Finally, it’s 10 PM. The last few customers are filing out of the restaurant and when they’re outside, you lock up the front door. It’s closing time.
Then, you turn around and look at the whole dining room. After a full, bustling day of serving customers, the dining room is looking run-down and needs to be prepared for tomorrow. Even though the restaurant is closed, the work is far from over.
Now, this scenario may not be familiar to you. But whether or not you have ever worked in a dining establishment, your brain knows what this is like. This is what it does every night when you go to sleep!
We think of sleep as a restful activity. But even though your body is “closed for business,” your brain stays busy, cleaning up shop and preparing you for the next day.
For your brain, sleep is an important time of active recovery. Just like in a restaurant, waste products build up in your brain during the day, and it takes the time that you’re resting to clear them out so that your cognition is pristine when you wake up.
This is why getting better sleep is one of my 7 cheap, simple strategies for boosting brain performance – because it directly impacts so many areas of brain function. Depending on the quality of your sleep, you can enhance all of your mental faculties, or compromise them.
When you sleep well, your memory sharpens – you can more clearly and quickly recall things.
When you don’t sleep well, both your short-term and long-term memory suffer.
Sleep activates the brain’s neurons responsible for solidifying memory and learning, priming them for the next day’s new challenges and experiences. When your brain doesn’t get enough sleep, it is less able to retain and recall.
When you sleep well, your brain is more creatively capable.
When you don’t sleep well, your perspective is more rigid and less developed.
One 2004 study found that participants had more of a creative capacity to solve problems after 8 hours of sleep, even if that sleep took place in the middle of the day. It found that “sleep, by restructuring new memory representations, facilitates extraction of explicit knowledge and insightful behavior.”
When you sleep well, you think more sharply; you have better mental acuity.
When you don’t sleep well, your thinking is stunted; you face mental blocks and deal with confusion, too.
Being intoxicated is not known for its positive effects on one’s mental acuity – but some studies have found that going without sleep can impact your cognitive process as much as that.
When you sleep well, you are happier, more easygoing, and less irritable.
When you don’t sleep well, your mood worsens and you are prone to emotional outbursts.
I do not need to tell you that your sleep affects your mood – I am sure you know just by how your loved one greets you in the morning how well they slept the night before! But there are a number of scientific reasons. For example, the amygdala (the part of the brain largely responsible for regulating emotion) is hypersensitive in a sleep-deprived state, causing more intense, and often negative, emotional responses to things.
When you sleep well, you make more responsible decisions.
When you don’t sleep well, you are more likely to make choices that are irresponsible or self-sabotaging.
We use our judgment to make decisions – that is, we think through them (using our cognition), we consider our relevant experiences (using our memory), and of course, our emotions come into play. Because all of these things suffer when we lose sleep, we are naturally going to make worse decisions.
When you sleep well, your overall long-term health improves.
When you don’t sleep well, you put yourself at risk for health complications later in life.
Sleep refreshes and replenishes the body, physically and mentally. When we miss out on this recovery time, we compromise our health. Sleep helps clear out the brain’s beta-amyloid plaque buildup, which has been associated with the degenerative effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Sleep deprivation has also been shown to lead to greater risk of heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and other health ails.
Proper sleep is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. For practical tips to improve your sleep, you can download my free brain boost guide – your brain will thank you.
But in the meantime, make today your masterpiece!
Florina
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