Sleep is Essential

This may seem like an obvious statement, but it’s not.  Our culture rewards hard work and often that comes at the expense of sleep.  Millions of people do not get enough sleep each night and it can have serious consequences to our physcial and mental health.  I’ll be doing a series of posts on sleep as I feel it is a very important, yet often undervalued component of our overal health.

Good sleep starts with good sleep hygeine.  What is sleep hygiene?  It is our rituals and behaviors that affect our sleep.  There are many things one can do to develop good sleep hygiene, a few suggestions are as follows:

• Have a consistent bedtime each night – our bodies work on a circadian rhythm and need to have regular sleep and waking times
• Wake up at the same time each day – even on weekends! Our body clocks need to be reset each day as not everyone’s clock is on a 24 hour day. So waking up at the same time each day can help maintain consistency. If you do this routinely, and get enough rest, you should be able to wake up without an alarm clock.
• Avoid daytime naps – you can only sleep so many hours in a day. If you get several hours during the day, you will have a harder time falling asleep at a set time.
• Exercise regularly – regular exercise promotes restful sleep. But don’t exercise too close to bedtime or your body will have a hard time settling down.
• Avoid caffeine, alcohol and nicotine close to bedtime. Although alcohol can make you sleepy and relaxed, it disrupts the quality of our sleep.
• Maintain a cool and quiet room.
• Avoid fluids too close to bedtime – if you drink a large beverage just before bed, you may be awakened in the night to go to the bathroom. Even if you fall back to sleep, you still have interrupted sleep.