The Art of Sleep
Mathew Walker, the writer of ‘Why We Sleep’ states that ‘routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer’. This in itself should be enough to make you really think about how the lack of sleep is affecting your body. But it doesn’t. I have always found myself invincible to these kind of things until its too late and I’m in bed downing a glass of vitamin C and feeling sorry for myself.
We spend around 1/3 of our life sleeping so if this is not up to par, it can make the other 2/3s quite unpleasant. Today I am going to lay out just three simple, yet constantly overlooked aspects that are having a complete negative effect on our sleep.
1. Drinking Caffeine Throughout The Day
According to the Sleep Foundation, consuming caffeine less than 8 hours before bed can be detrimental to our very sleep. Adenosine (a sleep-advancing chemical) builds up in our body throughout the day but the presence of caffeine completely halts this process which in turn can disrupt your sleep. As a rule of thumb, try and refrain from drinking those Monster’s at least 8 hours before bed to ensure your body can naturally fall asleep with ease. For example, if I was heading to bed at 11pm then my last cup of coffee would be at 3pm.
2. Lying in Bed vs Sleeping in Bed
The average adult needs around 8 hours of sleep a night to ensure they can fully function and focus on daily tasks. Now many of you might say, ‘Oh I definitely get 8 hours sleep but I’m always tired’. This can be down to two major factors; the first being some people actually need more than 8 hours which you can workout yourself by using The Sleep Calculator which will give you a great guide on what time you should wake up from the time you go to sleep.
Before I tracked my sleep, I would go to bed around 12ish and fall victim to endless scrolling on social media for around 45 minutes and then wake up at 8.30am the next day. Here in actual fact, the time I spent on social media plus the 15 minutes it usually took me actually fall asleep meant I was only getting around 7.5 hours sleep for quite a long period of time which did impact my energy levels and ability to focus.
3. People will not think you’re dead if you turn your phone off an hour before bed
This leads me onto my next point, which for me was arguably the hardest task to implement in my daily life. The infamous blue light that emits from your phone every night before bed can halt the production of melatonin which is a sleep hormone that controls our circadian rhythm. This means that not only does it make it more difficult to actually get to sleep but also makes it harder to wake up the next morning. Therefore, you might be getting 8 hours of sleep but if they are not of good quality then this too can impact your daily life.
The Action Plan:
Firstly, I want you to try and turn your phone completely OFF one hour before bed this week, especially with exams in full swing for you A-level and university students. My degrees a bit of a joke and they’ve given us 7 days to complete our exam, which at first you might get angry about but remember it’s because of this that I have the time to help improve your overall day!
Secondly, keep away from those high caffeine drinks! If you are going to have caffeine try and limit the frequency as in the long-term it could damage your sleep cycle which as a result will have you spending more money on energy drinks to keep you awake. Here we see the ruthless cycle begin of spending more money on products that are only hindering your sleep in the first place!
I get it, we’ve all had that day when our fingers won’t stop scrolling on our phones and the thought of coffee to reverse the lack of sleep sounds all too promising. So cut yourself some slack, life will sometimes not allow us to have that perfect bedtime routine but when it does give us the chance, its best to seize it…