Sound, uninterrupted, beautiful sleep is essential when it comes to maintaining our overall wellbeing. In fact, chronic under sleeping has been linked to type two diabetes, compromised immunity, weight dysregulation, depression and even early death.
Sleep is beneficial as a preventative measure, as well as when recovering from illness. You know when you get sick, and you just want to sleep all day? That's your body trying to get you into a state where it can undertake repair processes to help you recover.
Wellness is the combination of many small factors you do consistently. In the hierarchy of health, we believe sleep and stress are at the top of the pyramid yet frequently get overlooked.
We spend a lot of time factoring in nutrition and exercise, but often at the expense of sleep.
There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture—it is horrendous in all senses of the word and disrupts with your physical, hormonal and mental health.
If you are looking for extra sleep support BePure Deep Sleep provides a nourishing blend of nutrients and herbs to wind down and support your precious sleep.
Here are four things you need to know about sleep.
1. Sleep is a basic biological necessity
Sleep allows our bodies to recover and regenerate.
Research has shown that without this recovery and regeneration, a sleep deficit can contribute to major illnesses like heart disease, diabetes and obesity. It can trigger anxiety and depression, as well as leading to impaired mental performance, memory loss and can lower our immunity making us more prone to bugs like the flu.
What some people don’t know is that even short-term sleep deficit has negative consequences.
One night of poor sleep can temporarily leave you as insulin resistant as a diabetic!
This is problematic as when we are tired we often reach for energy stimulants to get us through; such as sugar or caffeine.
On the flip side, good sleep improves our mood, mental ability, memory, immunity and physical performance.
2. Sleep is both an active and a restorative process
This means that both hormonal and neurochemical (mental) changes take place during your sleeping hours.
Most healthy adults will experience the following three stages of sleep:
- Your eyes are closed, but you’re still semi-awake (the dozing off part…)
- You’re experiencing light sleep—your muscles relax, your heart rate slows down and your body temperature drops.
- You’ve drifted off into a deep sleep or delta sleep, where the body repairs and regenerates.
To understand how and why sleep has such a huge impact on our health, let’s look at how our sleep cycle works and how it affects our body.
3. The Circadian Rhythm
Our internal body clock, known as the circadian rhythm, is naturally regulated by light, dark and by changes in body functions every 24 hours. This includes our body temperature, hormones, airways and kidneys.
This means levels of hormones such as the thyroid hormone, thyroxine and our sleep hormone, melatonin, are different by day than by night. Interrupted sleep can throw our hormone balance off kilter and create health problems. For example, thyroxine regulates our metabolism, if this is affected it can lead to weight gain and sugar cravings.
Melatonin is especially important when it comes to bedtime. This hormone changes our core body temperature and lets us know when we’re tired. Melatonin is produced when it gets dark. Production speeds up from about 10:00pm onwards—which is why we feel more tired the later it gets. As sunrise looms, melatonin drops off and cortisol production kicks in - this wakes us up.
In today’s modern environment, we are constantly exposed to the bright light from electronic devices. This unnatural light disrupts the earth’s day-night cycle that regulates our sleep cycle and is the reason so many of us struggle to drift off to sleep.
4. How much is enough?
A good guideline to stick to is 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night. However there are lots of factors that play into this. In winter when the days are shorter we benefit from extra sleep while it is dark. The amount of optimum sleep also varies between individuals. Some people function perfectly well on six or seven hours sleep, while others need nine. Infants, of course, need a lot more sleep as it allows their wee bodies develop. Elite athletes also need extra snooze time to allow their bodies to fully recover.
Regardless of your ‘personal best’ sleep time, one thing is for certain: No-one can survive on minimal sleep, long-term.
Research also shows us that when the body gets less than six hours sleep it will affect memory, especially short-term memory. Early studies into dementia have pinpointed 6 hours as the minimum requirement for disease prevention.
We can try and fill our days with exercise, healthy meals, social interaction and a fulfilling work life but if we aren’t sleeping we can potentially undo all this good work.
Low energy and elevated cortisol levels will damage our metabolism.
Your sleep challenge
Sleep is vital for optimal health and wellbeing, which is especially important now. It affects so much more than just our energy. This week try to aim for 8 hours uninterrupted sleep each night. For example, this could mean sleeping from 10pm-6am.
