Long days, long nights… what your body wants, needs and craves is SLEEP!! Sometimes I come home to a picture very similar to this one. Step 1: Pull off shoes. Step 2: Secure blanket around sleeping body. Step 3: Wake in the morning to find human in place of formerly exhausted zombie.
A whopping 40% of people do not get enough sleep in the nighttime hours. 10% of the population is beyond sleep deprived and fall into the sleep disorder category. We are fascinated by our dreams and find sleep to be elusive. We don’t fully understand what happens when we sleep, but we know it is an important process for maintaining good health on a variety of levels. An entire foundation and journal exist solely to understand the importance of sleep and most renowned universities have sleep research centers. If you’re a poor undergrad or have been in the past you might have participated in one of the “poked and prodded” during your sleep for some dinero$$.
Sleep is a mystery to us – we don’t know why it’s important, but we {think} know it’s something we can’t do without. A few quick tips are provided for achieving quality sleep for so you can feel like the optimal you! {pic = all the components of sleep and your brain} There is no “magic number” for the hours of sleep – it varies by individual. Being attuned to your body and its needs will help you determine that number for yourself.
Why sleep? From the Harvard’s Women’s Health Study:
(1) Learning and memory: Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. In studies, people who’d slept after learning a task did better on tests later.
(2) Metabolism and weight: Chronic sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates, and by altering levels of hormones that affect our appetite.
(3) Safety: Sleep debt contributes to a greater tendency to fall asleep during the daytime. These lapses may cause falls and mistakes such as medical errors, air traffic mishaps, and road accidents.
(4) Mood: Sleep loss may result in irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness. Too little sleep can also leave you too tired to do the things you like to do.
(5) Disease: Sleep deprivation alters immune function, including the activity of the body’s killer cells. Keeping up with sleep may also help fight cancer. Serious sleep disorders have been linked to hypertension, increased stress hormone levels, and irregular heartbeat.
Sleep is also when cells and systems get to work. From the Sleep Foundation “…one of the greatest changes induced by sleep is an increase in the release of growth hormone. Certain physiological activities associated with digestion, cell repair, and growth are often greatest during sleep, suggesting that cell repair and growth may be an important function of sleep.” You really are getting your “beauty sleep” at night.
Improve your sleep tonight!
- Stop eating: At least 3 hours before bed. You want to slow the digestive system for the night.
- Ix-nay alcohol and caffeine: They interrupt REM sleep.
- Power down the TV: By 10:00 pm or earlier; give your eyes a break from screens.Your eyes are tired from a day of computer and TV. Give them a rest.
- Bedroom=S’s: Sleep and sex. Get rid of the TV in the bedroom (on my to-do list…).
- Breathe, meditate, stretch: Giving yourself or get a massage and relax before sleeping.
- Block out all light:It might seem a little extreme, but most of us are sensitive enough to the point that even a little light disrupts our production of the sleep hormone melatonin. I go so far as to tape over the lights on electronics (cable box, Blu-Ray).
- Phone=away: Remove the iPhone/Blackberry/Droid/cell from your head at night.
- EXERCISE! Just don’t do anything too vigorous right before bed or you’ll be awake even longer.
The above were adapted from Dr. Frank Lipman’s REVIVE! and from his piece in the Huffington Post earlier this year. *Stats for the number of sleep deprived peeps come from the annual Sleep Foundation Poll. Get to sleep tonight :) and see what difference a night can make!
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