Why sleep well?

 

What is Sleep?

"Sleep is the best meditation" - Dalai Lama. Sleep is not just resting, rather it is much more then bodily rest alone. Contrary to popular belief, your brain does not rest when you are deep asleep. Rather, your brain is doubly active when you are deep asleep. Let’s see what is sleep? Sleep is a state of consciousness where we have limited interactions with our surroundings and are relatively quiet and still (depending on the stage of sleep). This is again contrary to popular belief that you become unconscious while sleeping. In fact, sleep is a different stage of consciousness.

Stages and cycles of sleep

Our brain goes through 4-5 cycles of 90 minute each in the night in a duration of 7-9 hour sleep, each cycle containing 4 stages. The pattern includes two major phases of sleep: non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. The four stages of sleep include three stages of non-REM sleep and one stage of REM sleep.

Stage 1: Your eyes are closed, but it's easy to wake you up. This phase may last for 5 to 10 minutes. As your body enters light sleep, your brain waves, heart rate, and eye movements starts slowing  down

Stage 2: You are in light sleep. Your heart rate slows, body temperature drops. Muscles relax and eye movement stops. Your body is getting ready for deep sleep. This can last for 10-25 minutes.

Stages 3: This is the deep sleep stage. Your eyes and muscles don’t move, and your brain waves slow down even further. Deep sleep is restorative. Your body replenishes its energy and repairs cells, tissues, and muscles. You need this phase to feel awake and refreshed the next day. It's harder to rouse you during this stage, and if someone woke you up, you would feel disoriented for a few minutes.

Stage 4: This called REM (Rapid eye movement) stage. In REM sleep, your brain waves and eye movements increase. Your heart rate and breathing also speed up. Dreaming often happens during REM sleep. Your brain also processes information during this stage, making it important for learning and memory

Mind repeats these cycles 4-5 times during the night. In each successive cycle the duration of 4^th stage ie REM stage increases. It is longest in the last cycle of sleep.

Why Sleep is Important?

Sleep is essential to every process in the body, affecting our physical and mental functioning in a lot many ways

• our ability to fight disease and develop immunity is compromised when we sleep less It affects digestion and nutrition absorption and gut health in body. Poor gut health also triggers unhealthy food choices,
• our metabolism slows down if we don’t seep well. Poor metabolism can lead to obesity and many health complications.
• hormonal functions are a lot impacted by sleep pattern. Inadequate sleep leads to increased appetite and overeating (due to high secretion of hunger hormone ghrelin and lower levels of satiety hormone leptin), leads to stress hormone cortisol, lack of growth hormone, insulin resistance causing diabetes.
•  growth & repairing of nerves/ tissues/organs/bones. If we don’t sleep well body can not repair, rebuild and grow properly which leads to faster agin
• brain functioning as to our mood/memory/ creativity etc

 In fact sleep touches every aspect of health. Lack of sleep is highly correlated to obesity

Some of the frequent doubts and clarification about sleep

• 1.   Can you cover up lack of sleep-in night in afternoon or during weekends? Well… as you sleep less in the night your sleep debt keeps piling up. Sometimes its ok to compensate during afternoon but habitually its not to be accepted. First, your body has a circadian rhythm and God has designed body to sleep in night every day. Body’s rhythm gets disturbed by such awkward habits. Body is not able to complete all the cycles and it will lead to repercussions of under sleeping over time.
•       What if I sleep late and wake up late? Well again best is to live by God’s design. Your body starts winding up after sunset and start preparing to wake up in morning wee hours. There are specific hormones for that. If you don’t follow the clock of your body, it will lead to all repercussions of lack of sleep. Same way night shifts are not at all good for health.
•      What if I eat my dinner within 30-60 minutes of my bedtime? Ideally one should sleep empty stomach and finish your last meal 3-4 hours prior to sleep. Late dinner interrupts with sleep and fat metabolism. Hence quality of sleep as well as body fat metabolism is impacted if you sleep with filled stomach.
•     Can I exercise even I have not slept well? One should avoid putting further stress on body by exercise with inadequate sleep. Exercise breaks your tissues and muscles. It gets rebuild in a larger way when you sleep. Exercise with inadequate sleep hinders this process where you only break your body while it does not get adequate chance to repair itself
•     Can body adopt to less sleep by an hour or two? There are some specific techniques in yoga science by which your body function equally well with less sleep but for normal people it can’t be done. If you are doing so under this myth, you are under sleeping perennially and harming yourself. Such gene mutation where body adopts to less sleeping happens only 1% of people. Even if you don’t feel sleepy due to habit, you are not giving required rest to your body
•     What if my body has adopted to sleeping late? ‘I can’t fall asleep early. My body is like that’ is a usual myth people carry. A lot of people sleep late with a justification in mind that their body has become like that. Let me clarify there is no genetic change happen in your body. You just become habituated of sleeping late. By conscious awareness one should gradually shift to sleeping on time.

Sleep hygiene

Not only knowing the facts will help you. Facts can only help in transforming the habits if we see deeply and realize the impact on us and our life. Visualize the positive things healthy sleep can bring in life like good health, glowing skin, anti-aging, mental peace, leaner body and many more. Then what are the habits to be followed for a good night sleep? Well… turn off exposure to TV/mobile couple of hours before going to bed, take a warm bath, read something unexciting, keep your room noise free, clean, and dark. Avoid drinking liquid before sleeping. Sleep burden free leaving all the stress/grudges ill feelings aside, pending work in a to do list instead of your mind. Have your dinner early and visualize the positives in life. Gratitude prayer also fills you with joy and satisfaction. Have a good night’s sleep and great life.!