THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU SLEEP...

Hope you are doing well. I just wanted to take a moment here and talk to you about your brain and sleep. As you may already know, if you want to maximize your brain’s health, sleep is key.

Just wake up after one night of not much sleep and you’ll soon realize just how much of an influence sleep has on you. Chances are you’ll be feeling agitated, have poor memory, and may be feeling slightly ‘cloudy minded’ as well. It’s clearly not an ideal situation for anyone.

But yet, people are still not giving sleep the attention it deserves. They burn the midnight oil, either working well into the wee hours in the morning or possibly sitting up and watching TV later than they should.

What are you missing out on? What all happens in your brain while you sleep? In addition to lowering inflammation rates and ensuring your brain is functioning optimally, there are many processes taking place when you are sleeping at night. These include:
Making decisions

That’s right. As you lay your head down at night, your brain may actually be figuring out what you are going to do about that nagging problem that has been on your mind since yesterday.

During sleep, your brain is able to work out problems and you may just find that when you wake up in the morning, you have a clear solution.

Don’t let yourself belief that when you sleep, your brain shuts off because this isn’t the case.

Creating memories

The next thing your brain does during sleep is creates and consolidates memories. It takes all the events that occurred over the course of the day and ensures that they are firmly embedded in your memory and will not be forgotten.

Likewise, it also pieces together related memories, consolidating them for easier recall later on.

If you are short on sleep, you may not remember as much of what happens in your day-to-day life compared to if you were sleeping 8-9 hours per night.

Making creative connections

What’s one character trait of the most creative people out there? They get a good night’s sleep!

Creativity is sparked during the sleep period and scientists have revealed that the mind can make connections between concepts during the unconscious resting state that it would not make while you were up and walking around.

Clearing out toxins

Finally, sleep is also a time when you are going to be clearing out toxins in the brain, ensuring that you stay as healthy as possible. Think of this as the ‘housekeeping time’ for your brain.

If you aren’t cleaning up your brain fully each night, it’s going to slowly become dirtier and dirtier. This may not happen right away since you are still doing some cleaning each night, but if it’s always just done partially and never fully, this builds up over time.

Soon, you’ll be experiencing toxin overload and reaping the consequences. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, this may actually accelerate the onset of certain diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.

So start taking your sleep seriously. It’s about more than just waking up and feeling energized the next day. It’s about really ensuring that you are living life to the fullest and are fully capable of your maximum potential.