What You Need To Know About Sleep:

Sound, uninterrupted, beautiful sleep is essential when it comes to maintaining our overall well-being. Chronic under sleeping has been linked to type two diabetes, compromised immunity, weight dysregulation, depression, and even early death.

Sleep is beneficial as a preventative measure, as well as when recovering from illness. You know when you get sick, and you just want to sleep all day? That's your body trying to get you into a state where it can undertake repair processes to help you recover.

Wellness is the combination of many small factors you do consistently. In the hierarchy of health, we believe sleep and stress are at the top of the pyramid yet frequently get overlooked.

We spend a lot of time factoring in nutrition and exercise, but often at the expense of sleep.

There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture—it is horrendous in all senses of the word and disrupts your physical, hormonal, and mental health.

Here are four things you need to know about sleep.

1. Sleep is a basic biological necessity

Sleep allows our bodies to recover and regenerate.

Research has shown that without this recovery and regeneration, a sleep deficit can contribute to major illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. It can trigger anxiety and depression, leading to impaired mental performance and memory loss and can lower our immunity making us more prone to bugs like the flu.

What some people don’t know is that even short-term sleep deficit has negative consequences.

One night of poor sleep can temporarily leave you as insulin resistant as a diabetic!

This is problematic as when we are tired, we often reach for energy stimulants to get us through, such as sugar or caffeine.

On the flip side, good sleep improves our mood, mental ability, memory, immunity, and physical performance.

2. Sleep is both an active and a restorative process

This means that both hormonal and neurochemical (mental) changes take place during your sleeping hours.

Most healthy adults will experience the following three stages of sleep:

Your eyes are closed, but you’re still semi-awake (the dozing off part...)

You’re experiencing light sleep—your muscles relax, your heart rate slows down and

your body temperature drops.

You’ve drifted off into a deep sleep or delta sleep, where the body repairs and

regenerates.

To understand how and why sleep greatly impacts our health, let’s look at how our sleep cycle works and how it affects our body.

3. The Circadian Rhythm

Our internal body clock, known as the circadian rhythm, is naturally regulated by light, dark, and by changes in body functions every 24 hours. This includes our body temperature, hormones, airways, and kidneys.

This means levels of hormones such as the thyroid hormone, thyroxine, and our sleep hormone, melatonin, are different by day than by night. Interrupted sleep can throw our hormone balance off-kilter and create health problems. For example, thyroxine regulates our metabolism, if this is affected, it can lead to weight gain and sugar cravings.

Melatonin is especially important when it comes to bedtime. This hormone changes our core body temperature and lets us know when we’re tired. Melatonin is produced when it gets dark. Production speeds up from about 10 pm onwards—which is why we feel more tired the later it gets. As sunrise looms, melatonin drops off, and cortisol production kicks in - this wakes us up.

In today’s modern environment, we are constantly exposed to bright light from electronic devices. This unnatural light disrupts the earth’s day-night cycle, which regulates our sleep cycle and is why many of us struggle to drift off to sleep.

4. How much is enough?

A good guideline is 7.5-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night. However, there are lots of factors that play into this. In winter, when the days are shorter, we benefit from extra sleep while it is dark. The amount of optimum sleep also varies between individuals. Some people function perfectly well on six or seven hours of sleep, while others need nine. Infants, of course, need a lot more sleep as it allows their wee bodies to develop. Elite athletes also need extra snooze time to allow their bodies to recover fully.

Regardless of your ‘personal best’ sleep time, one thing is for certain: No one can survive on minimal sleep in the long term.

Research also shows us that when the body gets less than six hours of sleep, it will affect memory, especially short-term memory. Early studies into dementia have pinpointed six hours as the minimum requirement for disease prevention.

We can try and fill our days with exercise, healthy meals, social interaction, and fulfilling work life, but if we aren’t sleeping, we can potentially undo all this good work.

Low energy and elevated cortisol levels will damage our metabolism.

Your sleep challenge

Sleep is vital for optimal health and well-being, which is especially important now. It affects so much more than just our energy. This week try to aim for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night. For example, this could mean sleeping from 10 pm-6 am.

The best thing you can do is focus on making small changes to improve your health and support your immunity, one step at a time. Each week it will be easier and more sustainable.

Source: Ben Warren from BePure

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