Our natural circadian rhythm is made of four main stages of sleep-wake cycles, which last approximately 90-110 minutes each. There are two main stages of sleep: non-REM sleep and REM sleep. It helps us regulate our physical and mental restoration it helps us handle stress and builds our immune system and makes us less susceptible to illness. Not a good start! Fortunately, he saw the error of his ways! Having less than 5 hours sleep significantly lowers out cognitive ability, our memory. Needless to say, he found that his performance and memory deteriorated completely as he failed to understand that rest and restoration is just as important as mental and physical activity to perform at his best. I remember listening to a former US academic, who stated that as a young student of neurology, he naively thought that he could do without sleep and just started to cram for his degree throughout the night. Why then do we often take sleep for granted? Disrupted sleep is the biggest contributor to all-cause mortality in illness and accidents. Sleep is critical to good brain health, as it regulates our emotions, consolidates long-term memory and our physical repair, and even more importantly, it flushes harmful toxins from our brain through the glymphatic system and allows us to awake refreshed the next day. During this pandemic, it has been reported that sleep deprivation has increased by 30%. Sleep deprivation is the underlying factor in many diseases, as it underpins our physical and mental restorative energy. Provide you with 7 key tips to optimise your sleep to reset your sleep hygiene and leave you restored and refreshed for the day ahead.What happens to your brain during the sleep cycle.Why sleep matters and why it is the foundation of good brain health. In this article we will explore 3 key aspects: Understanding the importance of good sleep hygiene will not only help you develop in a positive way in building your resilience through this crisis, but also for your long-term health. In order to be at our best, we need to develop a healthy brain and the most fundamental part of that is our ability to obtain restful sleep, something which is even more challenging in the current environment. Sleep recalibrates our emotions, replenishes our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Less than 5 hours sleep has the same effect as arriving into work drunk and we certainly wouldn’t be congratulated! We say to ourselves, “ I’ll catch up,” but we don’t. Matthew Walker, our sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorise, and make logical decisions. According to neuroscientist and sleep expert Dr. Sleep is the foundation of good brain health. The biggest factor as we emerge from this crisis is to rebuild our personal restorative energy in the longer term. The world is opening up, but our lives and our attitudes to the routine and stresses of the daily commute as we once knew it, have changed dramatically. We have all faced the most challenging onslaught to our physical, mental and emotional health. In this article, I highlight the critical importance of good sleep hygiene in maintaining good physical and mental restorative health.Ĭommentators are calling the next phase of life and work the “new normal,” but this crisis is anything but normal. This pandemic has affected our whole conscious an subconscious and more crucially, our sleep patterns. A recent study of 2000 people by Zevo Health has shown that 34% of people in Ireland are sleep deprived over 53% of people are experiencing vivid dreams and interrupted sleep patterns, 21% are experiencing nightmares and almost 30% state that the lockdown itself has had a significant impact on their sleep. What are you like without a good night’s sleep? Are you grumpy and irritable like a bear with a sore paw and overload on as much caffeine you can get your hands on just to cope with the day ahead and repeat the same cycle all over again the next day?Īre you struggling to get a proper night’s sleep during this quarantine? Is your routine disrupted completely? Are you struggling with managing your day job as well as schoolwork and childcare and you’re too anxious to sleep with all this overwhelm? Have you awakened from vivid dreams or horrible nightmares? The leading causes of disease and death in developed nations have recognised causal links to a lack of sleep.” “The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.
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