Sleep, Weight Loss and Metabolism
The function of the parasympathetic nervous system is rest and repair or sometimes called rest and digest.
During slow wave sleep the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure falls, and the brain is less responsive to outside stimuli. The pituitary gland releases growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair.
In a study with the Stanford men’s basketball team. They slept ten hours a night for five weeks. The results were that the freethrowing percentage improved by 9 percent, the three point shooting improved by 9.2 percent and their 80 meter sprint was faster.
REM sleep is to the mind what slow sleep is to the body. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and reorganizes information. Your brain clears out irrelevant information, boosts your memory by connecting the events since your last sleep to your previous events, facilitates learning and neural growth.
One of the ways it repairs the brain is to remove toxic proteins from its neurons that are the by-products of neural activity when you are awake. Unfortunately, it can only do this when you are asleep. And when the toxic neurons are not removed they wreck havoc on your prefrontal cortex effecting cognition, creativity, problem solving and inhibition.
Sleep deprivation means you can’t recover physically, your immune system weakens, and your brain becomes foggy.
Sleep deprived individuals are at increased risk of viral infections, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and death.
One of the ways it does this is by raising the stress load on the body and the cortisol levels. A lack of sleep helps break down skin collagen making you look older by reducing the elasticity of the skin.
In men, not enough sleep reduces testosterone levels and […]
