Looking after our mental health has always been important, but in recent years it has become more of a focus than ever before. The more we get to understand mental health issues, the more we talk about how to deal with them, about potential ways to manage them if not cure them. And while medication, counseling and diet changes have their part to play, there is one element of the battle for mental health that has always been indispensable: Sleep.
It doesn’t get talked about as much as the newer tools in the struggle against mental health issues, but it’s every bit as important – and that’s why it’s essential to ensure you are getting quality sleep night after night.
The Science of Sleep
When you sleep, your body and mind effectively power down for maintenance. This is one reason sleep is so essential; when you’re working out or just working, your body and mind aren’t still enough for the important work of rejuvenation to be carried out. When you don’t sleep well, the next day you will feel sluggish, have aches, struggle to concentrate and experience low energy. Part of the reason this happens is because you need to be in slow wave sleep for the body to secrete Human Growth Hormone (HGH) which drives the rejuvenation process.
An absence of HGH during sleep can be linked to a number of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, and also to social isolation. It’s among the main reasons why sleep is so essential for your mind and body.
Sleep and Mental Health
Poor sleep and compromised mental health are the ultimate vicious circle. If you’re sleeping badly, you will see the impacts in your mental health. And if your mental health is suffering, you are going to find it harder to get a good quality of sleep. If you have experienced the horrors of several consecutive nights of little or no sleep, you won’t need the realities explained to you. It’s a full-court press of unpleasant symptoms with all of the worst ones in full effect. Low mood, tearfulness, and short temper are all common in this situation.
There is a reason that sleep deprivation has been used as a torture method in the past. It’s a horrendous experience physically, but worse still mentally, and those who have experienced it will do anything to make it stop.
How to Encourage Better Sleep
If you’ve dealt with insomnia, you may well have experienced sleeping tablets as a potential treatment for the condition. And you’ll know that they’re not really a solution: they encourage sleep in the same way that morphine would cure a headache – they work, but too much. To get the kind of sleep you need, which leaves you refreshed in the morning, is better achieved by growth hormone secretagogues such as MK677 and other similar supplements that replicate the body’s natural sleep hormones. Taking an MK677 before and after study will demonstrate just how impactful the right treatment can be. You don’t need to be knocked out to sleep well. In fact, it’s better if you aren’t.
The Importance of Balance
It’s undoubtedly exciting for people who struggle to sleep to hear that there may be a solution to the issue, and sleep-encouraging supplements can definitely offer hope to the many insomniacs out there. But there is one caveat: nothing works in isolation; or at least, nothing works well in isolation. Supplements can make a significant difference to your sleep. What will make the biggest difference, though, is giving your body and mind a chance to sleep well.
This means maintaining a regular sleep schedule with specified bedtimes and wake-up times; it means avoiding blue light in the hour or so before you try to sleep; and it means eating and drinking the right things, too. If you want to sleep seven or eight hours a night, you’re going to need to calculate when you’re getting up, work back seven or eight hours from there, and start the process for bedding down well in advance of that time. Along with the right supplements and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, the impacts will be pronounced.
In conclusion
Sleep is perhaps the most essential element of our physical and mental health, and it needs to be encouraged by a range of means. Among those, using the right supplements to stimulate the body’s sleep cycle is definitely a major consideration, one which will be warmly received by insomniacs far and wide.