Sleep and brain health

This video explains the importance of sleep for brain health, detailing how sleep affects various bodily functions and contributes to learning and memory formation. It also discusses the link between sleep problems and mental health disorders, emphasizing the need for quality sleep to maintain good brain health.

Did you know that you spend a third of your daily life sleeping? Sleep is an important part of your daily routine. Quality sleep, and getting enough of it at the right times, is as essential to survival as food and water. Sleep is important to a number of brain functions, including how nerve cells, or neurons, communicate with each other. In fact, your brain and body stay remarkably active while you sleep. Sleep affects almost every type of tissue and system in the body - from the brain, heart, and lungs, to metabolism, immune function, mood, and disease resistance. Recent findings suggest that sleep plays a housekeeping role that removes toxins in your brain that build up while you are awake. Without sleep, you can't form or maintain the pathways in your brain that let you learn and create new memories, and it's harder to concentrate and respond quickly. Research shows that a chronic lack of sleep, or getting poor quality sleep, increases the risk of brain health disorders. Sleep problems are particularly common in people living with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. So, mental or brain health conditions can disrupt sleep, and similarly, lack of sleep can also affect mental health and impact existing conditions. Although it varies for everyone, doctors recommend 7-9 hours of quality sleep every night. If you want to improve and maintain your brain health, get your nightly Z's.