How A Healthy Sleep Schedule Can Change Your Life

Do you always seem to fall behind in your sleep? Do 8-hour sleep schedules seem impossible to reach with your packed work and life schedule? We get it. As you age, you accumulate more responsibilities and it’s harder and harder each day to squeeze in precious time for sleep. But it’s not a good idea to forgo it altogether. Not only will you feel refreshed and focused during the day, but getting enough sleep can impact how your body ages over time. Let's look into how sleep impacts the body and what you need to do to get into better shape.

How A Healthy Sleep Schedule Can Change Your Life
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How does sleep affect us?

Getting the recommended hours of sleep each night paves the road to a healthy, long life. When you're deep in sleep, your body repairs tissues and produces hormones responsible for vital functions such as immunity and metabolism regulation. Think of it as cleaning up your body to prepare it as a blank, refreshed slate for the next day.

After a healthy rest in the first half of the night, you'll wake up feeling refreshed and reinvigorated. Deprivation of sleep, on the other hand, can have negative effects on your body's physiology, including disruptions in appetite regulation, blood pressure, and cognitive function.

Certain sleep disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia can also lead to unwanted problems like heart disease, strokes, and heart failure later in life. Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that causes people to stop breathing for short periods of time during sleep. To avoid suffering those consequences, having the right sleeping aids you can find in CPAP are important to combat the progression of those major diseases.

How much sleep do I need?

Your age is a determining factor in how much shut-eye you're going to need to perform optimally throughout the day. If you're an adult, experts recommend 7-9 hours of sleep per night. If you're a teenager, this number bumps up to 8-10 hours. 

School-aged children require 9 to 12 hours of sleep. Getting enough sleep doesn't equate to the total hours in your bed spaced out as various naps or hours attempting to slumber.

Rather, it means getting good-quality sleep on a consistent schedule so that you'll feel refreshed when waking up. If you find it hard to get sleepy, don’t hesitate to consult your doctor for guidance.

What happens when I don't sleep enough?

The side effects of sleep deprivation can have profound effects on your daily life, but they're often overlooked because of how subtle they are at first. After a bad night's rest, you'll begin to feel groggy and unfocused.

You can tell this by how difficult it is for you to remember things, such as names and numbers. If you fail to sleep consistently over time, you could also lose your memory and experience a drought in creativity.

Another way sleep deprivation affects you is by making you feel slow or clumsier than usual. Many people find it difficult to discern what's actually wrong with their ability to function, so they just assume that's the way they are without first attributing it to lack of sleep.

By getting the recommended hours of sleep every night, you'll be able to avoid many costly mistakes at work or school. You'll also feel much more refreshed and energized during the day.

Does sleeping too much also matter?

Yes, sleeping too much can affect the quality of your everyday life. For one, it can increase the risk of certain chronic diseases such as anxiety, diabetes, and obesity for mid-aged adults. It also puts you at a higher risk of diabetes and coronary heart diseases.

Sleeping for 13 hours on a weekend as a one-time thing won't cause too much harm, but doing so consistently can lead to a worsening quality of life.

So, strike a balance by setting an alarm to train your body to wake up at a consistent time each day.

What should I do to get better sleep?

Implementing a more rigid sleep routine does wonders for your body. It near-immediately reverses the negative effects your hormones have done on you during your sleepless bouts. It also improves your ability to exercise and your cognitive skills.

Here are some of the things you can do to sleep better:

Switch to muslin bedding

Using fabrics like Muslin for your bedding and sheet helps. Organic blankets like muslin temperature regulating blankets go far in improving your sleep quality.

Take melatonin supplements

Melatonin supplements are a great way to help you fall asleep.

Melatonin is a hormone that your brain, particularly your pineal gland, produces to make you feel tired.

It's also found in other regions of your body, such as your gut, eyes, and bone marrow.

It binds to receptors in the body to control your circadian rhythm, which is responsible for letting your body sleep, eat, and wake at the times that you do.

By taking either 0.5 mg or 5 mg of melatonin, you can replicate the effects of getting your body to feel in sync and get better sleep again.

Exercise regularly

Exercising for at least thirty minutes a day can help you sleep better because it releases chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins in the brain.

The release of these neurotransmitters helps to make your body feel more relaxed and lower your blood pressure.

One study on exercise shows how it managed to halve the time it takes to sleep—from 90 minutes to just under 45 minutes.

However, it's best to limit exercise in the morning and afternoon. Doing it close to bedtime makes your body produce hormones like epinephrine and adrenaline which makes you feel more alert. Get a better sleeping space

Do you know why you sleep better in hotels?

It's because they take extra consideration on the bed quality.If your sleeping environment isn't ideal, there's a chance that you won't feel fully relaxed when you're trying to sleep. According to a study led by Bert Jacobson, a new mattress can relieve shoulder pain, back stiffness, and back pain by nearly 60%.

If your bed is over 8 years old and uncomfortable to sleep in, it's best to look for a better mattress to replace it. This way, you can avoid developing any joint or back damage to your body may suffer from.