Do you wake up each morning to an alarm, and immediately hit the snooze button while chastising yourself for staying up too late watching Leno or SportsCenter? Do you find yourself day-dreaming about the good old days in kindergarten when your teacher forced you to take a nap everyday? Perhaps you have just resigned yourself to the fact that you have too many things to do and there are simply not enough hours in the day. So sleep can wait. After all, you can sleep when you’re dead, right?
Unfortunately, if you operate this way for too long, you might find that your eternal slumber starts a bit sooner than you might like. If you are like most Americans, you need more sleep, period.
Reminders are all around us. How many of us stifle yawns during the day? How often do we sit down for just a minute and find ourselves dozing off? No matter how super-human you think you are, eventually we all fall asleep.
While you might not think of yourself as a well-oiled machine, your body actually operates like one, constantly repairing and regenerating itself. Most of these “updates” happen each night while you are sleeping. In fact, your body does some of its most important work while you are off in never-never land. You might think you aren’t being very productive if you are sleeping, but your body needs this downtime to reboot. Your body essentially uses this time to repair all of your cells and organs that have been working all day.
It’s a lot more complicated than this simple explanation, but since I am not trying to literally “put you to sleep” right this minute, I thought I would keep the science short and get to my personal experiment and mission for 2012: sleep more, work less.
Can I get an Amen?!
In the last few weeks, I have been writing about the Paleo diet. You can read those posts here and here and here. I absolutely believe the Paleo diet can transform your body and heal ailments that we typically associate with the normal aging process. But to truly enjoy all the benefits of Paleo, you have to commit to getting some extra rest. Doesn’t sounds so bad, right? Turns out getting 8-9 hours of sleep is pretty hard to do in our over-worked, stressed-out, over-scheduled society.
I have been trying to be very vigilant about sleep during the last month, to see if it makes a difference in my overall well-being. Since I get up early to teach my Jazzercise classes, I sometimes have to go to bed by 9pm to actually get eight hours of sleep. I know it sounds crazy. Many of us don’t even get home from work or evening activities until well after 7 or 8pm. That leaves very little time to make dinner, wash dishes, dish on the phone with a friend, update your status on Facebook or watch TV. It’s not easy to say good-bye to some precious downtime.
I will say a couple of things about my little experiment thus far. I have not been completely successful… there were many days when I did not meet my goal of a minimum of eight hours sleep. But overall, it has made a huge difference. I found out I am actually able to fall asleep at 9pm despite all of my previous assertions that it is just too early and it cannot be done! Here’s the catch – it involves turning off the TV and the computer well ahead of bed time, reading a (boring) book, and doing it the same way night after night.
I have also discovered that light (any light) affects my sleep habits negatively. Per the experts’ advice, I removed all light from my room. Yes, that includes the TV and cable box. Gone! I even bought blackout curtains. Even my digital clock radio has a dimmer and I turn it all the way down. I also wear a sleep mask and ear plugs. There is nothing sexy about my bedtime get-up, but I am finally getting some good quality sleep despite my hectic schedule.
That extra hour or so of sleep is really helping. I am not going to say that I bound out of bed each morning at 5am ready to take on the world… but you see what I mean. Quite simply, I feel better and have more energy all day long.
If you are interested in joining me in my 2012 mission to sleep more and work less, start slowly by easing yourself into a better bedtime routine. For some more tips, check out Dr. Oz’s article titled “How to Sleep Better in 2012.”
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