Have you ever had a moment where you’d really like to fall asleep or take a nap, but you’re not able to due to outside circumstances or even just not able to fall asleep? During those moments, we might just shut our eyes, hoping that resting them with do just as good of a trick as a quick nap. But does resting your eyes replenish us at all?
The Benefit of Resting Your Eyes
Although resting with your eyes closed doesn’t start up your REM cycle and allow you to clock in some sleep time, it does still provide some hefty benefits. Closing your eyes calms your mind and relaxes your muscles and organs. Many refer to it as “quiet wakefulness”.
When you rest your eyes, you essentially tell your body it’s safe and can take a break from focusing or thinking. Dr. Chiara Cirelli, a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, explains that “while we’re awake, all of our neurons are constantly firing, but that when we’re asleep, the neurons revert to an ‘up-and-down’ state in which only some are active at a given time” and that “during some stages of sleep, all neuron activity goes silent.” When you rest your eyes, the neurons will never go completely silent, but they do actually take a break and reduce stress.
Resting your eyes can also serve as a sort of reset for an overactive brain: it increases alertness, improves your mood, and stimulates creativity and mental clarity. It can be a great tool to use when you’re stuck on a problem or in a debate with someone. When we’re in these modes, we tend to continue to try to think harder as if digging deeper will help. However, often when we walk away from a problem, whether that is literally going on a walk to clear our mind or resting our eyes, that provides the best solution. Just pause, close your eyes for a few minutes, and when you come to, you’ll likely be a bit more productive.
The Downside of Resting Your Eyes
While resting your eyes can give your brain, muscles, and organs a tiny break, it doesn’t do much else. During the deeper stages of sleep, your body is replenishing itself in many ways. Sleep is essential for repairing cells, producing new cells, releasing growth hormones, and deeply resetting our brain. Sleep can help us remember new information, it can help us get over a cold, stimulate our appetite, and provide many other benefits.
Conclusion
Resting your eyes is a good way to relax your body and replenish your eyes before it needs to take on more tasks, but it is in no way a substitute for sleep. Your body needs the replenishing benefits of sleep to function properly and restore itself. If you’re struggling with sleeping at night, resting your eyes and hoping that you’ll drift away, the best thing to do is to do some type of low-light activity such as reading. Sometimes when we sit there with our eyes closed, the only thing we can think about is how we aren’t falling asleep, then we become agitated and it’s even harder for us to fall asleep. However, if we can empty our thoughts, resting our eyes can actually help us achieve sleep by relaxing our muscles and mind.
At times, people also rest their eyes because they’ve been staring at a computer screen all day or work in a profession that requires laser focus. If that is the case, closing your eyes does actually help moisturize your eyes and reset them to a certain degree. If you’re struggling with straining your eyes and needing to rest them often, don’t hesitate to speak to an Orange County eye doctor, like Dr. Ghosheh of Advanced Eye Medical.