How Sleep Benefits Your Body in Surprising Ways

A restful night’s sleep is crucial to our overall health and how we function throughout the day. Sleep is equally as important as eating healthy and exercising, but what you many not know is just how many ways a good night’s sleep helps the body. Contrary to popular belief, our brain isn’t inactive while we sleep. In fact, it’s hard at work making decisions, consolidating memories, creating creative connections, reducing toxins, and storing information.

Decision Making

A recent study published in Current Biology reported that the brain is capable of processing complex stimuli while sleeping, which then results in the information being used to make decisions while awake. During the study, it was found that the brain holds the ability to process information while asleep and unconscious, which prepares the body for motor functions upon awakening.

Consolidates Memories

Sleep is known to play an important role in learning as the brain consolidates old memories and forms new memories, allowing the storage of new information in the brain to be more successful. Lack of sleep can hinder your ability to learn and retain new information by as much as 40 percent as sleep allows the brain to prepare for new information to be stored in the form of a memory.

Creative Connections

A full night’s rest is known to boost creativity levels as it fosters improved connections in the brain. This allows you to make deeper connections to improve critical thinning while awake.

Cleanses Toxins

Sleep provides the brain with the opportunity to remove damaging molecules that tend to build during the hours we are awake. Without these molecules being removed, there can be serious side effects.

Improves Physical Tasks

The brain restores long-term memory while sleeping; thus, allowing us to perform important motor tasks. The brain transfers the short-term information it gathers and transforms it into long-term memories during REM sleep, which is stored for later performance.

A restful night’s sleep produces diverse benefits for both mental and physical health. To improve your overall well-being, add in a couple more hours of sleep each night.