Just for the Health of It:
Health Hacker Series
The Wellness for All workshop series offers MANY topics dealing with well-being. Wellness workshops are available digitally to schools for staffs and students, healthcare centres, and for parents and families too. Health hacking hints made easy! Created with experts in many fields of healthcare, psychology and education.
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The Science of Better Sleep
Taken from a workshop by Dr. Michael Breus, sleep expert
Sleep directly correlates to your performance at work, with relationships, longevity, your emotional state and happiness. It is often the missing ingredient in wellness plans. It is time to really look at your sleep and how restorative it is. Sleep is the prescription for rejuvenating your mind and body, increasing your energy reserves and vitality-not sleeping pills. They clog and fog you up eventually.
As sleep deprivation climbs, so does the obesity factor. Five different things happen when you become sleep deprived:
- Your metabolism slows down.
- It makes you have an appetite. Pass the cookies and a larger pant size with them.
- It increases your cortisol levels. It has a controlling effect on salt and water balance and helps control blood pressure, so you want your levels low.
- An imbalance of hunger hormones. Fast-food, drive through alert!
- You make poor food choices. That’s why you’re in line at the drive-through.
Why?
Because when you are sleep deprived, high levels of cortisol occur, and your brain gets exhausted, so your brain craves carbohydrates to increase serotonin. Eating a cookie or candy bar will quell that desire. If you weren’t sleep deprived, it wouldn’t happen in the first place. You won’t get cravings.
Sleep is the prescription for rejuvenating your mind and body, increasing your energy reserves and vitality – not sleeping pills.
How to Hack this Problem Immediately By:
- Understanding the power of sleep.
- Internal factors (monitoring anxiety, caffeine, chatter in your head, alcohol) and external factors (children and pets in your bed, snoring partner) affecting sleep.
- Learning how to hack napping. (ways you can catch up if you didn’t get a good night’s sleep). Often noted at 3:00-4:00 afternoon tiredness.
Be wise, don’t fall for these lies. Follow this action-plan, since you now know better!
There are several paradigms that we need to change about sleep. These are lies that we are trained to adopt as a society, which are:
- “I don’t sleep because I am too busy.” Every stimulus we own is telling us not to sleep. (phones, tablets, TV etc.) Sleep is a basic fundamental need of our bodies. Sleep is when we heal. That is the MOST important quality of our 24-hour cycle. 90 minutes less sleep = 30% less brain power the following day!
- “People who sleep more are lazy.” Untrue. We must continue to get the right sleep for us in order to heal.
- “I need 7-8 hours of sleep.” When you look at overall sleep cycles, the average sleep cycle is 90 minutes. The average person has five of those. 5 X 9 = 450 minutes or 7½ hours. However, if you sleep the right time for your chronotype: a person’s individual body clock, you will need less sleep. Train your sleep pattern to work in your favour! Take the Chronotype Test at the link below.
- “Night-waking is normal!” No, it is not! when you go to sleep, it is like putting your care into third gear. You only park it when you are in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Blood sugarlevels surge while you're sleeping, usually around 4 to 8 a.m. Read more about that here.
- “You need and alarm clock to wake up.” If you go to bed at the right time for you and wake at the right time for you, you should never need an alarm clock. It just become automatic. You have conditioned your body.
Frightening Facts!
If you are sleep deprived, it affects you physically. It slows down your reaction time by 33%!
If you have a cup of coffee at 5:00 o’clock, half of that coffee is still in your bloodstream at midnight. Ouch!
Within one half hour of waking up, go outside or to a window, where you spend 15 minutes in sunlight. It turns off that melatonin faucet and gives you a burst of energy.
Chronotype science is genetic. You are born with it. Interested in Learning Your Chronotype? See Dr. Breus on the Dr. Oz Show. https://www.doctoroz.com/quiz/quiz-what-your-chronotype Be sure to press the quiz button to determine your own chronotype.