Sleep: Natures maintenance cycle

Sleep is fundamental to health and any form of successful happy life yet we neglect it all the time and suffer illness and general poor health as a result. The irony is that we blame these problems on everything but our lack of respect for sleep.

The lancet shared an interesting article titled Dying for a good nights sleep which outlines the health problems inherent when you don’t get adequate slumber. It is always great to hear that scientists are aware of the problem, though my frustration is often their lack of understanding of sleep itself. I learnt a lot about it when I studied biopsychology during my A levels, and it turns out that the airline industry spent a lot of money learning about sleep because it improved safety.

Essentially, they needed their pilots and staff to be alert at all times, so they had to understand what that required. Pilots and airline staff continually do shift work and cross time zones, so their body clocks are often confused. The airlines needed to know how to help their staff handle this challenge.

The facts I learned then seem pretty basic now, but I have never heard them since. It seems that no one else seems to be aware of them. They are simple things that basic research tells us. Our minds take around 5 hours to recover each night, but our bodies need longer, at around 8 hours.

The fascinating talk shown below Lights Out: Sleep is Still the Best Medicine goes into much more detail regarding the necessity of sleep for health. It is presented so well that I recommend anyone to watch and enjoy just to learn why taking time to let your body heal itself will repay you in more ways than you can imagine.

How Fit2Thrive applies to sleep

play
- the more relaxed you are the easier sleep becomes. Play is the opposite of stressed and the state where sleep is easy to achieve. You need to explore what relaxes you.
compete
- balancing everything on your plate is crucial to getting enough sleep. Most often you have too much on your plate and your mind. Go for too long with out sleep and you won’t compete very well, you will start to lose.
create
- Your body cannot grow stronger if it is not given time to rest and recover.
- There is a lot of help out there you just need to find what fits you
- Explore the options available, each thing you try puts you a step closer to the answer.

I’ll explain more at another time and if you want to know more just ask but I wanted to point out how little the medical community seems to know about a core process of human life even though it has such a big impact on our health.