Sleep: The Key to Better Health & Productivity

Have you ever pulled an ‘all-nighter’ just to get that report done or get caught up on those countless emails?  Well, you may not realize just how detrimental it is to skip sleeping.  

According to Harvard Medical School, sleep deprivation is harmful to your health and can decrease your productivity.  Sleep deprivation plays havoc with your attitude and mood, concentration, and access to higher-level brain functions.  Worst, sleep deprivation can affect your productivity for several days.  The harmful effects of sleep deprivation are so profound that people who are drunk can actually perform better than those who are ‘just’ sleep deprived.

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Health & Productivity

Researchers from the University of Rochester suggested that when we sleep, our brains remove toxic proteins from its neurons.  This can only be done while we are sleeping.   Therefore, if we don’t sleep, we have toxic proteins building up in our brain cells.

This research better helps us understand why we feel that haze or fuzziness when we don’t sleep well or not at all.  Basically, the toxins slow our ability to process information and make good decisions.

 Essentially, lack of sleep increases our stress levels and increases our chances of having an “emotional hijack”.  

An emotional hijack is when we respond to others impulsively-by saying or doing something that is very uncharacteristic of us.  

For example, you yell at your colleague because they asked to borrow a pen.  When we have a lot of stress, we kick the stress hormone, cortisol into high gear.  This causes several serious health problems, including heart attack, stroke, obesity, and diabetes.

Make Time to Sleep

Although most people require between 7 to 9 hours of sleep, there are some people that require less than 7 hours.  

According to the National Sleep Foundation, over 50% of people in the US get less than the necessary 7 hours of sleep each night.

 The concern here is that most people sleep much less than they really need to, are less productive, yet think they are sleeping enough and are productive. According to a RAND study, the lack of sleep among the U.S. workforce is costing approximately $411 billion and losing 1.2 million working days per year.

The Bottom Line

Sleep helps our brain work properly and promotes health and well-being.

Sleep helps us recharge by forming new pathways to help us learn, remember, make good decisions and problem solve more efficiently and effectively.

 Bottom line, staying up late is a health and productivity killer.  Think of sleep as oxygen for your body: refuel, recharge, refresh.