We’re all also aware that sleep helps with alertness and concentration. If you find yourself lacking sleep you will probably find it hard to focus on a task or perform to the best of your ability. While this can be damaging for your career, academic life etc etc, it can also be dangerous – leading you to make silly mistakes that you wouldn’t normally. This is true particularly if you are in charge of machinery or a vehicle…which is why it’s recommended to take breaks and drink tea when driving. What might seem like a frustrating lack of sleep may, in fact, prove to be fatal on the road.

Sleep also improves our memory through a process called ‘memory consolidation’. During this time the brain strengthens the neural connections made during the day making them more easily accessible in future. This is why when you’re studying for an exam or presentation it’s important to get a good night’s sleep the night before – which will be tricky if you suffer from sleep apnea. Sleeping may even make you smarter through this process and in the long run may raise your IQ.

We all also know that sleep improves your mood. Ever heard of “getting out of the wrong side of bed”? Well that’s every morning if you suffer from conditions that prevent you from sleeping. This can lead to a short temper which can create stress in relationships, but even worse can lead to depression by impacting the balance of hormones in the brain such as the feel-good hormone serotonin. Lack of sleep can also lead to you gain weight due to chemical imbalances – in particular through the disruption of the hormones ghrelin and leptin which are crucial for the regulation of appetite.

In short then, difficulty sleeping will result in a wide variety of health issues including potential heart problems, mood disorders, slow healing, rapid aging, weight gain, cancer and diabetes. While not all of these will affect everyone it shouldn’t be a risk you take lightly – if you’re suffering from sleep apnea and getting less than eight hours sleep a night then seek professional intervention.

First, sleep is crucial for your heart. Sleep interacts with blood vessels and helps to lower the blood pressure as well as cholesterol which in turn lowers the chances of heart disease or stroke. Seven to nine hours of sleep each night has been shown to drastically lower the chances of either. Sleep might also be able to help prevent cancer, particularly of the colon or breast. This is due to the affects of melatonin (the sleep hormone) which can suppress the growth of tumors. To increase the production of melatonin make sure your room is dark during sleep.

It is also during sleep that our bodies do much of the work to repair the stresses of the day. During sleep our body is in an ‘anabolic state’ meaning that it produces more anabolic hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone. In children this is why sleep is crucial for growth, while for everyone it’s crucial for the repairing of the wounds and injuries, combating of diseases and the growth of muscle and other tissue. Growth hormone has also been shown to counter some of the effects of aging by healing the damage done to our cells. For this reason extended lack of sleep can lead to slow recovery from illness or injury and visibly faster aging. Sleep will, in short, minimize your chances of catching all illnesses then and even help turn back the clock.

Furthermore, sleep predictably has a large range of psychological benefits. While the purpose of dreaming is not fully understood by psychologists (everything from the random firing of pons to the expression of our unconscious desires has been suggested), it seems clear that it is, in fact, a necessary function. Psychological studies taking away patients’ ‘REM sleep’ (REM standing for Rapid Eye Movement and indicating the point at which we start dreaming) have shown that dreams will eventually begin to find their way into our waking hours as vivid hallucinations. Consistent lack of dreaming has been shown to eventually lead to psychosis and it seems that REM is the single most crucial part of sleeping for healthy brain function. REM sleep is however the final stage during our sleep cycle (which repeats itself about four times throughout the night), meaning that if you are constantly awoken through difficulty breathing then you will be likely to experience less REM sleep than you require (though due to it’s importance your body will eventually launch your straight into REM).