Go ahead, Snooze!

Does everyone sleep adequate? A good night sleep is one of life’s real pleasures, and unfortunately a luxury that too few people enjoy on a regular basis.

Sleep was long considered as a block of time when your brain and the body shutdown. But our brain and body functions stay active throughout sleep.

Sleep makes you feel better, but its importance goes way beyond just boosting your mood or banishing under-eye circles. Adequate sleep is a key part of a healthy lifestyle, and can benefit your heart, weight, mind, and more.

How you feel when you wake up says lot about the night you had and the day to come.

Why Sleep Matters:

When we miss sleep in order to keep up with our 24/7 world, we pay a price with our ability to learn, our health and safety, and our quality of life. Sleep like nutrition and physical activity, is a critical determinant of health and well-being. Sleep is a basic requirement for infant, child, and adolescent health and development. Sleep loss and untreated sleep disorders influence basic patterns of behavior that negatively affect family health and interpersonal relationships.

Improve Memory:

Our mind is surprisingly busy while snooze. During sleep we can strengthen memories or practice skills learned while we are awake. If we are trying to learn something, whether it’s physical or mental, we learn it to a certain point with practice. But something happens while we sleep that make we learn it better. In other words if we are trying to learn something new, whether it’s Spanish or a new tennis swing we’ll perform better after sleeping.

Live Longer:  

Too much or too little sleep is associated with a shorter life span. (Although it’s not clear if it’s a cause or effect. Illness may affect sleep patterns too). It’s pretty clear that “if you sleep better you can certainly live better”.

Spur Creativity:

In addition to consolidating memories, or making them stronger, our brain appears to recognize and restructure them, which may result in more creativity. People seem to strengthen the emotional components of a memory during sleep, which may help spur creativity.

Be a Winner:

If you are an athlete, there may be one simple way to improve your performance – Sleep. Good sleeping hours in bed could make us quicker and sharper.

Keep Your Figure and Look attractive:

Watching our weight can be as simple as getting a good night’s sleep. Lack of sleep can make us put on weight by drastically slowing metabolism down. If you are thinking about going on a diet, you want to plan an earlier bedtime too. Regular sleep actually makes you look healthier and more attractive. After a good night sleep of around 8hrs, you look more attractive, healthier and fitter than a less rest full night.

Lower Stress:

When it comes to our health stress and sleep are nearly one and the same –and both can affect cardiovascular health. “Sleep can definitely reduce levels of stress, and with that people can have better control of blood pressure”. It is also believed that sleep affects cholesterol levels, which plays a significant role in heart disease.

Healthy Sleep:

Maintain a regular bed and wake time scheduling including weekends.

Our Sleep-Wake cycle is regulated by a “Circadian Clock” in our brain and the body needs to balance both sleep time and the wake time. A regular waking time in the morning strengthens the circadian function and can help with sleep onset at night. That’s also why it is important to keep a regular bed time and wake time.

Establish regular, relaxing bed time routine such as soaking in a bath or tub and then reading a book or listening to soothing music.

A relaxing, routine activity right before bed time conducted away from bright light helps separate our sleep time from activities that can cause excitement, stress or anxiety which can make it more difficult to fall asleep, get sound and deep sleep or remain sleep.  

Create a sleep conductive environment that is dark, quite, confortable and cool.

Design your sleep environment to establish the conditions you need for sleep-cool, quite, dark, comfortable and free of interruptions. Also make your bedroom reflective of the value you place on sleep.

Sleep on comfortable mattress and pillows.

Make sure mattress is comfortable and supportive. The one you have been using for years may have exceeded its life expectancy .Have comfortable pillows and make the room attractive and inviting for sleep.

Use your bedroom only for sleep.

It is best to take work materials, televisions and computers out of the sleeping environment. Use your bed only for sleep to strengthen the association between bed and sleep.

Finish eating at least 2-3 hours before your regular bedtime.

Eating or drinking too much may make you less comfortable when setting down for bed. It is best to avoid heavy meal too close to bed time. Also, spicy food may cause heartburn, which leads to difficulty falling sleep and discomfort during the night.

Exercise regularly; it is best to complete your workout at least a few hours before the bedtime.

In general, exercising regular makes it easier to fall asleep and contributes sounder sleep. However, exercising sporadically or right before going to bed will make falling asleep more difficult. In addition to making us more alert, our body temperature rises during exercise, and takes us much as 6hrs to begin to drop. A cooler body temperature is associated with sleep onset.

Avoid caffeine or nicotine close to bed time. It can keep you awake.

Caffeine and nicotine are stimulants, which mean it can produce an alerting effect. Even if you do not think it affects you, it may be disrupting and changing the quality of sleep.

Avoid alcohol close to bedtime.

Al though many people think that alcohol as sedative, it actually disrupts sleep, causing night time awakenings. Consuming alcohol leads to a night full of less restful sleep.

Working the Night shift:

Increase your total amount of sleep by adding naps and lengthening the amount of time you allot for sleep.

Minimize the number of shift changes so that your body’s biological clock has a longer time to adjust to a nighttime work schedule.

Get rid of sound and light distractions in the bedroom during daytime sleep.

No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap – Carrie Snow