Why Sleep Is Vitally Important and How to Get More of It
Sleep is a key element of our well-being and interacts profoundly with each of the other parts.
Arianna Huffington
God gives rest to his loved ones.
Psalm 127:2
Have you ever thought of sleep as being as important to your health as the food you eat and the amount of exercise you get? That is not how we usually think of sleep, is it? We think of it as something we can get by with less of, something negotiable. We even wear a lack of sleep like a badge of honor, feeling as if skimping makes us look busier and more productive than the next person. But all this wrong thinking about sleep is only getting us sick, making us fatter, clouding our minds, and frying our emotions.
If you want to become the new you that you are envisioning—if you want to walk in the fullness of all God has for you—it is time to take another look at sleep. Sleep is not a luxury. Making sure you get seven to eight hours each night is not an indulgence. Quite the opposite. Sleep is a nonnegotiable component of overall wellness. Without healthy sleep, your health will suffer in every way.
The Importance of Sleep
Your body was crafted for sleep. When God knit you together, he fashioned your systems in such a way that they need deep rest in order to function properly. Without sleep, breakdown begins.
Don’t take it from us; with every passing year, more and more scientific evidence emerges to underscore the importance of quality sleep. Study after study shows that sleep is critical to good health, while sleep deprivation is linked to increased risks of the following:
Not to mention, a lack of sleep destroys your ability to function at your best on a daily basis.
Here are just a few of the benefits of good sleep.
Improved Clarity
When you get a good night’s rest, you have more energy the following day. You think more clearly and make better decisions. One extensive study concluded that people who get eight hours of sleep each night are significantly more focused and better able to perform tasks than those who get six hours of sleep.2 Six hours of sleep was shown to lead to cognitive decline, which resulted in poor decision making, poor reactions to stimuli, and compromised productivity. Scarily, the average American subsists on around six hours of sleep each night.3
For years, I (Nelson) tried to convince myself that I could do fine on five to six hours of sleep, but as I became a student of this subject and committed to getting more rest, I realized I had been living an illusion. I had been compromising my work while telling myself I was getting more done. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? My life was suffering because I wouldn’t give my body the sleep it required. Is yours?
Lower Stress
Sleep is God’s prescription for minimizing stress and keeping you emotionally healthy. When you are in a stressed state, the cortisol (your body’s stress hormone) levels in your system surge. Over time, continually high levels of cortisol lead to immunity suppression, weight gain, stomach problems, heart problems, and more. Sleep is one of the main ways your body neutralizes that stress hormone. When you go to sleep, your stress level begins to fall and your system has the opportunity to normalize. Getting a good night’s rest is like hitting a reset button on your body. (For more on lowering stress, see chapter 17.)
Better Physical and Mental Health
Getting enough sleep is undeniably connected to physical health. For starters, a lack of sleep is directly tied to increased weight gain. In a study by the Mayo Clinic, sleep-restricted people gained more weight than their well-rested counterparts over the course of a week, consuming an average of 559 extra calories a day. People who get six hours of sleep per night are 23 percent more likely to be overweight. For people who get less than four hours of sleep per night, that percentage climbs to a staggering 73 percent.4
You might think it would take years of poor sleep habits for physical problems to start showing up. Not so. One study simulated the effects of the poor sleep patterns of shift workers on ten healthy young adults. After just four days of insufficient sleep, a third of them had glucose levels that qualified as prediabetic.5
Sleep is as important to mental health as it is to physical health. Good sleep allows the brain to shed toxins, including proteins that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Plus, sleep deprivation has been found to have a strong connection to practically every mental health disorder we know of, especially depression and anxiety.6
Sleep is not something to be taken lightly. Your health literally depends on it. If you want to be well, you have to understand the life-giving benefits of sleep and learn to prioritize it in your life—because not doing so is so easy. As Arianna Huffington wrote in The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time, “The path of least resistance is the path of insufficient sleep. And unless we take specific and deliberate steps to make it a priority in our lives, we won’t get the sleep we need.”7
Making sleep a priority begins with adopting a new view of sleep.
A New View of Sleep
A few years ago, as I (Nelson) was studying Genesis in preparation for a teaching series, God brought something significant to my attention—a truth that became a paradigm-shifting revelation concerning my view of sleep. At first glance, the truth seems simple enough: when God created the world, he created the night before the day (Gen. 1:2–4). The darkness preceded the light. While this fact may seem insignificant on the surface, it is transformative when you follow it through.
In our culture, we consider nightfall the end of the day. We work hard through all our waking hours, and when the hour is finally late enough to justify our actions, we turn off all our screens and fall into bed exhausted. The next day begins when the alarm clock goes off. However, the Hebrew concept of night and day illustrated in Genesis is much different and arguably much more productive. In it, each sunset begins the preparation period for the next day. Sleep is not the reward for a day well spent; it is preparation for what God is calling you to tomorrow. In other words, tonight is not the end of today; it is the beginning of tomorrow.
This subtle change in perspective shifted my understanding of sleep. I began to realize that if God is going to accomplish what he wants to accomplish through me, I need to prepare myself by getting enough rest at night to be truly ready for what the next day will bring. My ability to fulfill my purpose is directly linked to how rested I am when I wake up each morning. The same is true for you.
Nighttime sleep is the prep time you and I have been given for each new day. It is a gift. Taking sleep seriously is our way of saying, “God, I want to be ready for what you have for me. I don’t want to miss or compromise your will because of my refusal to get the sleep I need to be at my best.” Since I have learned to give sleep the place in my life it deserves, not only am I more pleasant to be around but I am also more effective in my calling than I ever was during those years when I tried to function on fumes.
Still, sometimes it is just hard to put down what we are doing and turn out the light. We are all guilty of what sleep scientists call bedtime procrastination. That is, we don’t go to bed when we know we should because there is always one more thing to do—one more email to send, one more chapter to read, one more episode to watch. You know how it goes.
As with other areas of our health, we have to be intentional about getting our sleep to the level that will serve us best. Here are a few tips for breaking the procrastination cycle and getting more shut-eye.
Go to Bed Fifteen Minutes Earlier
You probably have a certain time you need to be up in the morning. Sleeping in isn’t an option. So to start getting more sleep, you have to add it to the front end of the night. In other words, you have to go to bed earlier.
Try easing into an earlier bedtime. If you suddenly start going to bed an hour before you are used to, you may find yourself staring at the ceiling until your body adjusts. Instead, go to bed fifteen minutes earlier every night for a month. The next month, go to bed fifteen minutes earlier than that. Keep backing up your bedtime by fifteen minutes each month until you are getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night.
Create a Bedtime Routine
Parents know that kids go to sleep much easier when a predictable bedtime routine is in place. Maybe it involves a bath, changing into comfy pajamas, reading a book, or playing with a favorite toy. No matter the specifics, routine helps signal kids’ bodies that sleep is coming. As adults, we usually lose this practice, but we shouldn’t.
A wind-down routine will help you transition out of your hectic day and into sleep. Don’t get too elaborate; just start doing something consistently that relaxes you and puts you in a sleepier state. Have a cup of herbal tea or read a few pages of a novel. Spend some time in quiet prayer. Do whatever helps you cross the divide from busy to bed.
Do a “Big Sleep” Two or Three Times Each Year
Sometimes the best thing you can do to accomplish more is to get some much-needed rest. That is the idea behind the big sleep—a concept we came across several years ago and have made great use of ever since.
Let’s say it is Thursday afternoon. You are trying to pull things together for an upcoming weekend commitment, but because of side issues demanding your attention, unusual family situations, and a slew of other to-dos on your radar, you are having a hard time working through all that needs to be done. Your stress level is high; your anxiety is through the roof; you are overwhelmed and so far behind with everything that you aren’t sure which way to turn next. At that moment, what should you do?
Here is what you shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t keep plowing through. You shouldn’t stay up half the night to get everything done. Pushing harder isn’t the answer. You will just start hitting your head against the ceiling of diminishing returns. Though it may seem counterintuitive at first, your best plan is to hit the reset button by doing a big sleep. Leave everything behind and go to bed for twelve full hours.
Sounds crazy, right? Trust us on this: the most effective way to clear your head and break the cycle of stress is to do a big sleep at the exact time you think there is no way you can afford to. Let your family in on your plan and then steal away for an extended night’s rest. If you don’t think you can physically sleep for twelve hours, use the first part of that time to unwind—alone and completely unplugged from technology. Take a walk or read a book, then get in bed nice and early. When you get up the next morning, you are going to be refocused, reenergized, and ready to tackle everything that seemed ready to tackle you the day before.
Now, you can’t do a big sleep every night. But if you adopt the practice two to three times per year, when things seem particularly hectic and stressful, you will soon learn that a big sleep doesn’t cost you any time or productivity. In fact, it doubles your time and productivity by giving you the ability to face your circumstances refreshed and clearheaded. After one or two successful big sleeps, you will understand why some of the most productive people in the world have made this a habit.
How Are You Sleeping?
Even when we understand the importance of prioritizing sleep, gauging whether we are getting enough can still be difficult. In the sleep study mentioned above—the one showing cognitive decline among those who got only six hours of sleep—most of the sleep-deprived participants insisted they were getting enough sleep and weren’t being negatively affected by sleeping less than eight hours. But the research proved them wrong. They were significantly impaired. We are so conditioned to get by on too little sleep that we are not always the best judges of whether our needs are being met. To begin determining if you are getting enough sleep, ask yourself these questions:
Use these questions to help you figure out the current quality of your sleep and then do whatever it takes to begin getting the rest you need. Healthy people understand that sleep is a nonnegotiable component of overall well-being. Don’t let the sleep-deprived culture we live in convince you otherwise.