Are You Getting Enough Sleep?

by Helen Hamlin

One important and often overlooked aspect of obtaining optimal health that we need to explore is sleep. Why is sleep so important anyhow? Do we really know? Why does it elude us?

More than 400 years ago, Shakespeare penned the following:

“…O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse,
How have I frightened thee.”

Yet for the next three-and-a-half centuries, this notion missed the mark entirely. Even today, many of us think of sleep as a luxury, something to do when we have a day off or during a vacation!

The good news is that science and medicine have begun to acknowledge that our health and lives begin to come undone without enough quality sleep. Our society is developing all sorts of sleep disorders and our health is being dangerously affected as a result.

Do you . . .
Wake up tired in the morning?
Need a nap in the afternoon?
Fall asleep watching TV?
Have frequent small accidents at home or large ones on the road?
Have trouble focusing on the job?
Find yourself sleepy after lunch?
Have trouble figuring the correct change from a purchase?
Feel irritable or depressed most of the time?
Feel like you are not getting anything done?
Drink alcohol to get to sleep?
Drink several cups of coffee or energy drinks to stay awake?
Have difficulty falling asleep?
Have difficulty staying asleep?

Answering yes to more than three of these questions indicates you are most likely not getting health restorative sleep.

Sleep is our body’s restoration system. It helps organ function, stabilizes chemical imbalance, refreshes areas of the brain that regulate our moods and behavior and improves performance. Sleep deprivation is considered a form of psychological torture and is often considered worse than going without food or water.

There are plenty of good articles being written these days on the damage caused by inadequate sleep, so I will not dwell on this. Rather, I would like to suggest some simple things you might want to help maximize the quality of your sleep. What do you have to lose by getting the rest you so desperately need?

Are you an early bird or a night owl? If you are an early bird, you might try getting to bed a little earlier in the evening. If you are a night owl, perhaps you can arrange your work schedule so that you can begin your day a little later and leave work later.

It doesn’t matter which type of person you are – we all need to get up! So count backwards from the time that you need to be up (approximately seven hours for women and eight hours for men – sorry that’s just the way we are programmed!). That is the time you should be sleeping. That is your bedtime – no electronics/TV/reading, etc. After some practice, you will find the right amount of sleep needed for you and you will begin waking up rested before the alarm goes off!

Develop a set routine. Today’s busy schedules have been allowing us to sleep only when our inability to function forces us to. But you can do some creative planning to enable you to change these sleep-depleting behaviors.

Here are some helpful hints that you might want to incorporate into your plan to develop better sleep habits:

Daytime:

  • Limit your in-bed activities to sleeping and lovemaking in order to stop sending your brain the wrong signals.
  • Try not to consume caffeine after noon. Caffeine can still be coursing through your body up to six hours later!
  • Avoid large heavy meals within three hours prior to sleeping. If you are really hungry, try some low-fat milk or a light, low-sugar snack.
  • Do not nap. It will sabotage your plan to get a good night’s sleep.
  • Avoid high-glycemic and fatty foods at lunch. If you are really sleepy, a short power nap might do the trick – short!

Evening:

  • Reduce ambient light several hours before bedtime. Turn off the TV 30 minutes before you plan to go to bed (no emails, no surfing the Internet, and turn down loud music).
  • No cell phone use, if at all possible; if necessary, use a headset; or turn it off two hours prior to bedtime. Recent studies are linking radiation from cell phones to stimulating your brain and inhibiting sleep.
  • Decrease your fluid intake – getting up to use the bathroom is a sleep disruption.
  • Avoid exercise two hours prior to bedtime. While exercise is a good thing, it is too stimulating to enhance your sleep time. Try to give up some TV time to allow for exercise earlier in the day.
  • If you take medications at night, take them one hour prior to bedtime.
  • Avoid alcohol within 90 minutes of bedtime. Contrary to what we think, it is a stimulant and can interfere with your sleep patterns. If you have difficulty falling asleep, you may want to consider skipping the drink with dinner.
  • Resolve family issues before your planned sleep time. Unresolved issues will surely inhibit your sleepiness.

We all have busy schedules, family and work-related stresses, and other things that keep us from getting the proper amount of quality sleep to function at our very best. For the next couple of weeks try focusing on getting enough sleep and see if you don’t feel and perform just a little bit better.

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