As the world becomes busier, faster, and more demanding place we are finding ourselves squeezing more and more into each day and the working week. This means many of us are disregarding proper sleep patterns due to the hectic lifestyles we live. The common thought being to try to fit more ‘life’ in a 24hr period. The facts show if sleep is disregarded and replaced with demanding activities on the body and mind it will have a negative effect on our capacity to perform tasks. Sleep deficit is now recognised as a modern disease causing poor work productivity, accidents, and low mental acuity through for children at school and adults at work.
Sleep is a crucial part of a healthy lifestyle and it is vital that we devote one third of our day to some shut eye. It is a state during which the body and mind are at rest. In essence, sleep is a partial detachment from the world, where external stimuli are blocked from our senses and recovery can occur.
There are two main phases of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM in which you cycle through 4-5 stages of sleep. Each phase and stage of sleep you enter depends on the length of time you have been a sleep as well as the quality of sleep from the previous few nights. Both of these factors affect the duration of time you will spend in each stage.
Why all these stages of sleep?
Researchers have still not come to a full conclusion for the exact purpose for the each of the stages but they all agree they are vital to our health and well being. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggests that the average adult needs between 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. During this time we cycle through the different phases and stages of sleep spending between 90 to 120 minutes in each. During some stages of deep sleep growth hormone is secreted by the body which assists with cellular repair. This includes repair to bone density, connective tissues and muscle mass. Mending of blood cells, daily wear and tear on the body and also the immune system regenerates antibodies to fight off antigens such viruses, bacteria and toxins. It is also believed that the consolidation of memory takes place during REM sleep. Finally, processing of the day’s activities occurs in the brain occurs which is essential for our emotional and mental well being.
How do we get a good sleep?
With sleep being vital for our wellbeing, we need to make sure that we are getting enough time pushing out a few Z’s. It is essential to set a rhythm to ensure adequate sleep is achieved. Setting a time to go to sleep and a time that we wake up on a day to day basis including weekends helps set this rhythm. Make your bedroom as dark as possible by reducing or removing as much light as possible and removing all light and sound distractions helping to increase the body’s hormone level of melatonin making sleep easier. Dimming the lights in your home progressively over the evening will also help with the increase of melatonin as you get closer to bed time. Create a routine before bed which might include 10-30min of light reading, listing to soft music, burning incense, or even a stretch routine will help. If you struggle with this also try to avoid the sleep destroyers (caffeine, alcohol, nicotine) in the later half of the day and before bedtime.
Try to wake up close to the same time everyday and then allow natural light to contact your skin as soon after you wake as possible. This reduces the melatonin hormone levels which make you more awake and alert. If you feel the need to sleep through the day take a nap but no longer then 20mins. By keeping naps to this time frame you avoid entering into the deeper phases of sleep which would upset our night time sleep patterns making it harder to sleep later that evening.
Do the right thing by your body and achieve the required amount of sleep on a regular basis to maintain a healthier body and mind.
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