9 de agosto de 2021
Every day, our environment creates more and more distractions to keeps us awake, and we sleep less and less in return.
We forget how important is to sleep the right amount of time, we prioritize anything before a good night's sleep. We underestimate the consequences of what the lack of sleep makes to our bodies and our minds.
What's the point of going to sleep late and just rest for 5 hours or less if we know it's not enough? What's the point of staying up late when we know we have to wake up early the next day? What's the point of rising with the sun to be productive when we are just getting sleep-deprived?
Steadily sleeping less than 7-8 hours has truly harmful effects on our health and yet, we rather not worry about those things because "we have a lot of things to do and if we sleep enough, we can't do it all".
Recently, I've read the book "Why we sleep" by Matthew Walker and I realized how important it is to sleep and why it's not something we should underestimate.
Today, I want to share some facts that I learned from this book:
- Going to sleep and waking up at the same hour every day -including weekends- should be part of our routine.
- After 16 hours awake, our brains start failing. Adult human beings need more than 7 hours of sleep every night to maintain cognitive performance.
- After ten nights of just sleeping for 7 hours, the brain starts working as if we haven't slept for 24 hours.
- Three whole nights of restorative sleep are not enough for restoring our performance to normal levels after a week of lack of sleep.
- The human mind can't perceive how sleep-deprived it is with precision.
- REM sleep has restorative effects and it's fundamental for the proper functioning of the body.
- Alcohol affects REM sleep negatively, it may also inhibit it.
- Caffeine's middle life span can last up to 8 hours, depending on several factors.
- Since blue light reduces melatonin -sleep inductive hormone-, experts don't recommend using devices that emit this type of light before sleeping (smartphones, TVs, PCs, etc.).
- Exposing to sunlight during the day and not exposing to blue light at night contributes to falling asleep faster at night.
Tips for a good night's sleep