Neuroscientists know their stuff.

One of them, Matthew P. Walker, PhD, professes that I possess a “superpower.” The reason I believe him, however, has nothing to do with his medical background, the abbreviation behind his name, or even the fact that he published a book explaining how I forge such force.

I believe simply because I have used my superpower so many times I’ve lost count.

Now I’m not a neuroscientist, but believe me when I say you possess this superpower, too. We all do.

It results from a healthy activity that many people claim they can’t find the time to do. But the superpower doesn’t come from working out 15 hours a week or even a single hour a day.

It’s simply a matter of getting sufficient sleep.

One reason why Walker calls sufficient sleep a superpower comes from a study he coauthored and referenced in his book, Why We Sleep. When exposed to stimuli designed to produce negative emotions, sleep-deprived subjects recorded about 60 percent more activity in the amygdalae, the emotion-processing part of the brain.

The amygdalae of the sufficiently rested subjects, though, didn’t react nearly as much. As a result, these subjects reacted more rationally to negative stimuli.

In essence, well-rested individuals handle bad situations - and who doesn’t occasionally encounter them? - more effectively.

Now those with keen a memory may recall that two sleep-related articles appeared in this column only two months ago. So what happened between now and the writing of those articles to return to the topic so quickly?

A little thing called a broken leg.

Because of it, I had four full weeks where I could sleep as much as I needed - and did I ever. Even deducting the sleep lost from the aches that cause me to wake, I still averaged nearly 10 hours a night.

To say this extra sleep expedited the fusing of the bone and the regeneration of the cut muscles classifies as a classic “no-brainer.”

The extra sleep also did something else: kept me from catching a cold or the flu.

Growing up, scratchiness in my throat usually meant nasal congestion the next time I slept and a cold or flu when I awoke. In my twenties, I discovered that taking a homeopathic remedy with the first feeling of scratchiness often ended the illness with just a bit of nasal congestion, so that’s been my practice since then.

But when I kept feeling a scratchiness in my throat after another over-the-top session of rehab (the physical therapists kept imploring me to do less instead of double on my “off” days), my only recourse was to nap as soon as possible and make sure I got to bed earlier than normal that night. The surgeon, you see, had prescribed a blood thinner to reduce the risk of a blood clot after surgery and wanted me to take a two-week break from any and all supplements.

Yet after 21 days of rehab where I averaged 21 hours of exercise a week and developing a scratchiness in my throat on at least a third of those nights, I never got sick. My belief that extra shuteye saved me is supported by a recent study recently conducted by researchers at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

The study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine found that a good night’s sleep increases the effectiveness of your T cells, specialized immune cells that - when activated by a protein - ward off the invading pathogens that create illness in your body. What activates that protein?

Sufficient sleep.

In short, this research bolsters a belief that’s been long held for years: that sleep aids the body’s defenses against infection.

Sleep helped my rehab in one other way, as well.

More than one person remarked during it how they’d be totally depressed to go from biking four hours one Saturday to walking 75 feet with the aid of a walker the next. I never felt that way, though.

I just saw rehab as another way to work out and didn’t let it depress me - so it makes sense that research published last summer in the Journal of Psychiatric Research suggests a link between effective sleep patterns and a lack of depression.

Prior to this, research had linked the night-owl lifestyle to an increased rate of depression, but never accounted for other factors. This study adjusted for those while using the results from data on more than 32,000 women first collected as part of the Nurses’ Health Study II.

The women in the study who reported going to bed and waking up early were 12 to 27 percent less likely to be depressed - even after adjusting for other factors - than even women who didn’t consider themselves to be true night owls but didn’t go to bed super early either.

So my advice to you is the same as two months ago. Don’t skimp on sleep.

Even if you workout and eat properly, you won’t feel or perform your best without the proper amount of rest.