Sleep is incredibly important. How important is sleep? It’s probably the third biggest component of overall health alongside exercise and nutrition. Good sleep habits can help optimize numerous biological systems, and poor sleep can cause these systems to seriously malfunction.
How Important is Sleep?
Yes, sleep is hugely important for overall good health, but it’s also more important for body composition improvement (weight loss, less fat, more muscle) than most people realize.
For instance, during fat loss diets, it seems that just a 3 hour reduction in sleep can cause an unfavorable nutrient partitioning effect, making weight loss come more from lean mass (muscle) rather than fat mass relative to a rested control. It can also increase hunger, as there is around a 20% increase in voluntary energy intake for women with sleep deprivation (and a slight increase in body weight of 0.4kg over 4 days).
Even though most people know proper sleep is good for you, they don’t seem to take action to improve their sleep habits and very few have an actual sleep strategy. Why not?!?
I think people think it’s “one of those things” they can get away with (until it’s too late). I also believe that getting proper sleep is one of those habits that is “easy to do, yet easy not to do,” as motivational speaker Jim Rohn liked to say.
To help you successfully manage your sleep, i’ve taken a vast amount of scientific research that has already been done on the subject and used that data to create for you some specific strategies for successful sleep. I’ve already done the hard work for you by poring through the science journals, pulling out the most important information, and turning it into a list of practical action strategies. All you have to do is read it and start working on making these real habits in your own life.
If you need to, tackle just one habit at a time. Look at the list of successful sleep habits, and then choose the one you know needs the most work or which you feel is holding your sound sleep back the most. Start there. When you click the button and see the content, you’ll notice these often recommended science-based sleep hygiene habits, are not only for general health, but also for supporting a fitness lifestyle (boosting training energy, building muscle, and burning fat).
Many of these strategies will also help if your primary problem is having difficulty falling asleep at night. Enjoy! Click here to jump to the sleeping section of GeorgeHealth.com
GeorgeHealth.com – How Important is Sleep?