Sleep and You: Why Rest Is More Important than You Realize

Struggling with weight, mood, or focus? Poor sleep may be the culprit. Discover the impact of poor sleep hygiene and simple ways to improve your rest.

Having trouble losing weight? Feeling depressed? Unable to focus? Your sleep habits may be the cause. Sleep quality impacts every aspect of your life, from your eating habits to your stress levels. As health concerns like weight, stress, and chronic conditions continue to rise, sleep health needs to be a top priority. However, Americans’ sleep habits are getting worse. 

A 2024 Gallup poll found that 57% of U.S. adults say they would feel better if they got more sleep. This is the first time that a majority of respondents said they weren’t getting enough rest since 2001. How is this affecting our overall wellbeing?

Let’s take a closer look at the effects of poor sleep hygiene.

The state of sleep health

An estimated 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic, or ongoing, sleep disorders. According to the Gallup poll, younger women are less likely than other groups to report getting adequate sleep. Only 27% said they get enough rest at night. 

Gallup also found that people are getting fewer hours of sleep per night than they did in previous decades. In 1942, 59% of American adults got eight or more hours of sleep per night. Three percent said they got five hours or less. Today, only a quarter get eight or more hours of sleep, and 20% say they get five hours or less. 

The impacts of poor sleep hygiene

Poor sleep hygiene can take a toll on your health. Here’s what the data shows:

• Sleeping less than five hours per day is associated with an 11% increase in hypertension risk. 
• Fewer hours of sleep are associated with consuming more calories and having more cravings for high-calorie foods. 
• Pre-teens who slept fewer than nine hours a night showed differences in brain structure and experienced more mood and cognitive challenges than those who got enough rest.
• Losing sleep leads to fewer positive emotions, such as joy and happiness, and increased anxiety symptoms, such as a rapid heart rate and increased worrying.
• Getting less than eight hours of sleep is linked to a 1.7 times higher risk of injury and slower recovery after training.

In addition to the negative health outcomes associated with a lack of rest, sleep issues can be a warning sign of other health conditions, like diabetes, asthma, heart disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and Parkinson’s disease.

Improving sleep hygiene doesn’t require tons of bells and whistles

There are countless new tools to help you improve your sleep, from wearables to bedside monitoring devices. These devices provide granular data on your sleep habits, which can be useful, but only up to a point. 

They can also increase sleep anxiety, which can lead to negative health outcomes:

• With so much data, you may feel empowered to diagnose yourself with a sleep disorder. Clinical decisions like these shouldn’t be made on your own. Only a doctor can diagnose a sleep disorder after conducting a thorough sleep study. 
• If you don’t hit your numbers, it can make you feel like a failure. If you start your morning feeling like you failed, it sets a bad tone for the rest of the day.
• It can lead to feeling anxious about sleep. At worst, this anxiety can evolve into a condition called orthosomnia, which is an obsession with sleep. 

Even if you don’t get to the point of becoming an orthosomniac, overengineering sleep can undermine the very goal that you’re trying to reach. This doesn’t mean that you should avoid sleep trackers altogether, but that you should consider their data in context. Instead of chasing perfection every night, you want to see positive trends over time. 

For better sleep hygiene, go back to the basics

To improve your sleep habits, you don’t have to launch a data-driven initiative. A few simple changes can help you sleep longer and more consistently.

• Turn off devices at least 1.5 hours before your bedtime, since blue light is associated with reduced production of the sleep hormone melatonin.
• Manage your stress and anxiety. By practicing things like relaxation techniques and deep breathing, you can reduce the stressors that prevent you from falling and staying asleep. 
• Aim to go to bed at the same time every night to regulate your sleep cycle.
• Get regular exercise during the day, which helps to promote the production of melatonin. 

Need help getting back to the basics to improve your sleep?  Check out Grokker’s expert-led sleep programs that help you get a full night’s rest.