Recovering from an injury or muscle strain can sometimes take longer than you’d initially hoped for. You will most likely want your body to heal and go back to normal as soon as possible. This is one of the reasons why getting enough sleep is vital while your body is recovering.
Sleep is proven to speed up the healing process of many kinds of injuries, provide the hormone stability needed to keep your spirits high and improve your immunity to protect you from any possible infections that could be problematic while recovering.
With all of that being said, here we’ll be discussing several reasons why you should set up a sleep schedule and try your best to stick to it.
The Importance of Sleep During Recovery
A Rest for Your Body
Even though this will probably be the most obvious point in this article, it shouldn’t be overlooked. Most of us don’t really appreciate how important it is to give our bodies and minds the rest they need.
During sleep, your blood pressure significantly decreases, which means your heart will be getting some much-needed rest.
Your body also releases certain hormones that cause your muscles to relax while you’re asleep. This is crucial if you’re recovering from an injury or muscle inflammation as the more relaxed they are, the faster your muscles are going to heal. The released hormones also help your lungs take a break as they cause you to breathe slower.
Increasing Your Energy Levels
While recovering, you’re going to need all the energy you can get during the day, especially if you require physical therapy.
By decreasing the consumption of calories during sleep, your body is able to charge your energy, causing you to feel well-rested and more prepared for the challenges of the new day.
Balancing Your Hormones
One of the many issues caused by not getting enough sleep is hormone imbalance.
A large part of balancing the release and production of hormones takes place while you’re asleep. This is because your brain simply can’t focus on balancing your hormones while you’re awake as it will be occupied with countless tasks it has to perform every second.
Therefore, your brain will wait until you’re asleep and fully relaxed to start releasing the appropriate amounts of hormones to get you feeling as good as possible when you wake up.
One of the hormones that will be affected by lack of sleep is the growth hormone. The growth hormone works on healing injuries, and your body will gravely need it while you’re recovering. A reduced level of growth hormone is also likely to cause you to get more belly fat, which will make the recovery process that much harder.
Protecting You From Ailments
Getting sick is always unpleasant. However, it can be unbearable while you’re recovering.
Sleep plays quite an important part in preventing you from getting infections and other undesired illnesses.
Insufficient sleep can cause reduced immunity, making you more vulnerable to all kinds of diseases. Missing sleep can also cause an increase or imbalance in appetite, higher calorie consumption, and weight gain.
You should keep in mind that your body is going to need to fight all of these ailments as soon as they start to develop. Therefore it’s going to have to focus on repairing several issues, which would likely cause your recovery to take a longer time.
Improving Your Mental Health
Keeping a positive attitude while recovering can both increase the chances of full recovery and speed up the recovery process.
As mentioned, sleep helps maintain your hormones at a healthy level. This is vital to keep you in a positive mood as irregularity in hormones can cause you to become depressed. In fact, depression is more common amongst people who are sleep deprived. This isn’t too surprising, as not getting enough sleep will cause you to feel less energetic and more stressed out. These two reasons alone would cause most people to feel depressed, let alone someone who’s recovering from an injury.
Depression can severely hinder the healing process, and you will no doubt want to keep it at bay.
You’re going to need all the positivity you can get to successfully and quickly recover and get back to doing the things you like, and sleep is evidently one of your best allies in this sense.
Faster Healing
Getting enough sleep every night can significantly speed up the healing process.
In a 2018 study published by nutrition scientist Tracy J. Smith; she and her team discovered that the wounds of the individuals who got sufficient sleep every night healed faster than those who were kept sleep deprived. This further highlights just how important sleep is for discovery.
Conclusion
As you can see, sleep helps in many ways during recovery.
Getting enough sleep is important for everyone, but especially if your body is going through a rigorous healing process.
One last thing that could encourage you to get enough sleep is to know that many people who are sleep deprived actually can’t get themselves to go back to sleeping regularly and it can get quite frustrating.
The reason is that one of the negative effects of the hormone imbalance caused by insufficient sleep is sleeping less. It can sound a bit confusing, but it basically means is not getting enough sleep can cause you to sleep even less.
This is why sticking to a regular sleep schedule might be in your best interest while you’re recovering.
