How well do you sleep?
Ensuring a good night's sleep is important for our mental health and wellbeing, but it's often something that we ignore. Working on sleep can have significant benefits.
Sleep is important for our health and wellbeing, and is one of the key pillars - alongside exercise and healthy eating - that are key to ensuring our wellbeing flourishes. Poor sleep is associated with the risk of developing or aggravating a range of chronic health conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, and is associated with other health risk factors including smoking, unhealthy eating and excessive alcohol consumption.
Both the length and quality of sleep are important, with the recommended amount of sleep for most adults around 7-9 hours. It seems that most Australians are meeting these recommendations, sleeping on average 7-8 hours per night. However, 66% report at least 1 sleep problem, and 48% report at least 2 sleep problems. This includes issues including short or long sleep, poor sleep quality, obstructive sleep apnoea, insomnia or restless legs. Generally, women are more likely to report sleep problems than men.
Why is sleep important?
When we sleep, it gives both our mind and body the chance to recharge and repair. Without enough sleep our brains cannot function properly, particularly impairing things like concentration, decision making and memory. Parents (and anyone who’s served in the military) will understand well why sleep deprivation is used for torture and interrogation purposes. So good sleep is critical to our physical and emotional wellbeing.
Here are some tips for good sleep:
Have a regular sleep routine – try and go to sleep and wake-up at the same time each day and try to avoid excessive sleeping in on days off.
Have a wind-down routine – no surprises here, get off your devices an hour before bed, switch off the TV and read a book or do something to relax and unwind.
Improve your sleep environment – make your bedroom conducive to sleeping (not too warm, reasonably dark and quiet)
A bed has (mostly) only one purpose – if you can, make sure the bedroom is considered a sleep only area. Try to avoid having a desk in your bedroom, and particularly avoid working from your bed.
Exercise and eat well
Avoid stimulants like caffeine, nicotine and alcohol before you go to sleep. They will interrupt sleep and increase tiredness and fatigue.
Get some sunlight – circadian rhythms are important in regulating sleep and waking, so getting out into the morning sun is important.
Above all, rethink the way you think about sleep – not just as something that you do at the end of the day, but something that is an important part of your wellbeing.
Last week: If you missed, last week, you can go back and read A Return to Free Education?