Sleep Disorders

Myths Associated With Sleep

Sleeping Pills Help Sleep:

One of the biggest myths is that sleeping pills make a person sleep. They do not. They numb the brain into a non functional state, hindering a lot of brain activity essential for background processing and sorting of neurological activities of the day.

Sleeping is a waste of time:

Another myth is that sleeping is a waste of time. Gaining some extra time by losing sleep is soon compensated negatively by profound negative effects of sleep deprivation on the mood, concentration ability, and ability to use higher-level brain functions for many days. The negative effects of sleep loss are so profound that people who are drunk outperform those who lose sleep.

One can catch up on lost sleep over the weekend:

If there is sleep deprivation, it leaves its impact on health right the next day. Catching up on sleep over the weekend does not reverse the damage caused by loss of sleep.

One can function without sleep using caffeine as a stimulant:

Nothing is further from the truth. Caffeine only provides a short term kick but requires more than 48 hours to be flushed out of the body. This causes poorer quality sleep when it is possible to have a good sleep. Caffeine cannot be a substitute for the fresh feeling that comes with a natural good sleep.

Damage Caused by Insufficient Sleep

• Accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain cells
• Anxiety
• Bodyache
• Hair loss
• Higher risk of accidents while working or driving
• Impairment of creativity, problems solving skills and emotional balance
• Inability to organize information in the brain cells leading to memory lapses and poor focus
• Increase in stress hormone cortisol
• Increased craving for unhealthy food, increased appetite leading to weight gain
• Irregular heart beat
• Irritable mood
• Lack of motivation and energy
• Lack of patience
• Lowered sex drive
• Premature aging
• Proneness to develop diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity
• Tremors and muscle twitchings
• Unhealthy skin and hair

Tips to Have Natural and Healthy Sleep

1. Avoid Sleeping Aids:
   These include melatonin, sleeping pills, alcohol, cough syrups, panadol night etc.. All of these disrupt your brain's natural ability to have a good sleep. Sedation or numbing of the brain using any of these aids seriously interferes with the various stages of sleep cycles and disrupts normal restoration of brain cells. Most such aids are also addictive. If you are unable to get good sleep naturally, a thorough analysis of the cause and a natural treatment protocol is needed to fix it permanently.




2. Stop Drinking Caffeine (at least after lunch)
   Coffee seriously affects the quality of sleep. Yes, even a cup in the morning has an impact on that night’s sleep. Caffeine is a powerful stimulant that interferes with sleep by raising adrenaline release and blocking sleep-inducing chemicals in the brain. Caffeine has a six hour half-life, meaning it takes 24 hours to get flushed out of the system. A cup at 8 in the morning means you still have 25% of the caffeine in your body at 8 in the evening. Anything you drink after noon will still be near 50% strength at bedtime. Presence of any caffeine in the body makes it harder to fall and stay asleep. Not only that, caffeine impacts sleep by reducing rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the deeper stage of sleep when your body recuperates the most. This would cause you to wake up with a cognitive and emotional disturbance. You’ll be naturally tempted to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink to try to make yourself feel more alert, creating a vicious cycle.




3. Avoid Blue Light at Night
   Since light is the most important signal influencing sleep and wakefulness, the blue light emitted by gadget screens influences our brain’s ability to go into sleep negatively. Morning sunlight contains high levels of this "blue" light. When you are exposed to this light directly, this blue light stops the production of melatonin, the sleep inducing hormone and making you feel more alert.
   By afternoon, the sunlight starts to lose its blue light, allowing the release of melatonin and beginning the process of making you sleepy. By sunset time, your brain does not expect any blue light and becomes very sensitive to it. With direct exposure to it through various devices, melatonin production is impaired and interferes with the ability to fall asleep and the quality of your sleep. The best thing to do is avoid screens after dinner (television is okay if sufficient distance is kept from it). If you must use screens in the evening, you can limit your exposure with a blue light filter or protective eyewear.




4. Wake Up at the Same Time Every Day
   Keeping your sleep timings consistent helps immensely allowing the body to follow a rhythmic pattern. This applies especially to your wake up time. When you have a consistent time to wake up, your brain adjusts to this cycle and accordingly starts to be active at that consistent time. Levels of certain hormones rise about an hour before you wake and continue to rise gradually (along with your body temperature and blood pressure), causing you to become fully alert. This is the reason some find themselves waking up right before their alarm goes off.
   When you do not maintain this consistent cycle, your brain doesn't know when to complete the cyclical process and when it should start to be alert. Before the invention of the light bulb, sunlight ensured a consistent wake-up time. Nowadays only an alarm makes this possible.




5. No binge sleeping on the weekend
   Trying to catch up on lost sleep and binging on sleep on weekends has an unhealthy impact on your circadian rhythm. By suddenly changing the time that your brain should be alert, it causes you to feel groggy and tired. It also makes it harder to go back to the original schedule because that would mean waking up at a different time the next morning.




6. Estimate How Much Sleep You Really Need
   Each person has a different need in terms of the number of hours of good healthy sleep they need. It is genetically encoded and is not something one can change. Due to pressures of modern lifestyle, most people sleep less than this required amount. They start to experience subtle signs of degradation in their overall performance and health, but fail to connect it to insufficient sleep. By judging how fresh and energetic you feel on waking up and how exhausted you are around bedtime, you should be able to figure out the right sleeping hours you need.




7. Stop Working
   Work is stimulating to the brain and slows down its transition to sleep mode. Evening is when you should be winding down and relaxing in preparation for sleep. Surveys show that about 60% of people check their smartphones for work emails before they go to sleep. It is not only bombarding your brain with the blue light, but also creating alertness as it forces you to actively think. Any work before bed should be avoided if you want good quality sleep.




8. Eliminate Interruptions
   Unfortunately there are factors beyond our control that might interrupt sleep like families with small children. The idea here is to minimize all the interruptions that are under your control. Like putting the phone on silent mode, wearing earplugs if the neighbors are loud etc. If you think it through you can make changes to eliminate unnecessary interruptions to your sleep.




9. Learn to Meditate
   Meditation is known to improve the quality of sleep, reducing the number of hours needed.




10. Try Taking Power Naps
    Short afternoon naps lasting between 15 and 25 minutes are known to rejuvenate brain function and reinstate alertness back to pre lunch levels. On the other hand if you feel an overwhelming need to sleep in the afternoon, you are probably not getting quality sleep at night. If this happens, it’s a good idea to take a short nap (even as short as 15 minutes) rather than resorting to caffeine to keep you awake. A short nap will give you the rest you need and you will sleep better in the evening without the caffeine.