6 Ways Sleep Affects Your Overall Health

Sleep is an essential part of our daily routine, but it is often one of the first things we put off when we are busy or stressed. However, getting enough sleep is crucial for maintaining good health and wellbeing. In this blog, we will explore how getting enough sleep can affect your overall health and why it is important to prioritize a quality night’s sleep.

According to the Center for Disease Control, adults should be getting at least 7 hours of sleep each night.  Unfortunately, around 1/3 of US adults get less the recommended amount and the prevalence of short sleep duration has remained almost unchanged for the last decade. This is staggering especially when we consider the impact that sleep has on our overall health and wellbeing.

Getting the proper amount of sleep can help support and maintain our immunity, healthy weight, cardiovascular health, cognition, mood and skin.  Here are just a few examples of how sleep can affect these areas. 

Immunity

Getting the right amount of quality sleep is extremely important for maintaining a healthy immune system. In a study on 153 men and women, they found that those with <7 hours of sleep a night were 3x more likely to develop a cold than those getting enough sleep.³

Healthy weight

Sleep helps our bodies to stay performing their best. This includes maintaining a healthy weight, and also our ability to lose weight (when we want to). During a weight loss intervention trial, researchers found that better subjective sleep quality increased the likelihood of successful weight-loss by 33% as did sleeping >7hours of sleep a night.⁴

Cardiovascular health

The effects of sleep on heart health have been well studied and are important in understanding public health.  How long you sleep as well as the quality of sleep you get both can have a large impact on our cardiovascular health. The MORGEN Study followed over 20,000 people for 12 years and found that short sleepers and especially those with poor sleep quality had a greater risk of coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease than those with normal sleep.⁵

Cognition

How long you sleep and the quality of sleep you get is directly correlated to improvement in cognitive tests. One example was a study from the World Health Organization on global aging and adult health which showed these exact results.⁶

Mood

There is a direct relationship between how well you sleep and your mood. In a study on 208 individuals, they found that sleep quality was directly responsible for an improvement in mood the next day.⁷

Skin

In a study on 24 women, just 2 consecutive nights of sleep restriction significantly altered skin and facial appearances including a reduction in skin hydration and skin elasticity.⁸

We learn more and more about sleep as researchers across the globe explore sleep and how it affects us.  With all of these positive effects, it is also important to explore how we can improve our sleep.  Trying to improve sleep is a huge market valued at over $64B in 2021. This includes everything from pillows to sleep masks, all with the promise of helping consumers.  Here at Kemin we are trying to do our small part to improve sleep health by creating natural extracts and proving that they work through clinical studies. Contact us through our website to find out more about how Kemin ingredients like DailyZz™ and FloraGLO® can be used to create natural sleep solutions in your finished product.

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References:

1. https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/data-and-statistics/adults.html
2. https://health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationships/get-enough-sleep#:~:text=Lower%20your%20risk%20for%20serious,Get%20along%20better%20with%20people
3. Immunity: Cohen S, Doyle WJ, Alper CM, Janicki-Deverts D, Turner RB. Sleep habits and susceptibility to the common cold. Arch Intern Med. 2009 Jan 12;169(1):62-7. doi: 10.1001/archinternmed.2008.505. PMID: 19139325; PMCID: PMC2629403.
4. Healthy weight: Thomson, C. A., Morrow, K. L., Flatt, S. W., Wertheim, B. C., Perfect, M. M., Ravia, J. J., Sherwood, N. E., Karanja, N., & Rock, C. L. (2012). Relationship between sleep quality and quantity and weight loss in women participating in a weight-loss intervention trial. Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.), 20(7), 1419–1425. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2012.62
5. Cardio: Marieke P. Hoevenaar-Blom, MSc, Annemieke M.W. Spijkerman, PhD, Daan Kromhout, MPH, PhD, Julia F. van den Berg, PhD, W.M. Monique Verschuren, PhD, Sleep Duration and Sleep Quality in Relation to 12-Year Cardiovascular Disease Incidence: The MORGEN Study, Sleep, Volume 34, Issue 11, 1 November 2011, Pages 1487–1492, https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.1382
6. Cognition: Gildner, T. E., Liebert, M. A., Kowal, P., Chatterji, S., & Snodgrass, J. J. (2014). Associations between sleep duration, sleep quality, and cognitive test performance among older adults from six middle income countries: results from the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE). Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 10(6), 613–621. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.3782
7. Mood: Triantafillou, S., Saeb, S., Lattie, E. G., Mohr, D. C., & Kording, K. P. (2019). Relationship Between Sleep Quality and Mood: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study. JMIR mental health, 6(3), e12613. https://doi.org/10.2196/12613
8. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945721005761?via%3Dihub
9. https://www.medgadget.com/2022/09/global-size-of-sleeping-aids-market-anticipated-to-reach-usd-118-3-billion-by-2030-polaris-market-research.html

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