Sleep, is an inseparable part of everybody’s life. No matter if you are going to sleep early or late, you sleep for long or short time, you simply need to sleep. But what is the best way to sleep? Is it really only the 8 hours per day or do other factors such as bedtime also play a part? Let’s take a deeper look into sleep and its effect on your life.
To talk about sleep we need to know why sleep is important.
Sleep has a significant impact on your life from the moment you are born. As a child, sleep helps in your organism development and stimulates growth. No matter what age you are, sleep always affects your mental and physical health and sleep deficits can have major impact on your health. A sleep deficit can, for example, lead to a car crash due to falling asleep behind the steering wheel or in the long term can increase the risk of chronic problems such as heart or kidney diseases.
While you are dreaming sweetly, your brain is working hard on analysing and sorting all the
information you have received in the past day and store it in the right place in your mind. Your brain is also creating new pathways and improves your learning and problem-solving skills.
No matter what you are learning, proper sleep will improve the speed and quality of that
learning process.
Besides organising the previous day, it also prepares your body and mind for the next day.
During a long and deep sleep, your body repairs cells, enhances muscle mass and keeps your immune system working properly! Furthermore, a good sleep helps you control emotions, dealing with change, making decisions and concentrate.
Basically, sleep effects every aspect of your life! Knowing this, you might want to know how to get the optimal sleep, so let’s see what research tells us about sleeping hours.
Sleep deprivation
To sum up all these effects of sleep deficits, I would like to show you a research by Lisa S. Talbot and a bunch of other researchers. They studied emotional responses with 10 to 13-year olds (adolescence), 13 to 16-year olds (mid-adolescence), and 30 to 60-year olds (adulthood).
One group had one night of 6,5 hours sleep followed by a night of 2 hours of sleep. The other group had two nights of 7 to 8 hours of sleep. The sleep deprived group was more anxious and rated the likelihood of unfortunate things to happen higher than the more rested group independently of age. Basically, the sleep deprived group had a more negative mindset than the rested group. And that after just 2 nights of a sleep deficit, is interesting at the least. This backs up previous research and statements made about the effects of sleep deficits.
Technology
A big influence on why we now have sleep deficits is because we are going to sleep late. And one of the main reasons behind that is modern technology. Most people are up in bed until late, watching TV, playing games on tablets and checking all your socials such as Facebook and Instagram. (Talking about Instagram don’t forget to follow me on Instagram, @healthychanges_pt!). Anyway, in order to maintain the recommended 8 hours of sleep, we have to wake up late and if you are not in a luxury position of waking up late, you end up having a sleep deficit.
So, what exactly about technology makes us sleep late you ask?
There are 3 main reasons.
Firstly the blue light which comes from digital devices keeps your body from producing melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone to help control the sleep and wake cycle, also known as circadian rhythm which is just a fancy name for your "inner body clock". Nowadays, a few devices have a special sleep mode in which the light colour changes to red which, in theory, should not affect your body clock. But this is yet to be analysed before saying that with certainty.
The second problem with technology is that, beside messing with your body clock, it tricks your mind in thinking it needs to stay awake. Responding to late night emails, exciting videos on Facebook and other features your device gives you, stop your mind from relax.
Finally, all "glory" goes to all the different applications and phone calls which may wake you up during the night. One research has found that 72% of children between 6 and 17 sleep with at least 1
device in their room, which causes up to one hour of less sleep on school nights!
The solution for all these problems is to be at least 30 minutes before bedtime technology free, this helps your body to unwind and relax. Even better is to keep your bedroom a technology free zone. This way you are not tempted to quickly check your phone or play ‘one more game’ before getting your well deserved sleep. Give it a try and see how you will feel at the next morning!
Productivity
So, we are going to sleep late, which creates sleep deficits, which brings along many negative effects, but what about effects of bedtime instead of sleep duration?
I want to show what a different bedtime does with your productivity. A research, conducted by Tim
S. Olds, Carol A Maher and Lisa Matricciani, tried the relationship between sleep habits and
weight status and activity patterns. It included 2200 kids between 9 and 16 years old which were divided into 4 groups:
1. Early sleep/early wake
2. Early sleep/late wake
3. Late sleep/early wake
4. Late sleep/late wake
Groups were compared by use of time, weight and socialdemographic characteristics. The results were intriguing. The late sleep/late wake group spend 48 minutes more on watching electronic screens and 27 minutes less on physical activity than the early sleep/early wake group. Furthermore, the late sleep/late wake group had a higher BMI and was more likely to be overweight or obese. The interesting fact about this, is that they roughly have the same amount of sleep, the only difference was the time they went to bed.
So, if you want to have a productive day, go early to bed and wake up early the next day! I can bore you with many more researches like these, but let’s have a look at what we have learned and how you can help in your sleep efficiency instead!
Its clear, sleep deficits can have major, negative effects on your body, but so does inappropriate bedtime. To be in the optimal state it is important to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep per day.
Furthermore, try to stay away from technology 30 minutes before sleep, and preferably, keep your bedroom a technology free zone. Also, try to find a good sleeping rhythm and stick to it, even in the weekends. One day of sleeping in the weekend could already affect your body clock in the following week! Decide a concrete bedtime and stick to it, leave important emails for the next morning. Getting proper sleep, before 12 o'clock, will help you be more productive the next day, which can finally improve the quality of your emails. And if you are having difficulty falling asleep at the right time, you can also take melatonin supplements! Melatonin is a hormone which regulates wakefulness and therefor helps you fall asleep sooner and deeper.
For example, give Melatonin Sustain from Jarrow Formulas a try, besides improving sleeping quality it also removes free radicals and strengthens the immune system!
What is your bedtime? Let me know what are your thoughts on this subject, or if you have any subjects you would like to read about next time, give me a tip! Thanks for reading!
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