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For you to maintain an excellent health and wellbeing throughout your lifespan, it is necessary for you in sleeping well. Your body works to support healthy brain function and preserve your physical health and energy while you sleep. So, your sleep is quite important for your general health being.
Getting enough sleep increases brain power, improves weight management, and reduces stress and inflammation. It also plays a crucial role in tissue repair, hormone regulation, and overall health.
Some Benefits of Sleeping
1. Strengthens Your Heart
During sleep, your body releases hormones. Some of them keep your heart and blood vessels healthy, preventing against High blood pressure, worse heart function, and heart disease.
2. Regulates Your Blood Sugar
Sleep helps regulate your metabolism. That’s the way your body converts food to energy and regulates your blood sugar level. Blood sugar extremes can affect your mood, energy levels and mental function.
3. Reduces Your Stress Levels
Sleep helps your mind and body get relaxed and recover from your day. When you’re sleep deprived, your body releases stress hormones. Stress can make you react in ways that aren’t productive. You may act out of fear or make rash decisions. Or you may even be irritable.
4. Decreases Inflammation
Sleep regulates you. It can have an effect on your body. A chronic inflammation damages structures and increases your risk of many health conditions. A few examples include: Ulcers, Dementia, and Heart disease
5. Helps You Maintain a Healthy Weight
People who sleep less are more likely to be overweight or obese.Poor sleep appears to disrupt the balance of ghrelin and leptin. Those are hormones that control appetite. If you want to lose or maintain weight, don’t forget that good sleep is part of the equation.
6. Improves Your Balance
Sleep helps you maintain your physical abilities. When you deprive yourself of sleep, it leads to short term balance problems. That’s called postural instability. It can lead to injuries and falls.
7. Increases Your Energy and Activeness
A good night’s sleep makes you feel energized and alert. This helps you get your focus right and get things done. It’s easier to exercise when you’re energetic and alert. So that’s an indirect benefit of getting enough sleep. Being active all day feels good and can also help you get another good night’s sleep.
8. Improves Your Memory
Sleep appears to play a big role in what’s called memory consolidation. During sleep, your brain makes connections. It links events, feelings, and sensory input to form memories. Deep sleep is important for this. So more quality sleep can improve your memory.
9. Boosts Your Executive Functioning
Executive function involves thinking wide and complex. Problem-solving, planning, and making decisions are examples of such complex thinking. It can also affect your alertness and memory. Executive function helps you with work, school, social interactions, and more. One night of sleep deprivation can impair executive function the next day.
10. The Potential to Live Longer Comes With Better Sleep
Too much or too little sleep can be associated with a shorter lifespan. This is because of sleep’s relationship to the rest of the body’s processes. So, a good sleep increases your potential to live long.
FOODS TO EAT TO HELP YOU IN SLEEPING
It is well-known that certain substances, such as caffeine, can affect the onset of sleep in a negative way. On the other hand, evidence is growing that shows how other foods like tart cherries, kiwi, fatty fish (like salmon and tuna), and malted milk may have beneficial effects on sleep. Healthy dietary patterns overall—not just specific foods are also associated with longer sleep duration and shorter time to fall asleep.
1. Tart Cherries and Tart Cherry Juice
As the name indicates, tart cherries have a distinct flavor from sweet cherries. Sometimes called sour cherries, these include cultivars like Richmond, Montmorency, and English morello. They may be sold whole or as a tart cherry juice.
These benefits come from the fact that tart cherries have moderate concentrations of melatonin, which is a hormone that helps regulate circadian rhythm and promote healthy sleep. Tart cherries may also have an antioxidant effect that is conducive to sleep.
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2. Malted Milk and Nighttime Milk
Malted milk is made by combining milk and a specially formulated powder that contains primarily wheat flour, malted wheat, and malted barley along with sugar and an assortment of vitamins. It is popularly known as Horlick’s, the name of a popular brand of malted milk powder.
Milk itself contains melatonin, and some milk products are melatonin-enriched, providing a natural source of the sleep-producing hormone.
3. Fatty Fish
A research study found that fatty fish may be a good food for better sleep. Fatty fish may help sleep by providing a healthy dose of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids, which are involved in the body’s regulation of serotonin.
4. Nuts
Nuts contain melatonin as well as minerals like magnesium and zinc that are essential to a range of bodily processes. It has acombination of melatonin, magnesium, and zinc and helps adults with insomnia get better sleep.
5. Watermelon
Since dehydration can impact your ability to fall and stay asleep, choosing watery fruits like watermelon can make up for any deficits. It can be used to hydrate yourself before sleep and eliminate post-dinner hunger pains due to the fiber and volume.
6. Sweet Potato Toast
Sweet potatoes are great sources of potassium, magnesium, and calcium to help you relax.
7. Pistachios
Pistachios hit the sleep-inducing jackpot, packing in protein, vitamin B6, and magnesium, all of which contribute to better sleep.
8. Prunes
The nutrients in dried plums — vitamin B6, calcium, and magnesium, to name a few normally helps make melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep. Taking it before bedtime increases your sleeping behavior.
9. Dark Chocolate
Dark chocolate contains serotonin, which relaxes your body and mind, making it easier to sleep.
10. Bananas
The magnesium and potassium in bananas serve as muscle and nerve relaxants. The vitamin B6 found in the fruit also converts tryptophan into serotonin, increasing relaxation even more and good for sleep.
SEE ALSO:
11 Tips on How To Stop Sleeping in Class
Optimal Times for Water Consumption to Enhance Health
12 Lesser-Known Health Advantages of Bay Leaves
Seven Tips to Maintain Healthy Skin
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