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Whether you are heading off on your travels to go and party on exotic islands, discover the world, or maybe a mix of both, the one thing you’ll need to have the best time possible is sleep.
You’ll find research papers aplenty that confirm the facts when it comes to highlighting how losing sleep has a detrimental effect on your well-being, along with a full list of other health-related issues. Obviously, when you are travelling it is vital to stay as healthy as possible, and if you do the right things then there is no reason why you can’t.
How Much Sleep Is Enough?
According to The Sleep-Advisor, the level of high-quality slumber any single person needs does depend on a few things, but as a general rule of thumb, teenagers need in the region of 9 hours per day, while adults typically require 7-8 hours each day.
This can be spoiled by sleeping in new environments and staying out late, etc., but if you neglect the importance of what sleep can offer, then the following areas can be affected…
Memory Troubles Develop
Lose sleep in your life and your body can lose a grip on its capability to take care of your cognitive ability, meaning your thinking and information processing is compromised. Sleeping lets your brain get to work on doing the admin for the body, and acts like a secretary who is filing all your memories.
Just contemplate the potential issue that will arise if your memory is affected while travelling, just from not sleeping enough:
- Losing your luggage
- Missing planned transport
- Misplacing your passport
Don’t run the risk of forgetting important things as part of your travels; this is meant to be a life-changing experience for the better!
Lowered Immune System Predicaments
Experts support the fact that losing out on good levels of sleep has the potential to increase the chances of becoming ill. If this becomes a regular thing, your immune functions are at risk, and this can lead to proneness to colds, the flu, and other unwanted illnesses.
Your friend sleep helps your body run those health checks while your rest and fight against any illness if you do happen to come down with something.
Being ill when you’re travelling will only dampen the time you are away, so keep sleep on board and reap the benefits.
Stress Levels Become Affected
This point covers off how you can become worked up and stressed out with the strains of different modes of transport while travelling.
If you’ve not been to cities and heavily populated areas, then you won’t be used to the overcrowded transport, which is, of course, part of the adventure, but everything is congested.
Organising travel when busy can be a stress-inducing task made more stressful if you aren’t getting sufficient levels of sleep while you’re away. Your cortisol release in the body will be doubly higher, which is not what you want.
Essentially, high amounts of cortisol induce spikes in anxiety, snowballing the stress on your body once more; you see how this is going, and it’s all from not sleeping enough! If you feel that your lack of sleep is causing an overwhelming amount of stress and anxiety, click here to talk to a licensed professional and get the support you deserve.
Don’t bank on travel planning going to plan and working out perfectly, because the chances are there will be slight hitches and complications along the way. But, with the help of sleep, you’ll be able to tackle whatever lies ahead and take it in your stride.
Reduction in Performance
Quite simply, if you don’t sleep enough, you won’t be able to function properly, and this is an issue you really do want to avoid. Your reflexes and fine motor skills will suffer.
Officials claim that around 20% of accidents on the roads in the UK are brought on by sleep-related mistakes.
Take the stat we just mentioned and then consider the ramification if you are driving a car or motorbike while you’re in a foreign country. The difficulties you can face in a country that isn’t your own can make everything significantly more stressful.
If you’re at fault with an accident, insurance of various kinds (travel, credit card, etc.) won’t always cover you and you run the risk of being sued. This is a financially scary thought when you’d have to pay out of your own pocket. You can slim this risk down notably by staying on top of your sleep.
Hindered Judgement
Not too dissimilar to the previous point, a reduced level of sleep can hinder your reading of occurrences. If you get rich, recommended amounts of sleep, you’ll continually make sound judgements on various scenarios. Lose those sleep levels though, accurately assessing situations becomes reduced.
