I’ve always told my patients that obtaining adequate sleep is crucial because often health complaints improve simply by getting better quality sleep. Here is an interesting item off this morning’s Yahoo news page: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090616/hl_time/08599190456100 Apparently sleep also functions as a sort of emotional car wash. In particular REM (i.e. dream) sleep is crucial to processing the emotional component of daily events.