Sleep overview including
‘The sleep revolution’ book review written by Arianna Huffington
This book had some great content in it and when I read it I made a great connection that affects us all, whether you want to perform better in a high ranking job, whether you are a new mum, you want to lose weight, you want more energy or you just want to function with all cylinders – sleep is the key.
For those who work in corporate and want to continually master their job and work up the corporate ladder, they bust their boilers to work extreme hours just fueling with stimulants to get them through, they ignore health warnings their body is trying to tell them and they definitely put sleep into the ‘not now basket’.
For those that want to lose weight, they only concentrate on diet and exercise, and they tend to over exercise to try to burn more calories to get them skinny, again not understanding the power of rest and recovery to help lose the weight.
For those new mums, yes sleep is deprived due to the new little human who just entered the world, sleep is controlled by the baby, however meditation is a brilliant way to help the sleep deprived mum, who has a sleep-hangover if naps are interrupted.
For mums and dads that find their only “me” time is when the kids go to bed, they are continually stimulated by screens catching up on emails, messages, FB and Game of Thrones series.
This is sending their health into a downward spiral with not a great ending.
What we all need to understand is we need to prioritize sleep to help all of these situations above.
So I will pull out some great sections of this book so as you understand why sleep needs to be your new focus.
Mental health –
- When we sleep the brain is able to get rid of toxins, including proteins that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
- Sleep is connected with every mental health disorder we know of especially depression and anxiety.
- Lack of sleep makes you more emotionally fragile and makes small problems feel like big ones.
- Your cognitive performance is reduced greatly.
- Memory capacity is reduced and same with social competence.
- Your entire performance is going to suffer.
- The way you make decisions is changed:-
– Like losing your temper at your children 16%,
– Behaving badly at work 13%,
– Difficulty concentrating 29%,
– Losing interest in hobbies and leisure activities 19%,
– Falling asleep at work 16%.
The incidence of death from all causes goes up by 15% when we sleep 5 hours or less per night.
There is a link between lack of sleep and increased risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and obesity.
Sleep deprivation makes us dangerously less healthy.
The bottom line – when we’re not rested, we’re not as healthy as it shows.
The lack of melatonin, the hormone that controls our sleep and wake cycles, is linked to higher rates of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer.
*Melatonin is decreased by 30% for every hour you are on your screens of a night.
Among teens and young adults, short sleep duration was directly associated with higher levels of stress and anxiety. Every hour of lost sleep the risk of psychological distress went up 14%.
Being dependent on energy drinks is making us sick, plus emergency room visits have doubled in 4 years as a result from these: nausea, vomiting, increased blood pressure, altered heart rhythms, kidney problems etc – instead of prioritizing sleep, people reach for caffeine or energy drinks instead.
Unfortunately shift workers are affected the worst and having my partner a shiftworker, I notice his cognitive power is non existent after waking from night shift.
Your circadian rhythm is totally out of whack.
To think the emergency workers need their cognitive powers to be fully switched on in life and death situations, but they battle within themselves to help lives of others, but put their own health at risk.
How is it the companies that are providing us with sleep apps and devices are the ones that hyperconnected us in the first place – they rob us of sleep, now after they have got us addicted to the technology they are making us more addicted by relying on their sleep devices.
* 60% of people around the world have slept holding their mobile phones
Facts about lack of sleep:
- Sleep deprivation results in higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol the next day.
- Many genes are affected by lack of sleep – stress and immune system, leading to inflammation.
- When our body has inflammation triggered we can’t sleep as well, so then you have a continuing circle of lack of sleep and constant inflammation.
-This easily helps to explain the links between sleep deprivation and negative health outcomes such as heart attacks. - When we are sick our bodies recognise the power of sleep, your body can repair and your body can start to rid the sickness within.
- Sleep is required for the processing of recently acquired short term memories (converting some to long term memory) and the strengthening of long term memory.
- During REM sleep neural processes not only strengthen connections between neurons but also reorganize them.
*If you want to increase your memory – rid your brain fog – get quality sleep. - Dreams can help us process our emotions, since when we don’t process our negative emotions, we are likely to experience an increase in stress and anxiety.
REM sleep also takes us offline by inhibiting the use of most of our senses and voluntary muscles.
Nightmares:
Around a quarter of children aged 5-12 wake up from nightmares once a week or more.
If you ban TV before bedtime for your child, a study from Santiago, Chile, found that children who watch TV late at night reported disturbed sleep and more episodes of nightmares.
Girls have more nightmares than boys.
* the word ‘nightmare’ is “a female evil spirit thought to lie upon and suffocate sleepers”
Nightmares can be so frightening and involve things that could not possibly be real, from a part within our brain, the amygdala, where we process negative emotions. Over-activation of the amygdala during REM can create intense fear-responses in the individual. And while the amygdala is firing on all cylinders our prefrontal cortex, which allows us to engage in rational thought, is, like the rest of the body, asleep.
Sleep recommendations:
Newborns (0-3 months) 14-17 hours
Infants (4-11 months) 12-15 hours
Toddlers (1-2 years) 11-14 hours
Preschoolers (3-5) 10-13 hours
School-aged children (6-13) 9-11 hours
Teenagers (14-17) 8-10 hours
Young Adults (18-25) 7-9 hours
Adult (26-64) 7-9 hours
Older adults (65+) 7-8 hours
Sleep is so crucial
So many aspects of our lives that often what looks like one kind of problem – child obesity- is actually not a diet problem, but a sleep problem.
When mothers leave early for work, kids get up early for daycare or school.
Every extra hour of sleep a child can get has been associated with nearly a 7% drop in BMI.
We as parents are always preparing them for schoolwork, homework, sporting activities, but we never prepare them and teach them about how sleep is so important. So to give them the best opportunity in life, we need to model to them the importance of sleep, and at the same time you are getting great benefits.
If they start to show signs of anxiety and stress – they need more sleep.
Just think if we’re on social media and we have this 24-7 culture, we are raising a generation of kids that are not going to be able to get a quality night’s sleep.
If you are wanting to get the most out of your workouts and gain strength and lean muscle mass you need to start getting to bed earlier and prioritising sleep even getting an extra 45 minutes, it’ll take about 4 months for the full benefits to kick in.
Obviously the street runs both ways: researchers found that after a bad night of sleep, participants had bad workouts, while they had better workouts after a good night’s sleep.
“Finish everyday, and be done with it…..You have done what you could – some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as fast as you can, tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Night routines:
1. Write a to-do-list before bed so you go to bed with a clear mind. Tackle the list in the morning, so you can just focus on your sleep.
2. Count slow breaths is a great technique if you are having a hard time getting to sleep.
Breath in for 4 counts, hold for 7 counts and breath out for 8 counts. Make sure they’re big belly breaths to help you relax.
3. Stillness – pause and connect with you deeper self – is a skill that can be learned and cultivated.
4. Try different types of meditation, guided, mindful, use apps if you need. It can be 3 mins or 30 minutes. It just needs to be something.
Many people say I haven’t got time. But believe me if you do take time out to pause and regroup, you will get more done than you ever thought.
It does take awhile to get used to, but it’s the best thing I have ever done. You really do need to reduce the constant stream of external stimulation.
It’s taken me a few years to really appreciate the rest and recovery phase of my energetic and hectic life, but sleep has seriously helped cure me from going totally crazy.
Sleep cycles:
Your sleep cycle is 90 minutes, so work back from your wake up time.
Remember get to bed just before that time to allow time to drift off to sleep approx 10 minutes.
If you rise at 7am, make sure you are in bed by 10pm (9 hours) or 11.30pm (7.5 hours)
If you rise at 6am, make sure you are in bed by 9pm (9 hours) or 10.30pm (7.5 hours)
If you wake in the middle of a sleep cycle you can wake tired because you have let your body go through the full cycle.
Eg: If you go to bed just before 9.30pm, to allow you to fall asleep and have the alarm set for 7am you’ve interrupted your 6th cycle, so set alarm for 6.30am so you’ve woken as you finish your 5th cycle.
– If you got to bed at 11pm again set alarm for 6.30am (7.5 hours – 5 sleep cycles).
This will take a few days to settle your body clock, but it certainly does work.
Why don’t you try to focus on your sleep for the next few weeks, still eat good clean food, but don’t get hung up on your diet and exercise.
If you give some much needed nurturing on your sleep, your body will reward you in the areas you want – performing better at work, reducing brain fog, lose weight, recover better from training, get stronger and best of all improve your health.
To your sleep, health and happiness
Kerrie
Professional Health and Fitness Coach.
