Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being throughout your life. The way
you feel while you are awake depends in part on what happens while you are
sleeping. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and
maintain your physical health.
In children and teens, sleep also helps support growth and development. Getting
inadequate sleep over time can raise your risk for chronic (long-term) health
problems. It can also affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with
others. Learn how sleep affects your heart and circulatory system, metabolism ,
respiratory system, and immune system and how much sleep is enough.
Heart and circulatory system
When you fall asleep and enter non-REM sleep, your blood pressure and heart rate
fall. During sleep, your parasympathetic system controls your body, and your heart
does not work as hard as it does when you are awake. During REM sleep and when
waking, your sympathetic system is activated, increasing your heart rate and blood
pressure to the usual levels when you are awake and relaxed. A sharp increase in
blood pressure and heart rate upon waking has been linked to angina, or chest pain,
and heart attacks.
People who do not sleep enough or wake up often during the night may have a
higher risk of:
Coronary heart disease
High blood pressure
Obesity
Stroke
Hormones and sleep
Your body makes different hormone at different times of day. This may be related to
your sleep pattern or your circadian clocks. In the morning, your body releases
hormones that promote alertness, such as cortisol, which helps you wake up. Other
hormones have 24-hour patterns that vary throughout your life; for example, in
children, the hormones that tell the glands to release testosterone, estrogen, and
progesterone are made in pulses at night, and the pulses get bigger as puberty
approaches.
Metabolism and sleep
The way your body handles fat varies according to various circadian clocks,
including those in the liver, fat, and muscle. For example, the circadian clocks make
sure that your liver is prepared to help digest fats at appropriate times. Your body
may handle fat differently if you eat at unusual times.
Studies have shown that not getting enough quality sleep can lead to:
Higher levels of the hormones that control hunger, including leptin and ghrelin, inside
your body
Decreased ability to respond to insulin
Increased consumption of food, especially fatty, sweet, and salty foods
Decreased physical activity
Metabolic syndrome
All of these contribute to overweight and obesity.
Respiratory and immune systems
During sleep, you breathe less often and less deeply and take in less oxygen. These
changes can cause problems in people who have health problems such as asthma
or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Asthma symptoms are usually
worse during early morning sleep. Likewise, breathing problems in people who have
lung diseases such as COPD can become worse during sleep.
Sleep also affects different parts of your immune system, which become more active
at different times of day. For example, when you sleep, a particular type of immune
cell works harder. That is why people who do not sleep enough may be more likely to
get colds and other infections.
Problems with thinking and memory
Sleep helps with learning and the formation of long-term memories. Not getting
enough sleep or enough high-quality sleep can lead to problems focusing on tasks
and thinking clearly. Read our Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency page for more
information on how lack of sleep affects performance of daily activities, including
driving and schoolwork.
Flyte has been designed for those who care about sleep and don’t want to
compromise on their sleep despite them having to compromise on their sleeping
situation for the evening. Heavy duty wave beam construction, flock top and easy to
inflate pump, the Flyte Vento Airbeds available at Harvey Norman are your perfect
answer to managing your sleep when you’re not at Home.