How many of you find sleeping to be unmanageable these days? And also consider it as a catastrophe for sack time?
It’s late-night, but you are still awake and finding it difficult to fall asleep. Your eyes glued to the smartphone screen swapping between the social media applications or may be engaged to binge-watch the latest on Netflix.
I am sure many of you experience this.
The internet in the present day is a source of breakneck amusement and satisfaction for every individual out there. It has become a high usage in recent times by the people.
If you look at the present-day scenario, troubled sleep has outspread like a pandemic. And according to the latest findings by a fitness solution firm Fitbit, India stands 2nd in the sleep deprivation league after Japan.
Sleep deprivation is the lack of enough sleep. It is a consequence of other illnesses compiled in one package as a sleep disorder that can occur due to disruptive sleep patterns.
Even if you want to, you cannot brush aside the essentiality of sleep. It is as crucial as breathing and eating square meals.
Now, coming to the fact that why do you think that sleep is so beneficial?
Imagine, when you have a powerful sleep at night, how much refreshing the next morning will be for you.
It increases the productivity of the kind of work you do, be it at home, school, college, or office. And assist you in maintaining your focus and concentration and helps you in doing the job two times more.
And it also undoubtedly helps your brain to function well, improves your memory, and helps you in learning things faster.
#Additional Benefits of Sleep are:
It takes good care of your heart: A good sleep can keep your heart safe and healthy.
When you don’t have an adequate amount of sleep at night, there is a high possibility that your heart is at risk.
When you keep on depriving your sleep day after day, it straight away links to high blood pressure, relates to inflammation in the body, higher chances of heart failure, heart attack, and coronary artery disease, and diabetes.
When the level of blood sugar increases due to insufficient sleep, the power of the body to regulate sugar gets interrupted, and that causes diabetes.
You have to be responsible for doing a favor to your cardiovascular system that is the heart. A night of poor sleep can cause heart problems irrespective of what is your age, weight, and also whether you drink or smoke will not come under consideration in that case.
So a night of sound sleep is indeed a necessity.
It helps in reducing the stress level: A proper sleep can also bring down the stress level.
These days there are a lot of determinants where one can feel stressed a lot at times. It can be due to work, relationships, finances, competition, paying bills, dreams, ambitions, and a lot of nitty-gritty things involved in day to day life of a person that can be the reason behind his stress and anxiety.
And due to this, many are losing their peace of mind and are struggling to get a sound sleep.
So from next time when you will be in stress, remember that your body releases cortisol that is a stress hormone. Too much cortisol in your blood can cause mood swings and shows a sign of depression, anxiety, and irritability.
It protects your immune system: The sleep at night decides how much unattackable your body is.
People with sound sleep are less likely to fall sick as compared to the one’s who are sleep deprived.
It helps your body immune to fight the germs or any severe bacteria. And at the same time, it also trains your body to fight against all sorts of odds.
The body must act as a shield and safeguard itself from the threat it has exhibited from the infections outside.
It helps you to keep up a healthy weight: The person who is sleep deprived feels more hungry in the middle of the night compared to the ones who have a sound sleep.
Too little or too much sleep can cause hunger hormone issues, and those are ghrelin and leptin.
When you don’t get the proper amount of sleep, then you feel more hungry, and it increases the hormone for hunger. And there is a rise in the ghrelin that leads you to overeat.
There is no second thought that less sleep can make you eat more and increases your hunger level, and it also increases your weight. So if you want to have decent health, you need to focus on how you can have a sound sleep.
On the flip side, if you want to feel energized, then you have to check the leptin hormone that helps you to decrease your appetite and makes you lose weight and hence sleep more.
#How much sleep is required?
There is no such exact amount mentioned, but it depends on the person’s needs and the kind of work they do and also in what age group they fall to function at their best. But there is a standard belief that a person needs a minimum of 8 hours of sleep at night.
The scientist of the National Sleep Foundation almost took more than two years to find out the detailed research as to how much amount of sleep one needs on the establishment of the criteria on age.
The suggested guidelines can be trusted and be rest assured that they have provided regarding sleep requirements.
So here is the mentioning of the abbreviated sum-up of the sleep chart.
What is the ideal time to have your meals in a full day?
Aside from checking your sleep habits, you need to keep track of the meal timings. Eating food may look like one of the simple tasks but do you know it is the time which says a lot about your health and your sleep. If you want to have a night of peaceful sleep, then the time of the meals is vital.
BREAKFAST: As said, the morning is one of the most crucial time of the whole day. And your breakfast needs to be on time, and your consumption of food for breakfast should be substantial enough.
It leaves an impact on how the rest of your day will be. The time is as important as what kind of food you are consuming.
The ideal time for breakfast is within 2 hours from the time you wake up in the morning, and it must not exceed after 10 am. Your breakfast decides your metabolism and the ability to fight diseases and also how much well built you are.
LUNCH: Mostly office goers or school kids have to maintain their attentiveness on a light yet healthy meal. Lunch naturally can’t be heavy, unlike breakfast, especially when you are out for work on weekdays to avoid sleep.
For a better digestive system, you need to set your targets regarding the timings.
The ideal timing I would say for lunch is always between 12 pm to 1 pm. And any meal after 4 pm must be strictly avoided. It is not so good for digestion.
Another thing to be kept in mind is that an ideal gap of 4 hours is a must between your breakfast and lunch to avoid acidity.
Now, you must tweak the lunch feed according to the timings.
DINNER: The last meal of the whole day, should be eaten with utmost care as it can cause trouble to the sleep cycle of a person. So there must be a considerable gap between eating the meal and hitting the bed.
The body stores it as fat rather than burning it as energy if we fail to grab an early meal.
It is not at all a good idea to sleep just after the consumption of dinner.
A minimum of 3 hours of gap is a standard time before you hit the bed. And try not to consume dinner after 8 pm.
#Here are some most essential hacks for getting a good night’s sleep.
Some people at night don’t struggle to fall asleep, while it may seem a difficult task to perform for others. So, in that case, you need to train your mind to certain sleep habits and make your brain introduce you to the daily bedtime rituals.
Make your room’s light dim: When the night arrives, it means that it is the end of one whole day.
Your bedroom should be a sleep-friendly place for you. When you are tired and want to sleep, make sure you reduce or switch off the blue light of your room, it will give you a better good night sleep. Your brain needs a message about which time of the day it is. The hormone melatonin helps to combat disruptive sleep and helps you to manage the natural sleep process of a person. So it is indeed necessary to lessen the exposure of the bright light of your room.
And you also should distance yourself from all the electronic gadgets which can irritate your eyes just 2 hours before bed.
If possible, make the room temperature cool. An increase in the room temperature might not lead a person to sleep peacefully. It somewhere affects the quality of sleep.
Take a shower: A lukewarm bath at the night can create wonders for your sleep.
It undoubtedly helps in improving the quality of your sleep and makes you fall asleep faster.
Your mind feels more relaxed, and the body feels refreshed, and it helps you to sleep extra.
Make sure you follow this, and you can see a difference in your sleep pattern.
Cut alcohol consumption: We have a wrong notion that if we booze, it allows us to sleep peacefully. And also, we tend to believe it is a solution to the problem in our life.
That is not the case. Alcohol causes more disruptive sleep at night.
Most alcoholic people face the problem of insomnia. After a few hours of sleep, it wakes you up in the middle of the night and thus causing you difficulty falling back asleep.
Out of the standard time of sleep of 8 hours, it is to be said that 1 or 2 hours of a deep sleep, a person can attain roughly. But alcohol can harm the REM(rapid eye movement), sleeping off a person.
REM is said to be a deep slumber of a person. It is interesting because it increases the activity of your brain and helps you in creating memories, dreams, and also boost learning.
Try to meditate/chant/pray: It may seem an old technique, and the present generation might find it dull and boring.
But these things never go out of fashion. A half an hour of relaxation can be the best therapy to have a good night’s sleep.
These days we try to find a source of relaxation in something else like going for a movie or a drink, watching a good Netflix web series or playing video games, or might having a long conversation over the phone at the night, etc. So this can be an amusement, but the effect won’t be for a long time. These things can make your mind heavier.
You should always go for a more permanent solution, and that is meditation, chanting, or praying.
It helps you to relax your body and mind and also through this you can let go of things. Many times, you will find that you sleep with the baggage of unimportant matters. So try to apply these techniques. I am sure it will help you in combat insomnia.
Say no to caffeine and late evening meals: Too much consumption of caffeine is also one of the factors you not being able to get a night of proper sleep.
It came out in one of the suggested studies that before sleep, you must not consume caffeine, and the minimum gap maintained must be 6 hours. And this has been one of the substantial references about sleep hygiene and caffeine consumption so far.
And another element that influences sleep is late evening snack or meal.
If you face any sleep problem, this is a point to be considered and not neglected.
One of the reasons for not recommending heavy late evening snacks is that it has a higher chance of indigestion and heartburn.
Hence, you might be agreeing that despite sleep being one of the most vital components in one’s life, yet a neglected one.
And the profound knowledge regarding the benefits of sleep is not much to the people.
Or maybe they don’t want to ponder upon the fact because they are too busy to reach out to other things in life, and this has been the increasing issue these days that people are mentally depressed and facing problem-related to insomnia.
So how many of you are ready to set a sleep routine just like any other?
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