Sleep may appear simple at first glance; all it requires is lying down, closing your eyes, and drifting off into restful slumber. But it is in fact one of the most intricate body processes; there is even an entire field dedicated to studying its various conditions that affect it.
Sleep plays an essential role in several bodily processes, from growth and reproduction to regulating metabolism and supporting the immune system. Sleep also plays an integral part in consolidating memories and improving mental wellbeing.
Muscles and Tissues
Sleep can enhance virtually every aspect of life: it lowers injury risks, boosts immunity and energy levels, increases muscle growth, decreases stress hormone levels and can even help you shed unwanted weight.
NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep is the deep stage of restorative sleep in which blood flows to muscles and bones while electrical activity in the brain slows. This allows your body to rejuvenate cellular components that have become depleted throughout the day while rejuvenating itself – this process is known as restorative sleep.
After exerting yourself during training or suffering an injury, muscles, tendons and ligaments need time to recover. Sleep plays an essential role in this process by increasing protein synthesis and cell reproduction to repair damaged tissues and muscles; plus it allows you to replenish glycogen stores which reduce fatigue while improving muscle function.
No sleep can lead to increased inflammation and increase your risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and stroke. Furthermore, poor rest makes pain perception worse during physical therapy sessions or rehabilitation and makes managing discomfort harder than it needs be.
Prioritizing quality sleep can make managing pain easier, speeding up recovery from injury faster. Sleep can stimulate muscles to produce natural pain-relief substances and lessen intensity of pain signals from the brain while helping you do rehabilitation exercises more easily.
Bones
Proper sleep is vital to successful musculoskeletal recovery. As soon as you enter deeper stages of non-REM sleep, blood flow increases and oxygen and nutrients that support muscle repair become available to your muscles. Furthermore, during restful slumber they produce natural pain-relief substances; not enough sleep can deplete them leaving it difficult to manage pain during rehabilitation exercises.
Sleep allows the pituitary gland to produce growth hormones that stimulate muscle repair and development, but when not enough rest is taken these growth hormones are inhibited, leading to impaired cell regeneration resulting in slower recovery from injury or decreased participation in rehabilitation exercises.
Sleep loss has an adverse impact on bone health. Sleep deprivation reduces osteoblast activity while stimulating osteoclasts to overactively break down bone tissue, increasing fracture risks.
Poor sleep can result in the accumulation of lactic acid, which can contribute to fatigue and limit your ability to exercise and attend physiotherapy sessions. Furthermore, poor rest can cause an imbalance of calcium in the body that could weaken bones over time.
Tissues in the Brain
Scientists are only just beginning to grasp what sleep entails. Though it might appear simple, sleep involves much more than simply lying back down in comfort and closing your eyes – there is an entire field of medicine dedicated to understanding how our brain and bodies operate during restful restorative sleep. When people don’t get enough quality restful slumber or suffer from medical conditions that impede the process of sleeping it can have adverse consequences for long-term health.
Sleep plays an integral role in tissue repair and cell reproduction, helping heal muscles, bones, tendons, as well as enhance pain tolerance and decrease inflammation. Sleep also stimulates production of cytokines (proteins that fight infection and promote healing).
Sleep can help the brain detox from toxins and protein build-up by using its glympathic system – like a plumbing system in reverse – to flush away waste products from its brain, helping maintain overall brain health and functionality. This system ensures waste products do not build up inside your head allowing the glympathic system to keep functioning optimally, keeping you feeling healthy and functional!
Sleep is essential to overall health; however, its importance varies with age. Babies, toddlers and school-age children require more rest than adults do. People who do not get enough rest due to sleep disorders may be at increased risk for health conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity or depression.
The Immune System
People often don’t understand how profoundly sleep can influence almost every tissue and system of their bodies, from brain function to memory and learning, metabolism and energy levels, immune system strength and disease resistance, as well as mood disorders like depression. A good night’s rest can promote brain health by improving its functions as well as supporting memory retention. Achieve good quality rest can also support good brain functioning by maintaining memory retention as well as memory formation for learning purposes, maintaining metabolic rates that maintain energy levels as well as immune system strength for increased disease resistance. Without restful restful rest comes numerous health risks including cardiovascular issues such as weight gain from increased risks related to Type 2 diabetes risk as well as mood disorders like depression.
Immune parameters in peripheral blood, including numbers of undifferentiated naive and central memory T cells in lymph nodes as well as production of anti-inflammatory cytokines, exhibit distinct rhythms during the normal sleep-wake cycle. Sleep can impact these rhythms, shifting forward or backward in time. Sleep also specifically promotes trans-signalling of pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-6 so as to increase its effects on cells that do not express receptors but can still receive it via its soluble receptor gp130.
Sleep helps to enhance the glymphatic system in the brain, which serves to cleanse it of beta-amyloid protein associated with Alzheimer’s and other forms of brain damage. Without adequate rest, however, this process may become compromised, leading to buildups of beta-amyloid in frontal lobes which make thinking and remembering difficult.
