Good health starts with prioratising sleep

Beschrijving

 

How much hours of proper sleep do you get in the night? And what can you do about it to improve it?
A lot of people get to little sleep a night witch affects their health. A good night sleep is between 7- 8 hours.
Just like plants we humans have a biological clock. And in this society we confuse the clock by working nightshifts, yetlag, working late to many nights, bingwatching series at night etc. And so your sleeping patern changes.
The pineal gland in our brain is as big as a grain of rice and it makes melatonin.  Dr. Huberman talks about Melotonin and the effect of light in his podcast.
Melotonin you can also buy it at the regular drugstore when you have trouble sleeping. And it is very handy when you experience yetlag. A lot of people are afraid of using sleep medication but it is a shame that they also dont want to take melatonin because it is a substance your body produces naturally. Melatonin can help you reset your biological clock.
When you have a period of to little sleep you can get moody, quickly emotional, get amnesia, and even get paranoia or start having hallucinations.
When you have less then 6 hours of sleep for a longer period of time at night chances are higher that your bloodpressure rises, women get more heartproblems when they only sleep 4 hours a night for a longer period of time. Also there is a higher risk of cancer and when you do nightshifts or you fly alot  through timezones you are have a higher risk of breastcancer or colon cancer.

If that isnt enough there is a higher risk to get diabetes and get overweight.

Also a lot of mental illnesses are linked to sleeping disorders.
This is why sleeping hygiene is important.

In the book Night School by Richard Wiseman he talks about what you can do for a good sleeping hygiene.
Here are some tips;

•  Stop screentime before bed (again this has to do with the effects of light)
• Get a bedlight next to your bed and leave out the big light in the evening
• use your bedroom only to sleep. This means no tv in your bedroom
• set your bedroom temperature to 18 C or 64F
• When you have cold feet use socks or a hot waterbottle to warm your feet
• take a bath to get sleepy
• Dont nap more then 1,5 hours during the day
• put pen and paper next to your bed and write down  things to do or your worries
• when you have nightmares then maybe you want to learn more about imagenary rehearsal therapy

When you want to know more or why then read the book night school and or watch the huberman podcast.

I wish you a goodnight