Sleeping Secrets
Why Sleep?
Every day your heart beats hundreds of times, your body moves quite a bid, you ingest nutrients to be broken down and absorbed, you stress your body, and hopefully accomplish some things. However, you can’t keep doing this all the time nonstop. Your body needs rest, and this is what sleep provides for. Without sleep you will go crazy and die, that is how important it is. Sleep is a time for your body to recover, replenish and restore your body so that you can go out and do this again and again. Read on to find out what happens during sleep, how to optimize this process for the best outcomes and improve your quality of life.
The recommendations for sleep vary from a newborn to the elderly and your body’s needs and abilities for sleep change over time also. For now, let’s just talk about adult sleep needs and how to obtain them. The recommendations are 7-8 hours a night of quality sleep. So how do you go about this? Current best practices are to sleep in a cool, dark, quiet environment for optimal sleep. Some broad recommendations are to cut down screen time before bed, no alcohol or exercise for about three hours before bed. The best way to evaluate your sleep is to determine how you feel the next morning and during the day. Did you wake up groggy or alert? Did you feel sluggish in the mornings, or run out of energy in the afternoon? We you exhausted at the end of the day and fell asleep on the couch? If you are not waking up alert, having energy throughout the day, and staying awake until bedtime you likely are having adequate quality sleep. If not, you need to start playing investigator to determine what you can do to improve the quality f your sleep. Yes ,you can break the rules and only get 5-6 hours for a night or two if needed, as life happens. But make this a rare occasion rather than a regular occasion.
In further articles I will dive in deeper into all aspects of sleep so that you can have the best sleep possible.
