We all love to live life to the full, or is there something that is stopping you from doing that? Do you find your motivation for everything draining away? Do you feel tired or drained most of the time? Do you lay awake at night, or have disturbed sleep? Life can be very complex, and we feel that we must juggle, health, family, friends, housing, work, finances, and everything else that gets thrown at us. How often do you say to yourself, “I just don’t have time”?
Fatigue and tiredness can take the shine off our life. Not only can we feel run down, but we become vulnerable to illness, and it can also affect our relationships with those around us. Getting a good night’s sleep can become difficult for many different reasons. Do you ever feel in the morning that you’ve had little or no value out of your sleep? Many wakeup in the early hours for no apparent reason. Others just can’t get to sleep in the first place because their mind is too active. Disturbed sleep can take many different forms and can have many causes.
A 2016 study found about a third of adults suffer with chronic insomnia, which increase with age. Even if you’re not suffering with disturbed sleep, it’s probable that you have friends and family that do. The study concludes that insomnia is a condition that is often missed by GPs unless specifically asked for. So, it’s likely that you don’t realise that the lack of sleep is making you feel the way you do. Alternative health media don’t want to blame sleep for symptoms of being run down because they want to sell their supplements to you.
What is sleep?
Getting enough sleep is as essential to our survival as food and water. The lack of sleep will impact on almost every type of tissue, organ, and system in the body. There has been a lot of research into the impact of chronic lack of sleep. If you don’t get enough or experience poor quality sleep, you are at risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, obesity, and many other diseases. So, we owe it to ourselves to make sure that good quality sleep is one of our life’s priorities.
Sleep is a dynamic process that is dependent on both internal and external factors. There are two main types of sleep, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and non-REM. We will typically cycle though REM and non-REM sleep throughout the night with longer and deeper REM periods nearer the morning.
Non-REM sleep is when the heart rate drops, breathing slows and brain waves slow. With REM sleep the eyes will move rapidly behind the eyelids and brain waves increase. It is at this time that we dream, and our arm and leg muscles are temporarily paralysed. REM sleep can happen typically after ninety minutes of sleep. We spend less time in REM sleep as we age.
Our bodies carry out many “housekeeping” tasks while we are asleep, which are essential to our wellbeing. Adults need somewhere between seven and nine hours sleep each night. This time reduces for the over sixties.
Good night’s sleep
How to get better sleep?
There are lots you can do to help you improve your sleep, and they fall into two different categories:
- Improve your sense of wellbeing. We are far more likely to sleep better if we have a healthier lifestyle. The key steps for living healthier:
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- Most of what we do in work and relaxation doesn’t make us physically tired. Our mind and body needs physical exercise. It is well known that regular exercise protects us from many chronic health conditions. However, exercise can only be sustainable if you have the motivation to do it. So, we need to find activities that are right for us, and we feel motivated to do them. Many find gyms boring and find sport to be more suitable because of its competitive and social nature. Alternatively, dancing, gardening, or walking the dog are all good forms of activity. In other words, there is an activity to suit everyone.
- They say, “we are what we eat”. We are constantly bombarded with the eat healthy mantra, but there are so many conflicting ideas. In connection with sleep and wellbeing, you should be eating a balanced diet that avoids processed foods. It’s also important to know that “free from”, vegetarian and vegan diets still can include a lot of processed food or ingredients.
- While addictions are not the scope of this blog. Alcohol should be moderated, along with caffeine. But other addictions, some more harmful than others will have a major impact on our sleep patterns.
- Stress is a large part or our lives. Unrecognised stress is often the precursor to anxiety that leads to other mental health issues like depression. So, it’s important to take control of stress before it takes hold you and impacts on your life and rest.
- Love and belonging are listed as one of Maslow’s human needs. Our interaction with others, friends, family, and colleagues is an essential element of our wellbeing. If you live with a partner or family, it’s good to eat at least one meal a day together and engage in conversation.
- See your GP if you have a long-term problem with disturbed sleep to rule out any underlying health problems.
- Take time out during your day to meditate or think. A quiet time doesn’t have to be long. It just has to be your time, twenty, thirty or sixty minutes will make a huge difference.
- A regular massage will help lower stress and promote deep relaxation. But lowering stress and relaxation is only one sleep promoting benefits of massage. Remedial and deep tissue massage will also help reduce aches and pains that can keep you awake and restless at night.
- Preparation for sleep. By taking these few steps each night, you will develop a good night’s sleeping habit:
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- Set a regular bedtime routine. This helps the mind prepare for sleep. It can be harder to fall asleep if the mind is over stimulated at bedtime.
- Have your meal earlier and avoid sugary things in the evening. It can be uncomfortable to go to bed on a full stomach and cause indigestion. The body needs some time to process what you have consumed before sleep. Consuming sugary things increases the risk of a sugar crash in the night, which will wake you because your body demands more sugar.
- Avoid alcohol and caffeine before bed, but don’t dehydrate in the evening. Some are tempted by avoiding a drink during the evening to prevent being disturbed by the need to visit the toilet in the night. Going for a wee in the middle of the night shouldn’t a problem because you should be able to go back to sleep. But if you’re a man, going more than once a night should be checked out by your GP.
- Make sure your bedroom is prepared for sleep. Install good black-out curtains to ensure the dawn or external lights don’t disturb you. It should be a quiet place, free from anything that could cause a distraction.
- If you can’t sleep, read or listen to music until you feel tired enough to sleep.
Be Kind to Yourself
If we look after ourselves, we will look after our sleep. There is nothing more satisfying than waking refreshed ready for a new day. It only takes a few steps to improve the quality of our sleep. Therefore, if you are suffering from disturbed sleep that’s not a medical problem, send us a message at info@themassagespa.co.uk to book your Pure Body Fix® appointment to help get your sleep back on track.
