WEBSTER CITY — Jodi Harms, the Senior Life Solutions Program Director with Van Diest Medical Center will be hosting her Healthy Connections presentations on Sleep at Kendall Young Library Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 6:30 in the Library Meeting Room.

Harms will be discussing the importance of sleep to everyday life and how detrimental lack of sleep can be to the body.

Sleep can affect one’s mood, ability to retain new information and forming memories, the health of one’s organs, how the immune system processes infections, and “other bodily functions like appetite, metabolism, and hormone release,” according to Harms.

The body needs the accurate amount of time to shut down and regenerate its ability to function accurately, even at the cellular level. Each age group relies on a different amount of sleep in order for the body to re-energize itself, which will vary the older one gets. An infant 0-3 months old needs 14-17 hours of sleep, whereas adults aged 65 and up need 7-8 hours of recommended sleep according to the National Sleep Foundation.