Sleep plays a vital role in physical and emotional health impacting our quality of life in myriad ways. Yet most of us are not getting the recommended amount of sleep.

Maybe you’re thinking you can “catch up” on sleep with a nap, or sleep in on the weekend. Unfortunately, researchers have found that it doesn’t work that way. There is no substitute for a good night’s rest and a growing list of reasons why you should prioritize on sleep.

Brain Health

• While you're sleeping, your brain is preparing for the next day. It's forming new pathways to help you learn and remember information. Your brain is also detoxifying to remove waste.

• Studies show that a good night's sleep improves learning and problem solving skills. Sleep also helps you pay attention, make decisions, and be creative.

• Conversely, studies also show that if you’re sleep deficient, you may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling your emotions and behavior, and coping with change. Sleep deficiency also has been linked to depression, suicide, and risk-taking behavior.

• Children and teens that don’t get enough sleep may have problems getting along with others. They may feel angry and impulsive, have mood swings, feel sad or depressed, or lack motivation. They may also have problems paying attention, and as a result, may get lower grades and feel stressed.

Physical Health

• Sleep supports healthy growth and development. Deep sleep triggers the body to release the hormone that promotes normal growth in children and teens. This hormone also boosts muscle mass and helps repair cells and tissues in children, teens, and adults.

• Sleep also plays a role in puberty and fertility.

• Sleep is involved in ongoing healing and repair throughout the body. Ongoing sleep deficiency is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease and stroke.

• Your immune system requires sleep to defend your body against foreign or harmful substances. Ongoing sleep deficiency can affect how your immune system responds which can affect your ability to fight infections.

• Sleep affects how your body responds to the hormone insulin which controls your blood glucose level. This results in a higher than normal blood sugar level which may increase your risk for diabetes.

• Sleep deficiency increases the risk of obesity for teens and adults.

• Sleep helps maintain a healthy balance of the hormones that make you feel hungry (ghrelin) or full (leptin). When you don't get enough sleep, your level of ghrelin goes up and your level of leptin goes down. This makes you feel hungrier than when you're well-rested.

Productivity

• After several nights of losing just 1–2 hours per night, your ability to function suffers as if you haven't slept for a day or two.

• People who are sleep deficient are less productive at work and school. They take longer to finish tasks, have a slower reaction time, and make more mistakes.

• When in a sleep deficit, you may experience “microsleep” (brief moments of sleep while awake) and not even be aware of it. If you’ve ever had trouble following a conversation or understanding verbal instructions after a sleepless night, microsleep might be responsible for your confusion.

Safety

• Lack of sleep also may lead to microsleep while driving. If you have you ever driven somewhere and then not remembered part of the trip, you may have experienced microsleep.

• Drowsy drivers may feel capable of driving. Yet, studies show that sleep deficiency harms your driving ability as much as, or more than, being drunk. It's estimated that driver sleepiness is a factor in about 100,000 car accidents each year, resulting in about 1,500 deaths.

• Drivers aren't the only ones affected by sleep deficiency. It can affect people in all lines of work, including health care workers, pilots, students, lawyers, mechanics, and assembly line workers.

• Sleep deficiency doesn’t just affect the person who is experiencing it. Lack of sleep has played a role in large scale catastrophes, such as nuclear reactor meltdowns, grounding of large ships, and aviation accidents.

How Much Sleep Do I Need?

• Infants up to 1 year – 12 to 16 hours including naps

• Children 1 to 2 years – 11 to 14 hours

• Children 3-5 years – 10 to 13

• Children 6 to 12 years – 9 to 12 hours

• Teenagers 13 to 18 years – 8 to 10 hours

• Adults 18 and older – 7 to 8 hours

“Making up” Sleep and other Myths

If you lose sleep, the sleep loss adds up to what is called a sleep debt. Unfortunately you can’t make up lost sleep through napping or getting more sleep later—like sleeping in on the weekend.

Naps may provide a short-term increase in alertness and performance but if naps are too long, especially late in the day, they may disrupt your sleep cycle. Naps also don’t provide all the other benefits of night-time sleep.