Importance of sleep in sustaining good health
Getting a good night’s sleep is as important for your wellbeing as a healthy diet, good rest and exercising. It is during the sleeping time that your body rejuvenates its body tissues, synthesize hormones, and restore brain function.
Such processes that take place during sleep have been shown to lower the risk of lifestyle illnesses such as stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attack. Quality sleep therefore ensures that you lead a quality life by keeping you healthy both physically and mentally.
On the other hand, lack of sleep can lead to health complications. In the early days of sleep deprivation, you will notice that you have become irritable, impulsive, waking up tired, and lacking your normal level of concertation.
Inadequate sleep a major global problem
Experts recommend 7 to 9 hours of sleep for an adult every night. However, the modern lifestyle in developed countries has made it hard to achieve this target. Recent studies indicate that as much two-thirds of adults are sleep deprived especially in developed nations. In USA, for instance, about 40% of Americans do not get enough sleep, with a majority sleeping less than 6 hours per night.
Such a short sleeping period does not let your body restore its body and brain systems. As a result those that lack adequate sleep start the day at low energy levels. Over time, the accumulated strain leads to mental, emotional and physical health problems.
Many of the people that are not having enough sleep have daytime jobs. The stress and frustration resulting from the lack of sleep reduces concentration and productivity at the job. In sensitive occupations, the low concentration and productivity may endanger the businesses, health and lives of the clients.
Sleep deprivation a danger to others
Some of the sensitive occupations and daily activities in which sleep deprivation may cause danger include:
- Driving
Driving requires maximum concentration to control the vehicle and coordinate with other road users. A slight lack of concentration can lead to serious injury or death. In the United States, sleep-driving reportedly cause an estimated 100,000 vehicle accidents per year. Many of the accidents were fatal while others resulted in serious life-changing injuries.
- Health care
The alertness of healthcare workers greatly affects the lives of the patients. A doctor or nurse that lacks concentration can derail the treatment process or even lead to loss of life. As such, the workers in the healthcare sector need to have sufficient sleep in order to treat their patients efficiently.
- Lawyers
In order to present the case of his or her client, a lawyer needs to be alert all the time. A slight lack of concentration can compromise his or her ability to digest the details of the case, applicable law and arguments presented by the opposing lawyers. This could lead to disservice to the client.
- Technicians such as mechanics and electricians
The efficiency of a machine largely depends on the precision of the technician that manufactures or repairs it. Lack of concentration caused by inadequate sleep can lead to a technical fault that could cause the user of the machine injury or even loss of life.
There are many other occupations in which lack of concentration may cause loss of life, serious injury or destruction of property. Other examples include pilots, security officers, and managers.
Lack of sufficient sleep is therefore a danger to the people around you including employers and clients. However, maybe even more importantly, you also bear a lot of the negatively effects of poor sleep especially on your health. Sleep-deprived individuals are prone to heart diseases, diabetes, stress, growing and aging problems, and mental illnesses among others.
Reclaiming your optimum sleep
If you realize that you are already sleep deprived, you can take steps to start sleeping well again. However, good sleep is like a habit so you need to change a number of things in your lifestyle to effectively regain your optimum sleep pattern.
Some of the practices that can help you start to sleep well include:
- Set a definite time when you will be going to sleep and waking up
- Keeping your room temperature cool – hot temperature can be very uncomfortable and cause you to wake up at night
- Reduce caffeine consumption from 1 pm
- Physical exercise – however, don’t exercise too close to your bed time
- Healthy eating – especially lunch and dinner
- Avoid using your phone or other gadgets in bed
- Daily meditation to calm your mind
- Don’t bring your work home
All the above practices will not have an immediate impact. You need to work on them continuously and make them your lifestyle. As such, to achieve maximum benefits you need to plan your entire as well.
Using hypnotherapy to attain healthy sleep
Sleep deprivation is usually a result of one or more bad habits. You therefore need to stop the habits if you are to regain your normal healthy sleeping pattern.
The aim of hypnosis, also known as hypnotherapy, is to help you understand the root cause of your problem and solve it systematically. You can use hypnotherapy to identify the bad habits leading to lack of sleep, and then work on changing those harmful patterns of behaviour.
Issues such as anxiety, stress, trauma, depression and work-related burnout are a major cause of sleeping disorders. Fortunately, all of these conditions can be treated successfully treated through hypnotherapy.
Since you probably can’t tell of you are suffering from any of these conditions, your hypnotherapists will work with you to first identify the condition. He or she will then tailor the therapy process to suit your personal requirements and circumstances.
Instead of popping another sleeping pill, visit a hypnotherapist today.
