The Wrong Side of the Bed

We spend about a third of our lives asleep, or at least we should!  Most of us have felt firsthand the effects of a bad night’s sleep and know how difficult it can be to function the next day.

Fact:  The Guinness World Record for sleep deprivation is still held by Randy Gardner, who at the age of 17, in 1964, stayed awake for 11 days and 25 minutes. I do not recommend trying to break his record unless you want to experience paranoia, hallucinations, and severe memory impairment.

Sleep and mental health have a reciprocal relationship.  You need sleep for a healthy happy mind, and unfortunately, many mental health problems can have a major impact on the quality of our sleep.  Maybe you can think of a time when you were so anxious about something that it kept you up all night going over it in your mind only making it harder to deal with the actual thing when it came time because you were so tired? Good quality sleep helps to keep your immune system strong, making it easier to fight viruses, and helps to boost the other action in the bedroom!  Each stage of sleep is important, improving mood control, concentration, coping ability, problem solving, emotion regulation, memory retention, learning and, appetite control.  Basically, if you want to retain that new trick you just learned you need a good night’s sleep.  Lack of sleep or poor sleep quality is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease, obesity, depression, and diabetes.  So how can we improve sleep quality?  Here are 5 tips for developing a healthy sleep routine:

1.      The bedroom is just for sleep and sex.  I mean it.  It’s not a tv room or an office or the headquarters for your Instagram influencer empire.  Just sleep and sex.

2.      Limit your screen use up to an hour before bed.   A blue light filter can help, but overall, screen activities boost brain activity making it hard to wind down for a good snooze.

3.      Hit the hay on the regular.  Try to establish a routine that is somewhat regular each night.

4.      Keep it dark, keep it cool and keep it quiet.  Make a room that’s optimal for quality sleep. 

5.      Put down the wine glass.  Alcohol before bed, while it might seem like it helps you get to sleep, typically leads to disrupted sleep where you’ll find yourself wide awake at 3 am with nothing but your thoughts and weird house sounds for entertainment!  Ahhhhh!