Why Quality Sleep Matters — and What to Do When You’re Not Getting It
Imagine you see a headline announcing a new miracle cure. You discover this medicine supports and improves the health of every organ in the body, eases depression, reduces anxiety, and primes you to perform your best at work and in all other facets of your life.
It also protects against age-related conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, helps curb sugar cravings, and improves physical appearance. It even makes you a safer driver.
Oh, and there are no known side effects.
Most people would think this is a scam — no single intervention could offer all that. But not only does this remedy exist without the hassle of a prescription; it’s available to all of us every night when we get into bed.
Unless it isn’t.
The healing power of sleep may elude us because of insomnia. Or because we can’t fall asleep for other reasons, in which case we might lie in bed worrying about the all-important, cures-most-things sleep we’re not getting. It’s a common complaint.
But there are ways to overcome the hurdles standing between you and a good night’s rest. Learn why finding your way back to sleep is worth the effort.
Why We’re Not Sleeping
Roughly one in three American adults doesn’t get the recommended amount of sleep each night, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some suffer from occasional insomnia — involuntary sleeplessness or restless, truncated sleep lasting three nights or more — and others struggle with a chronic version (explore the various root causes of insomnia and get expert-sourced treatments for overcoming it). In either case, the inability to fall or stay asleep can produce a loss of focus and other negative outcomes the -following day.
According to Phyllis C. Zee, MD, PhD, a sleep circadian-health researcher and insomnia specialist at Northwestern University, insomnia disorder is usually the result of three P’s: a biological predisposition; a precipitating factor (such as grief or shift work); and perpetuating factors, such as naps and caffeine, that sustain the sleeplessness.
Meanwhile, plenty of Americans are involuntarily sleep-deprived due to choice or circumstance, like late nights at the office or caring for an infant.
“Human beings are … the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep without legitimate gain.”
Finally, many of us skimp on sleep because we’re busy, or restless, or just don’t see any reason to prioritize it when the show we’re watching or the book we’re reading is too good to quit. “Human beings are … the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep without legitimate gain,” notes Matthew Walker, PhD, in Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.
Even with the best of intentions, sleep can be elusive. Contemporary life has wreaked havoc on our circadian rhythms. While our bodies are designed to wake with the sun and fall asleep at dark, the combination of brightly lit environments and blue-light exposure from screens can stimulate our brains to believe it’s time for activity long after the lights are out.
“When electricity became widely available, we lost our natural bearings to live with our normal rhythms,” says integrative psychiatrist Henry Emmons, MD. “People could stay up late, and it really changed our relationship with sleep.”
The Beauty of Sleep
There are plenty of good reasons to turn out the lights and climb into bed at a reasonable hour. These are just a few of them.
1) Sleep detoxes the brain.
There’s a reason you feel so refreshed when you get a good night’s sleep — and so groggy when you don’t. When you’re exhausted and it feels like the gears of your brain are clogged, it’s because, in a sense, they are.
During the day, waste products accumulate in the brain. These are natural byproducts of our waking brainpower. When we’re asleep at night, the brain’s glymphatic system gets to work flushing away the day’s waste products. When we don’t sleep (or don’t sleep enough), the byproducts collect and muck up the gears.
“It’s sort of like having a party and leaving a mess in the dining room,” says integrative physician Frank Lipman, MD. He notes that consecutive nights of too little sleep compound the situation. “Then, say, the next day you have another party and don’t clean. The mess just builds up until it’s cleaned. The same thing happens in the brain, which is cleaned by sleeping.”
A “clean” brain allows us to learn, concentrate, and perform at our best. This is evidenced by a 2019 study that examined how the sleep habits of a group of MIT students influenced their performance on examinations. The amount and quality of sleep students got directly correlated with their test scores.
Interestingly, how much students slept the night before a test didn’t have much influence on their scores — what mattered most was the quality and quantity of sleep they’d gotten throughout the semester in which they learned the material. This showed that a good night’s sleep before a big day can be less important than quality sleep over time.
Surprising no one, sleep loss also reduces productivity on the job. A 2022 Gallup study found that more than $44 billion of lost productivity each year can be chalked up to unplanned absences due to sleep deprivation.
2) Sleep balances mood.
For many years, sleep problems were considered one byproduct of depression. But a series of longitudinal studies, in which researchers tracked the same individuals over time, have shown that sleep problems may actually be a causal factor in depression. This suggests more sleep may offer depression relief.
“People who have trouble with insomnia often have depression,” says Emmons. “If they can get their sleep back on track, their chances of recovering [are substantially better than] they would have been without improving their sleep.”
“People who have trouble with insomnia often have depression. If they can get their sleep back on track, their chances of recovering [are substantially better than] they would have been without improving their sleep.”
Insufficient sleep also increases anxiety, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association in 2023. Researchers showed that even short periods of sleep loss, like staying up an hour later than usual, resulted in participants experiencing fewer positive emotions, like joy and contentment, the next day.
Another important factor in emotional well-being is dreaming. Walker has described dreaming as a form of overnight therapy, helping us process and integrate difficult memories. These dreams can also help remove the “visceral, painful emotional charge that had previously been wrapped around those memories.”
To demonstrate, he suggests recalling a difficult childhood memory, such as feeling scared when you got lost at the mall and couldn’t find your parent. If the memory no longer conjures much fear and sadness, it’s because you’ve released those feelings through dreaming. “You have not forgotten the memory,” he writes. “But you have cast off the emotional charge, or at least a significant amount of it.”
3) Sleep improves creativity.
Dreaming helps boost creativity by acting as a sort of mixer for all our acquired knowledge. During dreams, the brain makes new connections and divines new meaning from the facts of our life. This is why we often wake with an ability to see things in a new light.
Walker describes this process as “informational alchemy” and cites the apocryphal tale of the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev as an example of its power. Mendeleev, who was obsessed with bringing “an organizational logic to the known elements of the universe,” is said to have suffered through three sleepless nights in 1869 before finally sleeping soundly.
In his dreams that night, he allegedly saw how all the elements could fit together and, upon waking, immediately wrote it down. It was the framework of the periodic table of elements as we know it today.
4) Sleep sustains long-term health.
Sleep helps regulate the body’s cyclical systems, such as hormones and the immune system. If we don’t sleep enough, these systems can start to falter, potentially leading to the development of neurodegenerative illnesses and type 2 diabetes.
One way sleep loss and poor-quality sleep appear to contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes is by disrupting hemoglobin A1C, a marker of blood-sugar control. Research suggests that better sleep may help people with the disease improve their blood-sugar markers.
Sleep apnea, which seriously reduces sleep quality, increases the risk of cardiovascular conditions, like hypertension, coronary heart disease, and stroke, most likely by fostering systemic inflammation.
Disruptions in a person’s circadian rhythm, such as night-shift work, increase the risk of certain cancers. And research suggests that chronic sleep deprivation contributes to neuroinflammation and the development of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s.
All good reasons to put that book down and turn out the light.
5) Sleep regulates appetite.
Getting enough quality sleep ensures that the body produces adequate amounts of the hormone leptin, the chemical messenger that promotes a feeling of fullness. It’s sometimes called “the satiety hormone.”
When sleep is in short supply, leptin levels drop, making it harder to feel full. At the same time, levels of the hunger-promoting hormone ghrelin go up, making us likely to eat more than we need.
This isn’t the only reason those extra pancakes always sound so good after a late night — or why we usually crave pancakes but not a spinach omelet when we’re tired. A study from Northwestern University showed sleep deprivation distorts our sense of smell, which scrambles the brain’s messages to the body about how much energy we really need. Researchers suspect this confusion helps make energy-dense foods such as sweets and processed carbohydrates even more irresistible.
(Sleep significantly influences metabolism, appetite, and weight management. Learn more at “How Does Sleep Influence Weight Gain?“)
6) Sleep supports immune function.
Sleep quantity and quality even influence how likely we are to catch a cold. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people who averaged less than seven hours of sleep per night before being exposed to a cold virus were almost three times more likely to get sick than participants who slept an average of eight hours or more.
How to Sleep Well
A few basic routines that support good sleep:
- Set a regular bedtime and stick to it.
- Quit screens at least an hour before bed.
- Maintain a cozy, peaceful bedroom with light-blocking blinds or curtains.
- Some people find a warm bath or shower can also help them wind down.
Experts also offer these strategies for getting better rest.
Invest in amber light bulbs.
Screens emit blue light, which signals the brain that it’s time to be awake; incandescent and LED light bulbs give off blue light too.
Consider installing a few amber light bulbs around your home for a less-stimulating light source, especially in the bedroom. Try turning these lights on only after the sun sets; reducing light stimulation to your brain can help you shift toward sleep more easily.
Consider a sleep tracker.
Not sleeping can quickly become a self-perpetuating cycle. The less sleep you get, the more you worry about it — and the more you worry about it, the less sleep you get.
A sleep tracker may help. “I suggest people use a sleep watch,” says Emmons. The data may reveal that when you thought you were lying awake worrying about not sleeping, you were actually in light sleep. “People who are concerned about not sleeping enough will often find that they’re actually getting more sleep than they think,” he adds.
Tracking devices do emit electromagnetic radiation, so consider using them on a temporary basis to establish a baseline and then only on occasion, when you want feedback.
Explore sleep-supportive supplements.
Several supplemental nutrients help support better-quality sleep, and they spare you the side effects associated with conventional sleep medications.
- Magnesium glycinate helps regulate nerve function and calm the body for sleep.
- L-theanine is an amino acid that helps settle the central nervous
system. It’s available as a supplement, and it’s also found in green tea — though the latter is not ideal before bed because it contains caffeine. - Melatonin is a sleep hormone the body naturally produces, but production decreases as we age. Lipman recommends melatonin supplements, especially for most people over 50.
(A host of supplements can help you drift off and sleep more soundly. Learn more at “Which Nutrients and Supplements Can Help Me Sleep?“)
Prioritize the early sleep phases.
The first half of the night is when most deep sleep happens, Emmons explains — and deep sleep is when the healing and restorative benefits accrue.
“Pay attention to what helps you sleep your best in the first half of the night,” he suggests. “One thing is not eating very much late in the evening so your body isn’t working hard to digest your food.”
If you tend to wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and have trouble falling back to sleep, rest assured that you’ve already enjoyed your most beneficial rest. You may wish for more sleep, but the sleep you did get really counted.
This article originally appeared as “A Good Night’s Sleep” written by Laine Bergeson, FMCHC, an Experience Life contributing editor and functional-medicine certified health coach.in the November/December 2024 issue of Experience Life.
