[ARTICLE] How Can Sleep Boost Your Mental Performance ?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Oh, my favorite part of the day…….sleep. Did you know that a good sleep can help boost your brain powers ie memory, attention, focus, mood, concentration and mental performance ?

…..and on the flip side, sleep deprivation has been linked as a primary cause of car accidents and other accidents. It also has been associated with medical condition such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, obesity and even prostate cancer ?

But what is the connection between Sleep & Dreaming in boosting Mental Performance ?

The role of sleep in improving mental performance

In this video, Dr. Stickgold discusses the role of sleep and dreaming in learning and memory functions…..

In a 2010 Harvard study, researchers suggested that dreaming may reactivate and reorganize recently learned material. And by doing so, memory and mental performance are improved……hmmm interesting.

The subjects were 99 healthy college students who agreed to avoid alcohol, caffeine, and drugs for at least 24 hours prior to the experiment. All the volunteers demonstrated normal sleep patterns before enrolling in the study.

Each of the subjects spent an hour learning how to navigate through a complex three-dimensional maze-like puzzle. After the training period, half of the students were allowed to nap for 90 minutes, while the others read or relaxed. Following a lunch break, all the volunteers tackled the virtual maze again. The only students whose performance substantially improved were the few who dreamed about the maze during their naps. Although the dreams didn’t actually depict solutions to the puzzle, the researchers believe they show how the dreaming brain can reorganize and consolidate memories, resulting in better performance on learned tasks. And all the amazing dreams occurred early in NREM sleep.is

I have always  been fascinated by the brain’s ability to superhouse all our memories. And now we know it is able to consolidate them while we dream in our sleep.

Tips for a Better Sleep Routine:

If you are having problems getting good quality sleep, try these easy and quick tips:

First of all, create a relaxing bedtime routine.

1. Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning. Your body likes consistency.
2. Exercise. Try not to exercise too close to your bedtime.
3. Keep your bedroom cool, quiet, and dark and use it only for sleep and  not engaging with electronics ie watching TV, surfing the Web, chatting on the phone or playing video games.
4. Drink a cup of relaxing herbal tea ( non-caffeinated).
5. Do a foot bath or tub bath to relax.
6. Stretch a bit before you  go to bed.
7. One hour before bed, try Insomnitol 2 capsules for natural promotion of sleep.  It can:

1. Serves as a sleep aid and general relaxant without causing sleep drowsiness.
2. Provide a natural sedative effect to enhance your sleep.
3. Reduce generalized anxiety symptoms.
4. Improve pain tolerance in chronic pain syndromes to help you better sleep throughout the night.

I hope you found this information useful and put into practice tips for a better sleep night.

To your health,

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