The importance of a good night’s sleep!9 Jan

It’s great to include exercise and a healthy diet in your lifestyle, but sleep is just as important!

At its core, exercise is just physical stress you’re placing on your body. By doing this, your body will need time to recover and sleep is the best natural way to do this. Your body will compensate for tougher workouts by ensuring you get a deeper sleep afterwards (another great reason to workout!).

Many of us have lifestyles that are completely overrun by work, education, hobbies or other personal commitments. Some people work around this by using 24-hour gyms, but by doing this they’re compromising the amount of sleep they’re getting, resulting in “sleep debt”! This debt is the difference between how much sleep someone should get, and how much they do get. The recommended amount of sleep is 7 hours a day, but many people in Britain get less than this, either due to not having enough time for sleep, or from stress and medical conditions such as insomnia.

Sleep has plenty of benefits other than just helping your body recover from exercise. You’ll continue to burn calories while sleeping, especially after a tough workout! A good night’s sleep will also improve your brain function, which will have some great knock-on effects to such as helping with your productivity, concentration and problem-solving skills.

What should you do if you’ve built up a bit of a sleep debt? Firstly, don’t panic! There are ways to claim your sleep back! Sleep without an alarm clock for a couple of days a week, and let your body wake up when it’s naturally ready. Having short naps every now and then can help get some extra sleep in and improve your mood.

The Cheshire Change Hub have some useful resources for those trying to improve their sleep, so click here to read more!

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