Sleep

Restorative sleep is essential to health because sleep is the ultimate relaxation for your mind and body. It's a chance to recharge, and to catch up on the task list that can't be worked through when you're asleep. In sleep your heart rate, breathing, and digestion all slow down and your muscles all take a fully relaxed position. This allows your body to focus its efforts on other things until you wake up. For example:

Physically
Your body takes sleep as the opportunity it needs to focus on defense and repair. If you're injured, sleep is when you'll heal the fastest. If you're sick, sleep is when you'll recover the fastest. Your body needs sleep like it needs water and nutrients so that it can refresh the emergency backup glycogen (blood sugar) stores and quickly deliver stored nutrients to your muscles so that they can repair themselves.

Mentally
Your mind needs sleep just as much as your body does, if not more! Sleep is when your subconscious sorts through and files away the various things that have happened since the last time you slept. In sleep your brain can rationalize and reason through upsetting incidents, create solutions to pressing problems, and strengthen the new neural pathways you've created in the day by learning new things.

Like it or not, your body simply cannot go very long without sleep. Just like refusing to change the oil in your car will cause problems - and ultimately a breakdown - denying your body the sleep it needs is going to reduce your physical and mental performance capabilities. Keep up the habit of not sleeping and you'll find yourself with a broken-down body.

How much sleep do you need?
The amount of sleep you need depends largely on your age and gender. A healthy adult male in his prime tends to do best with between 6 and 8 hours of sleep - two full REM cycles - and a healthy adult female in her prime needs between 7 and nine hours - three REM cycles. Children generally need more sleep, roughly nine hours, because their little bodies and minds are doing so much developing still.

Today, make sure your schedule is set up to give you the right amount of restful sleep, and then do the same for your children if you have any.