Hola amigo’s (Hello Friends)

Sleep is one of the most important things you do every day but many of us are either not getting enough, have regular interrupted sleep or sometimes feel guilty if they spend too much time sleeping thinking somehow it’s being lazy.

Let me tell you that sleep should be your No. 1 priority each day.

It is that important that if you don’t get enough you are actually impacting your health in a major way due to the importance that sleep plays in our ability to heal, detoxify our bodies, rest our brains and rejuvenate and allow our body to undertake some of the most important functions they carry out each night during sleep.

There is also scientific links that show the less you sleep your longevity is impacted.

Having spent the past five years and still are from what I recently discovered was PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) a physical injury to the brain where my brain had been stuck in the fight or flight stress response due to a terrifying event. I witnessed my mother’s passing which was a very traumatic experience for me over the few days prior, more about this in other posts. A lot of my healing happened at night so I know first hand how important sleep is and I’ve been prioritising it for a long time.

Not to say I get the perfect nights sleep every night but it’s still always something I am mindful of each day and I do my best to get a good nights sleep. I always prioritise 8 hours a night.

According to sleep scientist Professor Matt Walker from the Center for Human Sleep Sciences at the University of California, Berkley we should be getting 8 hours a night and in his TED talk “Sleep is your Superpwer” in his conclusion he said it is time we reclaim the right to a proper nights sleep and our full 8 hours.

So here are some of the pretty important functions our bodies carry out during sleep which are seriously impacted if we are not getting enough sleep., it’s actually pretty scary to think about it.

• Both Men and Women’s reproductive health is significantly impacted with a lack of sleep.
• Sleep is needed before and after learning to take in learning and create memories.
• There is a significant reduction in the ability for the brain to create new memories without sleep.
• Sleep is where our brain commits our memories into storage.
• Sleep produces powerful brain waves (that acts like a file transfer) during sleep.
• Just 1 hour of sleep loss impacts our cardiovascular system.
• Sleep impacts our immune health significantly.
• Just 4 hours of sleep reduces natural killer cell activity (Matt describes them as being like the secret service agents of our bodies.) by 70% which are our cells ability to fight against unwanted elements by eliminating them.
• The shorter you sleep the shorter your life.
• You increase your risk of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s if you are not getting enough sleep.
• Our DNA cells are effected through lack of sleep and impacts our genes and therefore our health.

While I must say I was pretty shocked to hear just how much even a short reduction in sleep can have such drastic impacts. There are simple things we can do to start getting a better nights sleep and I would urge all of you to make the first one to prioritise it.

While I plan to go deeper into how sleep affects our brain and body. Let’s start to make the right changes as suggested by Matt to get a better nights sleep.

He recommends the following tips:.

1. Limit the amount of alcohol or coffee before bed.
2. If you can’t get to sleep at night avoid napping during the day.
3. Regularity is King – go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each day, even on weekends. It will anchor your sleep and improve the quantity and quality of it.
4. Keep it cool. Body temp needs to drop to go to sleep and stay asleep. Keep your room around 18 degrees Celsius.
5. If you can’t sleep get up and go and do something until you are feeling sleepy enough to go back to bed. You may need to re associate your brain to your bedroom as the place to sleep rather than laying there awake.

There are others which I will discuss in future posts however the above list is what Matt mentions in the TED talk, so I think this is a great place to start.

Sleep is not something to be negotiated it is our bodies life support system. You cannot catch up on sleep and the effects of not enough are something that should concern you.

Sleep should be your number 1 priority every single day in order to give your brain and body the best support it needs each day.

As this is the start of 2022, make it the start of you prioritising sleep so that it becomes your Superpower.

Happy New Year everyone and sweet dreams to you all.

Kathryn

Featured Image Photo by Patrick Robert Doyle on Unsplash

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