Have you ever heard 

-  Just sleep on it, and you'll feel better in the morning -

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The Importance of Sleep for Health, Resilience, and Performance

​Sleep is fundamental to your resilience, well-being, quality of life, and ability to perform. Spending roughly one-third of our lives asleep or trying to sleep clearly indicates its need for our functioning. Sleep significantly influences physical health (e.g., balance, coordination, reaction time, immune function, illness and injury), brain and cognitive health (e.g., attention, decision-making, concentration, and memory), and psychological and emotional health (e.g., emotional regulation, stress reactivity, perspective-taking, anxiety, and depression).

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Research highlights the bidirectional nature of sleep's impact on health. Looking to manage sleep first can lead to improvements in various health conditions without directly treating them. For example, prioritizing sleep can reduce pain perception and improve tolerance, aid recovery from post-concussion symptoms, regulate weight, and alleviate underlying factors contributing to anxiety and depression. You don't have to have a health condition to benefit from good sleep health.

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Sleep management is often neglected, despite its importance, until problems become bad enough or reach a personal breaking point. Proactive and preventative approaches to sleep health are far more effective.

Effective Sleep Management Goes Beyond Bedtime

Managing your sleep isn’t solely about what happens when you go to bed. A comprehensive approach includes addressing daily and cumulative stressors that disrupt the sleep process, as well as strategies to manage fatigue and energy levels during waking hours to optimize performance and overall well-being.