and recall of new information that you have acquired while you’re awake – as greatly encouraged at memory care in Macomb, MI. Contrary to popular notions, sleep isn’t for the weak. Sleep is a prerequisite to a complete mind and body. You also need adequate sleep for good mental health. You strengthen your physical reflexes while also keeping your concentration and judgment fine-tuned.
People perform better when fully rested or after a good nightcap than those who slept for barely two hours.
Sleep boosts memory, and science shows it starts from the brain’s neocortex and hippocampus. These are the regions of the brain that store long-term memory. So when you’re asleep, the hippocampus’ task is to replay the events that transpired during the day, and the neocortex processes the memories for long-term storage and recall.
Deep sleep, which you experience during REM sleep, is critical to sharpening your memory. Adults are recommended to get at least seven to nine hours of sleep every night. In reality, though, this seems to be a challenging goal to achieve, especially in this productivity-obsessed generation.
What Happens To Your Brain When You Lack Sleep?
If you had to party all night or cram for reports that were due the next day, then you would experience extreme fatigue and downtime the next day. With insufficient sleep, your brain would be overworked, and your overall performance or productivity would be slowed down.
Once sleep deprivation has been chronic, daily tasks or activities become a chore. You’ll have difficulty remembering important dates or basic stuff like where you kept your car keys or your email password.
- Some people experience micro sleeping during the daytime to recuperate from inadequate sleep. However, it dims concentration and reaction time as you experience extreme drowsiness and fatigue.
- Mental functioning is derailed as you struggle to keep your mind active and alert while your brain and body beg for more sleep. Lack of sleep leads to daytime sleepiness or sluggishness and deterioration of learning and memory skills.
- Poor sleep impairs your emotional responses because it impedes everyday rationalization, problem analysis, and decision-making processes. When your emotions become too chaotic, you can’t make the right decisions.
- You can think but not in an efficient manner and make more errors than usual.
- This also gets in the way of creativity and innovation.
- It hampers productivity and can harm or threaten life or limb, especially if you are working in the medical or construction field that requires solid and agile cognitive performance.
Conclusion
Now, productivity is set on hyperdrive as lack of sleep becomes a part of the hustle culture. This is why getting enough sleep gets you to your goal, which is one of memory care in Macomb, MI’s goals. In addition, knowing that sleep boosts your memory means you have already won half the battle with a good night’s sleep.
