Sleep is the time that your brain uses in order to get things done. While you’re awake, your brain is busy processing everything you see, hear, touch, taste and smell. While you’re asleep, your brain has to catch up on its internal housekeeping. Knowing how sleep impacts your brain health could help you make sound decisions, such as setting up a comfortable bedroom and choosing a quality mattress that works for your sleep style. Here are some of the ways that sleep impacts your brain’s functions.

Faster and More Accurate Thinking

A poor night’s sleep or chronic sleep deprivation leads to a sort of brain fog. You feel like you’re thinking more slowly, and your thoughts aren’t clear. When you get the right amount of high-quality sleep, your brain thinks faster. You can process difficult tasks more easily and with more accuracy when you have quality sleep on a consistent basis.

Creation of Memories

While you are asleep, your brain goes to work cementing memories of what happened to you during the previous day. If you met someone new, read a book or tried a new route to work, your brain’s cells connect those pieces of information and process them so that you can make sense of what you learned or experienced. Your brain also decides what to filter out while you’re asleep.

Improvement of Creative Thinking

When you’re exhausted, it’s hard to think. Your brain goes on autopilot, and it’s difficult to be creative. Getting the right amount of sleep improves your ability to problem-solve and think creatively. While you sleep, your brain makes new connections between your old memories and new ones.

Elimination of Toxins and Waste Products

Your brain uses up to 40 percent of the calories you eat. All of that metabolism leads to a lot of metabolic waste products. Some of those products are toxic to your brain. In a small study of people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, people with the highest amount of brain plaques had the poorest quality of sleep. When you sleep, your brain finally has a chance to clear out those waste products.

Regulation of Your Appetite

While you are asleep, your brain triggers the production of leptin. This hormone makes you feel full. People who are sleep-deprived are not only deficient in leptin, but they make more ghrelin, which makes you feel hungry. The result of one day of missed sleep could mean overeating junk food at night while you’re awake. After five days of sleep deprivation, people in a controlled sleep study gained an average of two pounds. If you have chronic sleep deprivation, you likely eat an average of 300 extra calories per day as a result of those hormone imbalances.

Cellular Growth and Repair

You’ve probably heard about getting your “beauty rest.” This has some truth to it, because sleep is when your brain directs the body to make repairs to cells that were damaged. It also initiates the growth of new cells. The brain does this by releasing human growth hormone. This hormone travels throughout the body, attracted to damaged cells that are in need of repair or replacement. While you sleep, your body fixes damage caused by oxidation from metabolism and sun exposure as well as damage from air pollution and other toxins.

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