How to Get a Healthy Sleep

Getting a healthy sleep can be very difficult in today’s society. There are all sorts of obstacles holding us back from achieving a proper sleep each night. This can range from our jobs to noises to our bad habits. Some of us have jobs which give us a lot of stress or the shifts are not very ideal such as night shifts or constantly changing shifts. Noises from our family and the city can also distract us from getting a good sleep as well. But most of the time, the condition for not getting a good night sleep comes from our bad habits such as eating unhealthy, not exercising, smoking, drinking, watching late shows, going out late at night, waiting until late at night to do our work/homework.

First let’s define what sleep is. According to dictionary dot com. Sleep is:

To take the rest afforded by a suspension of voluntary bodily functions and the natural suspension, complete or partial, of conscious; cease being awake.

Basically it means to close your eyes and not be conscious of what’s happening in order to rest your mind and body.

Sleep Stages:

There are two types of sleep including rapid eye movement (REM for short) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM for short sleep. These are the 2 broad categories of sleep according to The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Each sleep category has different physiological, neurological, and psychological features. In the NREM sleep, there are 3 stages including: N1, N2, and N3.

NREM sleep

According to the 2007 AASM standards, NREM consists of three stages. There is relatively little dreaming in NREM.

Stage N1

-basically still half-awake with your eyes closed

-brain with alpha waves with a frequency of 8-13 Hz to theta waves with a frequency of 4-7 Hz

-may experience hypnagogic hallucinations

-some muscle tone is lost

-most conscious awareness of external environment is lost

Stage N2

-muscular activity measured by EMG decreases

-total conscious aware of the external environment disappears

-occupies 45-55% of total sleep in adults

-characterized by sleep spindles ranging from 11-16 Hz

Stage N3

-known as deep or slow-wave sleep

-delta waves ranging from 0.5-2 Hz

-parasomnias such as nightmares, sleepwalking, and enuresis occur

-this is when you’re in a deep sleep and cannot be woken up so easily

REM sleep

-20-25% of total sleep in most human adults occur in this stage,

-most dreams which you can remember very vividly occur in this stage

-you are in a state of paralysis in order to protect you from hurting yourself when acting out your dreams

-dreams feel like reality in this stage

-gets cranky if woken up in this stage

Timing

Timing your sleep can be very difficult as it is heavily influenced by our biological clock (aka the circadian clock). This clock keeps our temperature levels, our metabolism, and works in tandem with adenosine. This adenosine is basically a neurotransmitter which controls our awake we you are. Usually we can’t make up sleep over the weekends if we are sleep-deprived because in our weekends we have to get caught up with house work. However, in theory it does help to get extra sleep over the weekends if we are sleep deprived on the weekdays. With that said, try to sleep before 12AM (try to sleep at 10 to 11 PM for adults and 8 to 9 for children)

Optimal Amount for Humans

The optimal amount of sleep for everyone isn’t the same. Each individual has a different need. Some people may need up to 14 hours of sleep a night while some else may only need 6 hours a night to function properly. This depends on your age, your conditions, what exercise you do, and how well you are eating. For babies, they will need 18 hours of sleep, for kids 12-15. For adolescents, they need 9-11 hours a night approximately and as for adults 7-8 hours a night. If you’re sick or pregnant you will need to sleep more. If you do heavier exercises (anaerobic) you’ll need to sleep more to recover your muscles and if you do lighter exercises (aerobics) you need less sleep. If your diet/nutrition is really good you can go on with an hour or two less sleep than normal and still function well. On the other hand, if you lack proper nutrition then you’ll feel really tired and drowsy and sleep an extra one or two hours.

Conditions for Sleep Area

-nice comfy bed

-dark room

-65 degrees Fahrenheit (or 18.5 degrees Celsius)

-quiet background or extremely soft white noise

-this area should be for sleeping only

Top 10 Benefits of Sleeping Properly

1. Keep your heart healthy

2. May prevent cancer

3. Reduce stress

4. Reduce inflammation

5. Make you more alert

6. Improve your memory

7. Help you lose weight

8. Brain more alert

9. Reduce risk for depression

10. Help the body recover

Put Into Practice in a 5-Step Process:

1. Exercise in the morning and/or afternoon

2. Eat at least 2 hours before going to bed

3. Wake up at the same time every morning

4. Go to bed at about the same time every night after calculating how much sleep you need

5. Sleep in a nice comfy bed in a dark, quiet, and cool room (this should be your sleep space only and not anything else on it)