The importance of sleep goes beyond just providing your body rest. Sleep helps to: improve the rate at which we learn; improve memory; reduce the risk of accidents and mishaps; improve mood; improve cardiovascular health; reduce the risk of disease; and more easily control metabolism and weight.
Sleep triggers hormones that help cells to repair the damage done to your body that day. The most important hormone in this process is probably human growth hormone (HGH), which stimulates cell growth by mediating in the metabolism of protein, fats, and carbohydrates. HGH also influences weight control by telling fat cells to release the energy in the fats they are storing and to reduce additional storage.
Your body seems to understand when to bring in these hormones, which isn't when you're performing normal daily activities such as work and play. As much as 70% of the growth hormone produced in any 24-hour period is secreted while you are sleeping.
This is why the time you schedule for sleep is important. Your body begins preparing for sleep as soon as the sun goes down, most importantly by secreting melatonin, a hormone that helps to regulate sleep. Secreting growth hormone begins not long after (and more HGH is released during the earlier hours of the night rather than later in the night).
The result is that 8 hours of sleep from 10 PM to 6 AM produces a greater level of HGH than would occur during the same amount of sleep from midnight to 8 AM. Secretion spikes during periods of deep sleep, and those periods more often occur earlier in the night and very early in the morning.
You produce less growth hormone as you get older, and that decline can begin as early as your twenties. The use of ARTIFICIALLY produced HGH as therapy is highly controversial, so your better off getting the greatest amount of growth hormone the natural way--through adequate amounts of healthy sleep at the right time of night.
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