With everything that students have going on, it can become hard to get a good night’s sleep. Other things often take priority and sleep takes a backseat to social life, studying and work. Sleep is a good thing that helps refuel our bodies and gives us energy to accomplish tasks. Sleep should become a priority because of how it improves our mental and physical health.
Memory
Sleep helps improve your memory. If you are trying to learn something new like a second language or studying new material for school, you’ll learn it better if you get a good night’s sleep. The ability to access information, maintain memories and the introduction of new material is also improved when getting a good night’s sleep.
“If you are trying to learn something, whether it’s physical or mental, you learn it to a certain point with practice,” said Dr. Rapoport, associate professor at NYU Langone Medical Center, to Health.com.
Better mood
According to Jodi A. Mindell, professor of psychology at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and author of Sleep Deprived No More, getting a good night’s sleep gives anyone the ability to be in a good mood. Getting enough sleep won’t guarantee a good mood all the time, but it does help. Sleep deprivation can cause crankiness, emotional breakdowns and other forms of irritability.
Weight control
Leptin is a hormone that plays a role in when you feel full while eating. Leptin levels drop when you don’t get enough sleep, so you become hungrier. Sleep deprivation causes you to eat more than you normally would. In the Western world, food is readily available and sleep is restricted to certain hours. This restriction on sleep and overabundance of food can overfill the stomach and drop leptin levels causing weight gain. Getting a full eight hours of sleep can help control weight.
Safety
Getting a good night’s sleep helps you function well throughout the day. Even losing one to two hours a night for a series of nights can cause micro sleep — small, uncontrollable moments of sleep that happen when you’re normally awake. This can be dangerous when trying to drive or function at work. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Disease Institute reported drowsy driving affects the ability to drive as worse, or more than, drunk driving. Drowsy driving results in 100,000 car accidents and 1,500 deaths every year. Traveling and driving are all things that require people to be functioning well. If you drive drowsy, you are at risk of harming yourself and others
