Sleeping for Health and Wellbeing
Sleep Ok. So let’s be straight up here. Your body is designed to sleep and sleep well. It is designed to sleep regularly and often. When you wake you are meant to be bright eyed and bushy tailed just looking for the next adventure.
Most people hear enough to think that sleep issues are normal, especially parents. For many, this means that the average person will have sleep debts and problems for more than 10 years before seeking help. If you think about this it probably indicates an unusual form of trained social insanity.
Sleep Rules:-
- When you wake up, get up.
- Only use your bed for sleep.
- Habits Rule, so use them to your benefit. Go to bed at the same time 7 days per week.Go to bed 8 hours before you need to get up. 5.30 start = 9.30 bed.
- Blue light equals daytime, so do not use day globes in the bedroom (warm light globes only).
- Leave at least 30 minutes to an hour to just slow down and relax.
- Night sleep is NOT a time to digest food: Light dinner only!
A short addition to all of my advice here. Personal sleep requirements vary and no-one who is not a sleep professional, who has had you in a lab for at least 30 days, can tell you ‘your’ sleep requirements. However the thing that varies most is not how much sleep you require, (that usually stays fairly similar,) it is how well you cope with a lack of sleep. So even a person who considers that they need little sleep will normally find that they are just coping better than most with a chronic sleep debt. Symptoms
What are the effects of sleep deprivation?
Many people think that it is OK to work late into the night before an important exam or meeting to prepare, unfortunately for them this is the worst of all strategies. Depriving yourself of sleep like this means that you are less able to concentrate and respond to new ideas or questions and your ability to recall memories is decreased.
- Daytime drowsiness and nodding off
- Mood shifts, including depression,
- IncreasedStress,
- Anxiety and loss of sense of self
- Impaired memory functioning
- Reduced ability to handle complex tasks
- Reduced ability to think logically and critically
- Reduced ability to analyze new information
- Reduced decision-making skills and
- In more severe cases of sleep deprivation, hallucination or psychosis.
And those are just some of the mental issues.
Here is some more looking just at physical effects.
- Reduced ability to recover from fatigue
- Overweight
- Reduced motor skills and coordination
- Reduced immunity to disease, bacterial and viral infections
- Poor digestion and nutrient uptake and use
- Reduced sex drive
- Impotence
- Depression
Some of you will notice that most of these symptoms can have other causes as well, however I have put them in here as most people never consider the possibility that what they really need is just a goods night’s sleep on a regular basis.
Habits – As a general rule it will take your body around one full week to develop a schedule around sleep. If this is interrupted by a late night or on the weekend you will spend the next 3-7 days resetting your body clock. So try to have a regular sleep time that suits you. This may be a night sleep of 7 hours and a nap at 1PM for 20 minutes, or 8 ½ hours at night.
Fixing the Issue – Ok. So let’s get better. Challenge number 1 is that most people sleep accidentally and do not understand their sleep patterns or requirements. Get a notebook and place it on your bedside table. On a new page each day record. What time you went to bed, how long before you tried to go to sleep, how long did it take to go to sleep, did you wake up during the night, how often did this happen, When did you get up, how did you feel. Do you nap during the day, how often and how long are those naps.
Start to read about sleep and what your requirements are. 2 of my favorite books are “Power Sleep” by Doctor James Maas and “Sleep Thieves” by Stanley Coren. But whichever you buy, remember to focus on healthy sleep first. Find out what it is and only then start to out what it is not.
Medical Conditions – There are a number of medical conditions that will affect your ability to sleep. Some of these are physical and some are psychiatric. Some of these are even caused by lack of sleep in the first place. So if you are having issues that you can’t seem to manage, go see your doctor and if necessary get a referral. Squeaky Wheels As is often the case, it is the squeaky wheel that gets oiled.
Do not suffer in silence talk to your doctor, research online, read and talk to people. Professional sleep scientists believe that the vast majority of sleep issues are relatively easy to fix and that even most of the more intractable issues can be dealt with a little commitment and persistence.
November 29, 2008
· 
admin · 
No Comments
Posted in: Sleep
Leave a Reply