by: Jean Konda-Witte
Published: Sunday, October 04, 2009
These days people are becoming more health conscious, and a lot of the focus is on eating right, losing weight and getting regular exercise. While these are all important, there may be one thing that folks are overlooking in their quest to get and stay healthy. And that is, are they getting enough sleep?
Experts say sleep is important in maintaining good health. Without it, people become susceptible to health problems such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression and obesity.
Although a growing number of adults and Baby Boomers are interested in improving or maintaining their health, they have also embraced a lifestyle that forces them to sleep less. There are too many distractions at night: TV, the Internet, bars or restaurants that stay open all night, or simply thinking about the pressures of the upcoming work week.
SLEEP IS OFTEN THE FIRST THING TO BE PUT ON THE BACK BURNER.
So how much sleep do you really need? According to a C-Health newsletter, most adults need about seven hours of sleep a night, and children and adolescents need even more, about nine to 10 hours per night.
However, everyone is different, and the amount of sleep needed can vary, from five to about 10 hours per night.
These may be signs that you are not getting the right amount of sleep for you.
Columnist and retired Canadian Forces pilot Dale Nielsen believes we have a tendency to underestimate the amount of sleep we actually need and we over-estimate our ability to cope with the lack of sleep.
“Every hour of sleep we lose accumulates as sleep debt. If we short ourselves an hour a night Monday through Friday, we have accumulated five hours of sleep debt. A weekend is not enough to settle that debt. Many of us carry this through for weeks on end,” he wrote in a recent column.
The only antidote for chronic fatigue is more sleep, he continued. We need to sleep longer each night over an extended period to erase the sleep debt, and to keep from starting another sleep debt cycle.
We often feel we are making up for a late Saturday night by sleeping late Sunday morning. The problem is if we do that, we are not really ready for sleep at our normal time on Sunday night. We don’t sleep well and we tend to perform poorly on Monday, he continued.
SO WHAT CAN YOU DO TO TRY TO GET MORE SLEEP?
Dr. Maureen Ceresney, a psychiatrist specializing in sleep disorders and addictions at the Sleep Disorders Clinic at UBC Hospital, offers a few tips to help people get a better night’s sleep.
Get up at the same time every day, this means on the weekends, too.
Have a regular bedtime routine (such as brushing your teeth, having warm milk or meditating).
Give yourself time to relax and time to sleep. “You need time to unwind in the evening before bed,” she says. Relaxing with calm activities such as reading a book or listening to calm music help the body and mind slow down. Fit between six and 10 hours of sleep time into your schedule
Other things that may help to get the best sleep possible include:
Get regular exercise.
Spend some time outside every day. Exposure to sunlight helps keep the body’s internal clock on track.
If you nap, make it a short one (30 to 45 minutes in the early afternoon only).
Make your bedroom comfortable, quiet and dark, and not too warm (a temperature more than 75 degrees hinders sleep).
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP? HERE ARE SOME CLUES THAT MIGHT INDICATE YOU’RE SLEEP DEPRIVED:
Do you need an alarm clock to jar you awake?
Do you sleep much longer on the weekends?
Do you feel tired through the day?
Do you have early-morning headaches?
Do you doze off in public places (meetings or movie theatres)?
Do you feel dozy while driving?
Do you have trouble concentrating?
Source: http://www2.canada.com
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