Why Do We Need Adequate Sleep to Perform
The study from the University of Rochester found that when you sleep, your brain removes toxic proteins from its neurons that are by-products of neural activity when you’re awake. Unfortunately, your brain can remove them adequately only while sleeping. So when you don’t get enough sleep, the toxic proteins remain in the brain cells, impairing your ability to think something no amount of substance can fix. Not having enough sleep slows your ability to process information and problem solving skills, creativity, and catapults your stress levels and emotional reactivity.
What Sleep Deprivation Causes to Your Health
Your body overproduces the stress hormone cortisol when it’s sleep deprived. While excess cortisol has negative health effects that come from the havoc it wreaks on your immune system, making you look older, because cortisol breaks down skin collagen, the protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic. In men specifically, not sleeping enough reduces testosterone levels and lowers sperm count. Not getting enough sleep makes you fat. Yes, because sleep deprivation compromises your body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates and control food intake. When you sleep less, there’s a lot of time for you to eat more and have more difficulty burning the calories you consume. Sleep deprivation makes you hungrier by increasing the hormone ghrelin and makes it harder for you to get full by reducing levels of the hormone leptin.
How Much Is Enough Sleep?
It is still true that most people need 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night to get sufficiently rested. Few people are at their best with less than 7 hours, and few require more than 9 without an underlying health condition. A recent survey of Inc. 500 CEOs found that half of them are sleeping less than 6 hours a night. And the problem doesn’t stop at the top. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a third of U.S. workers get less than 6 hours of sleep each night, and sleep deprivation costs U.S. businesses more than $63 billion annually in lost productivity.
What would you do get sufficient sleep?
1. Avoid the Sleeping Pills
Any substance that sedates you, be it Benadryl or Valium, these greatly disrupt your brain’s natural sleep process. Bet you didn’t realize that it gives you some really strange dreams. Anything that interferes with the brain’s natural sleep process has consequences for the quality of your sleep. Many of the strategies that follow eliminate factors that disrupt this recovery process. Try some of the other strategies that will make it easier for you to fall asleep naturally and reduce your dependence upon sedatives like cutting down on caffeine, avoiding work at night.
2. Cut Down Drinking Caffeine (at Least after Lunch)
Caffeine is a powerful stimulant that interferes with sleep because it increases adrenaline production and blocking sleep-inducing chemicals in the brain. You can have a very good quality of sleep if caffeine intake is lessen before bedtime or really avoiding it. Remember that caffeine has a 6-hour half-life, which means it takes a full 24 hours to work its way out of your system. When you do finally fall asleep, the worst is yet to come. Caffeine disrupts the quality of your sleep by reducing rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the deep sleep when your body recuperates most. When caffeine disrupts your sleep, you wake up the next day with a cognitive and emotional handicap. You’ll be naturally inclined to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink to try to make yourself feel more alert, which very quickly creates a vicious cycle.
3. Avoid Blue Light at Night
Sunlight contains this blue light, high concentration. This short-wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood, energy level, and sleep quality. When your eyes are exposed to it directly the blue light stops production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and makes you feel alert. This is great, and exposure to morning sunlight can improve your mood and energy levels. If the sun isn’t an option for you, and hate to wake up with this, try a blue light device. Our favourite devices like tablets, mobile phones, laptops and TVs emit blue light, that’s why you really can’t easily fall asleep while using them.
4. Try to Wake Up at the Same Time Every Day
Consistency is the answer to a good night’s sleep, especially when it comes to waking up. When you don’t wake up at the same time every day, your brain doesn’t know when to complete the sleep process and when it should prepare you to be awake. Waking up at the same time every day improves overall mood and sleep quality by regulating your circadian rhythm. Roughly an hour before you wake, hormone levels increase gradually (along with your body temperature and blood pressure), causing you to become more alert. This is why you’ll often find yourself waking up right before your alarm goes off.
5. No Binge Sleeping (In) on the Weekend
We always look forward to weekends, because these are the best days we can catch up our zzzzs. However, it messes with your circadian rhythm by giving you an inconsistent wake-up time, remember the key is Consistency. When you wake up at the same time during the work week but sleep past this time on the weekend, you end up feeling groggy and tired because your brain hasn’t prepared your body to be awake. This isn’t a big deal on your day off, but it makes you less productive on Monday because it throws your cycle off and makes it hard to get going again on your regular schedule. Now, that’s the reason why all of us feel that way, every single week. So, let’s start being consistent on the waking hours.
6. Identify How Much Sleep You Really Need
Let’s be surprised by these people who experimented their sleeping patterns.
Ariana Huffington was one of those frantic types who underslept and overworked, until she collapsed unexpectedly from exhaustion one afternoon. She credits her success and well-being since then to the changes she’s made to her sleep habits. “I began getting 30 minutes more sleep a night, until gradually I got to 7 to 8 hours. The result has been transformational,” Huffington says, adding that, “all the science now demonstrates unequivocally that when we get enough sleep, everything is better: our health; our mental capacity and clarity; our joy at life; and our ability to live life without reacting to every bad thing that happens.” Huffington isn’t the only one. Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Sheryl Sandberg have all touted the virtues of getting enough sleep. Even Bill Gates, an infamous night owl, has affirmed the benefits of figuring out how much sleep you really need: “I like to get 7 hours of sleep a night because that’s what I need to stay sharp and creative and upbeat.” It’s time to try and start going to bed earlier until you find the magic number that enables you to perform at your best.
7. Stop Working
Sometimes we thought we are still productive f we work at night. However, it puts you into a stimulated, alert state when you should be winding down and relaxing in preparation for sleep. Recent surveys show that roughly 60% of people monitor their smartphones for work emails until they go to sleep. Staying off blue light-emitting devices after a certain time each evening is also a great way to avoid working so you can relax and prepare for sleep, but any type of work before bed should be avoided if you want quality sleep.
8. Eliminate Interruptions
For those with small children, the quality of your sleep does suffer when it is interrupted. The key here is to eliminate all the interruptions that are under your control, since this is the only thing you really can manage. If you have loud neighbors, wear earplugs to bed. If your mother likes to call at all hours of the night, make certain you put your phone in silent mode before you go to bed. If you had to wake up extra early in the morning, make sure your alarm clock is back on its regular time when you go to bed. Don’t drink too much water or any caffeine beverages in the evening to avoid a bathroom trip in the middle of the night.
9. Meditate
At the Stanford Medical Center, insomniacs participated in a 6-week mindfulness meditation and cognitive-behavioral therapy course. At the end of the study, participants’ average time to fall asleep was cut in half (from 40 to 20 minutes), and 60% of subjects no longer qualified as insomniacs. The subjects retained these gains upon follow-up a full year later. A similar study at the University of Massachusetts Medical School found that 91% of participants either reduced the amount of medication they needed to sleep or stopped taking medication entirely after a mindfulness and sleep therapy course. Give mindfulness a try. At minimum, you’ll fall asleep faster, as it will teach you how to relax and quiet your mind once you hit the pillow.
10. Take Naps
Melatonin production peaks during the 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. time frame, which explains why most people feel sleepy in the afternoon not just because the heavy meal, full of protein lunch you had. Did you know that companies like Google and Zappos are capitalizing on this need by giving employees the opportunity to take short afternoon naps. If you aren’t getting enough sleep at night, you’re likely going to feel an overwhelming desire to sleep in the afternoon for sure. When this happens, you’re better off taking a short nap than resorting to caffeine to keep you awake. You may have noticed that you’re packed with more energy after that short sleep you got. A short nap will give you the rest you need to get through the rest of the afternoon, and you’ll sleep much better in the evening than if you drink caffeine or take a long afternoon nap.
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