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Sleep: why it's important to a healthy, balanced lifestyle
Bed. Couldn't you just climb on top of that cosy little word and take a nap right now?
If you're nodding or feel like nodding off at the mere mention of the ‘B’ word, you might be one of the millions of sleep-deprived zombies in search of the dark, desperate to catch some more ZZZs.
Did you know that adults that sleep less than seven hours a day are 30% more likely to be obese than those that sleep nine hours or more?
Factor in shot-to-pieces sleep patterns and disruptions to your routine because of Covid-19 and it's now more vital than ever that you wake up to sleep and why it's important to a healthy, balanced lifestyle.
Good physical and mental health are the two biggest casualties of poor sleep, and you can count on us to equip you with all that you need to quickly find that sweet-spot in bed and go out like a light rather than counting sheep.
Types of sleep
There are two types of sleep. First comes non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, of which there are four stages, and it's during the latter stages that the body repairs and replenishes the cardiovascular system and metabolism, regrows tissues, builds bone and muscle, and strengthens the immune system.
This is followed by a shorter burst of REM sleep, also known as dream sleep. Then the cycle repeats. It's recommended that adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep per night But as a nation, we’re getting less sleep than that.
The UK Sleep Council's 2013 and 2017 Great British Bedtime Reports where a sample of 5,002 people were questioned, found that almost three-quarters (74%) of us sleep less than seven hours per night while the number of people who said they get less than five hours a night has gone from 7% in 2013 to 12% in 2017. For 61% of those questioned in 2017, between five to seven hours a night is the norm. And we’re not the only ones missing out.
Global analytics company Gallup reported that Americans averaged 6.8 hours of sleep in 2013, down more than an hour from 1942, while the same survey showed that only 59% of U.S. adults met the recommended seven to nine hours standard in 2013, compared to 84% in 1942.
Exercise, sleep, and general health
Exercising regularly is thought to help you sleep by reducing anxiety and relieving stress and earlier in the day is better because it increases the body’s adrenaline production, making it more difficult to sleep if you’re doing it right before you turn in. Mental health improves with better quality sleep too.
The Mental Health Foundation and medical studies have linked a lack of sleep to mental health problems and cognitive impairment. Anxiety and depression can also affect our sleep. Adults that sleep fewer than seven hours per night also have a 13% higher mortality rate than those that sleep for the full seven hours. The fragile balance of the body is such that even one hour of sleep deprivation can have a huge effect on the balance of the body's Circadian rhythm.
Would you believe that the risk of having a heart attack or stroke goes up to eight per cent during the first two days after the beginning of daylight saving time, according to one Finnish study? A group of U.S. researchers conducted their own similar study and determined that heart attack risk jumped 24 per cent the Monday after switching over to daylight saving time. That risk then tapered off over the remainder of the week. Conversely, the risk for heart attack dropped 21 per cent on the Tuesday after the autumn change.
How eating and drinking alcohol affects your sleep quality
“Your body becomes stingy in giving up its fat once it’s under-slept” is what Matthew Walker, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science maintains.
Good sleep means better food choices which fuel your body ready for exercise and so one massively depends on the other. The UK Sleep Council's 2013 and 2017 Great British Bedtime Reports also found that drinking alcohol before bedtime has risen from 16% to 25% with men (30%) more likely than women (20%) to have done so.
Thirty percent of people aged 45 to 54 said that alcohol helps them nod off. But alcohol blocks the REM sleep the brain hungers for, which is why we have intense dreams the morning after drinking once the body has processed all the alcohol as the brain tries to feast on REM sleep.
Disco-naps: Do they make up for a lack of proper sleep?
We are the only species that deprives itself of sleep, and you can't skip sleep like you can leg-day at the gym and then claw back all that sleep debt. The odd disco-nap at the weekend might freshen you up in the moment, but it doesn’t fix all the deficits caused by chronic sleep loss so this is not a great long-term solution.
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