Can’t sleep well? Ah, how do we envy those days when we could feel the soft embrace of our pillows as we slip into deep slumber within the blink of an eye. Alas, old age looms over us, bringing forth its harrows and torment denying us to be enveloped in rest and serenity.
Sleeplessness is a common problem that we all may have suffered, or are currently suffering through, as you read this article. But what exactly makes you so restless that you just cannot sleep, no matter how hard you try, why is it important and how do we fix it?
Well, sleep disorders come in various types and can have many different causes, including your lifestyle choices. You must recognize them early on as it can be hard to get rid of chronic disorders. This is due to the human body’s innate ability to adapt to different changes it has been exposed to.
Why you are not sleeping well?
Listing every disorder known to man in this small article would be a nightmare for me to write and for you to read, so we’ll just keep it simple. Let’s look at the root of the problem to better understand how it affects us. These can emerge from a variety of situations that ruin your sleep.
Insomnia
Insomnia is a common sleeping disorder.
According to 2020 study on Insomnia, almost 30-40% of adults in the US report symptoms of insomnia at some point in a year. In insomnia, a person cannot fall asleep, wakes up pre-maturely, or wakes up feeling un-rested.
This short-term period can be caused by something small; like jet lag, illness, stress, medication or even drinking too much coffee in the morning. In chronic cases however stress, depression, and anxiety are the common causes. People suffering from long-term insomnia associate sleep with hardship and thus their body prevents them from falling asleep, which in turn gives them more stress and hence more insomnia. The cycle continues until one resorts to drugs and medications to fall asleep which is dangerous to one’s health.
Pregnancy
According to a 2018 study, 44.2% of women reported insomnia in their first trimester, and why shouldn’t they?
During the first trimester of pregnancy, hormone levels in the body change a lot, such as progesterone. Also during the third trimester, the increased size of the abdomen makes it hard for them to fall asleep, as it is uncomfortable. Heightened emotions of pregnant ladies also keep them awake; like being too excited or anxious about the delivery, or stressed about being mothers. After delivery, care for the newborn often disrupts the mother’s sleep (especially if the husband is too lazy to get up to change diapers).
Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)
Restless Leg Syndrome is a condition when a person experiences discomfort and an uncomfortable urge to move their leg. The condition remains not well understood but some studies have implied abnormalities in the central and peripheral nervous system have a role. This movement disorder usually occurs in the evenings or at night when the person is about to sleep or lay in bed.
One study concludes that in almost 8.3% patients of with sleep apnea, clinically significant restless leg syndrome was noticed.
On the contrary, 2.5% of the people in the controlled group showed symptoms of restless leg syndrome. This shows a significant relationship between sleeplessness and RLS.
Nightmares
Nightmares are commonly known to keep one up during the night. This usually occurs during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and can be triggered by a frightful or stressful incident (like watching a horror movie), sickness, or drugs. Night terrors are closely related to this when a person, usually children, wakes up in the night in deep fear, without being able to recall what they were scared about. In most cases, this tends to scare those around the victim more than the sufferer.
Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a condition where the airways of your throat are constricted, which blocks air and induces snoring. When you sleep, many muscles in your body relax, including your throat muscles. However, if they relax too much, your breathing might be blocked. You might be awakened as it takes too much effort by your body to unblock your airways, hence keeping you up at night. Sleep apnea is also caused by and associated with craniofacial and upper airway abnormalities, nasal congestion, and obesity. Fat deposition in the upper airway tract can decrease muscle activity in the region leading to periods of breath cessation.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle choices like exercising before bed have an impact on your sleep schedule as your body temperature increases after exercise. During sleep, homeostasis regulates your body temperature which in turn helps you sleep better. With a high enough temperature, it makes it harder for your body to regulate its temperature, and in turn, doesn’t let you sleep. Staying up late messes with your biological clock and you will be more likely to fall asleep in the day. This can lead to irregular sleep cycles leading to insomnia.
The Journal of Sleep Disorders & Therapy published in 2013 relates lifestyle choices like late-night use of gadgets, late evening meals, and use of caffeinated drinks with sleeplessness.
Why is it important to get a Good Night’s Sleep?
An average human being spends approximately one-third of their life sleeping. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least 7 hours of sleep to adults.
Sleep not only helps you stay alert and active, giving you a productive day, it also has various health advantages. These include preventing cardiovascular diseases as it lowers your blood pressure, giving your heart and vessels a much-needed rest from staying active all day.
Sleep improves metabolism
According to a Sleep and Metabolism overview, laboratory studies clearly show that sleep deprivation can alter the glucose metabolism and hormones involved in regulating metabolism. Sleep boosts your metabolism as your brain requires extra nutrients to carry out functions like breathing, pumping your heart, and dreaming, and regulates your appetite hormones that restrict our daily intake of food, in turn helping us to control our body weight. A good night’s sleep goes hand in hand with the amount of time you eat and the amount of time you spend at the gym.
Sleep strengthens your immune system
Our immune system our body from diseases. It spends time to reflect on decisions and choices which can help us to prevent mood swings. Sleep also improves our memory as we can easily access short-term and long-term memories due to the brain being sharp and refreshed.
The Sleep Foundation says that there is a bidirectional relationship between sleep and immunity. An immune response to disease or viral infection can affect sleep. Similarly, proper sleep can strengthen your immune system leading to a healthy and disease-free body.
The ill-effects of lack of sleep
Lack of sleep can induce many problems in your life. You will be less alert, which can be threatening during operating heavy machinery such as working in a factory or during driving. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, every year about 100,000 police-reported car crashes involve drowsy driving. These crashes result in more than 1,550 fatalities and 71,000 injuries in the US alone.
Furthermore, it can mess up your biological clock and make you drowsy when you should be awake, like at work or in your classroom. Chronic cases of fatigue can make it very hard to regulate your sleep cycle which in turn would make it hard to sleep at your preferred rest times.
Affect on Your Social Life
It can affect your social life as you would encounter frequent mood swings. Nobody would want to stick around with a person that is unpredictable and in a constant tiff. It can also affect your sex drive! Research has shown that fatigue causes a drop in libido in men and women alike, making it harder for them to maintain interest. You will also be unable to participate in activities like exercise and work, making it hard for you to go through your day.
Chronic fatigue gives you high blood pressure and has a playing role in diabetes, which can increase the chances for strokes and cardiac arrest ultimately leading to death. Other problems include obesity, lowered libido, depression, and immune diseases. If you think that’s bad, sleeplessness is also bad for your skin! It can enhance premature wrinkling as lack of sleep induces the release of the stress hormone Cortisol, which breaks down collagen in your skin reducing its elasticity and increasing wrinkles. Dark circles and wrinkles also appear underneath your eyes.
How to fix it?
After all that reading, let’s get down to how to correct your lifestyle to get a good night’s sleep.
Lifestyle changes
Adequate lifestyle changes also account for better sleep at night. Try exercising during the day rather than at night. Try to have a fixed time to sleep and a fixed time to wake up, that way you can keep consistent and be on top of your routine. If you consume too much coffee, cut it down. If you are one of those people who stay up late at night stop doing so and sleep instead.
Read more about a healthy diet and its effect on your sleep.
Follow a schedule
Firstly, try prioritizing to get enough sleep. Treat it like your medication. With all the buzz and workload in our daily lives, you might overlook getting a proper sleep time to get some work done. However, this can be damaging to your health and to prevent this, try prioritizing sleep to get some work done. Change your schedule so that you can stay organized as well as get some sleep.
Try getting up at the same time every day of the week, so that you develop consistency and wouldn’t oversleep or under-sleep. Your biological clock will be set so that you wake up at the same time each day, regulating your sleep cycles so that you may not be woken up by your alarm during a deep REM sleep (which can make you sluggish as well as give you migraines or high blood pressure.
Try some before bed activities
It is also beneficial to try undertaking an activity that you consider peaceful right before sleep, like reading a book or taking a long, warm bath. This will allow you to associate sleep with peace, especially if you suffer from anxiety to help give you a relaxing rest.
Ditch those screens
Cut down your time using any electronic device right before sleep, like computers or smartphones. These devices keep your mind buzzing and restless, which can keep you from sleeping.
According to The Sleep Foundation the “blue light” emitted from the screens has a response in your brain to prevent releasing the hormone melatonin, which is responsible for making you feel sleepy.
While this may be a good idea during the day, it is widely disproved by many sleep experts. It is a good idea to turn off all devices approximately one hour before bedtime.
Avoid looking at the time
If you are awoken in the middle of the night, avoid looking at the time. Sleep Expert Dr.Michelle Drerup says “The minute you look at that time it’s not just looking at one number, you start mental calculations, and you think about how long it’s been since you’ve been in bed and what you have to do the next day. And before you know it, a long time has passed and that cuts into your sleep time.”
Make time for downtime
As the saying goes, ‘Make time for downtime’. In essence, give yourself some time to rest without thinking of anything going on in your life. For you, sleep should be a tie where you can escape the harshness of your workload and just relax.
“In our society, nowadays, people aren’t getting enough sleep. They put to sleep so far down on their priority list because there are so many other things to do – family, personal stuff, and work-life,” Dr. Walia says.
“These are challenges, but if people understand how important adequate sleep is, and how to sleep better, it makes a huge difference.”
Exercise
Engaging in regular exercise will help you in regulating your sleep-wake cycle. The relationship between sleep and exercise is quite straightforward. Exercises tires you out, after which your body demands rest and sleep. Keep in mind that the time of your exercise matters the most. Exercising just before bedtime will keep you up all night.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine Institute it is recommended to engage in 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise sometime in the morning or noon.
Want to start exercising today?
Medicinal therapy
If any of the natural methods do not work, you will have to resort to medicinal therapy to fall asleep. However, be sure to consult your doctor before buying any drugs so that they would inform you of the risks involved. Following are the psychoactive drugs that should be used with care to avoid dependency and addiction.
- Benzodiazepines
- Non-benzodiazepines
- Melatonin agonists
- Off-label treatments
- Over-the-counter medications.
Some well-known natural remedies may not have the same effect as they used to have in the olden days. Historically, people have been known to resort to herbal remedies to treat insomnia, including valerian or Kahweh. However, these do not work as well as we used to think they did, hence it is generally not recommended by experts to use.
Are there other ways to fall asleep quicker?
Many different methods can be branched out if you know what is causing your sleeplessness. If it’s a hectic work schedule try to adapt to it by reducing your fun time or stopping procrastination, which can easily deter you from work and could keep you in constant stress to meet deadlines. If you suffer from anxiety, try to investigate why you feel that way. See a therapist, or talk to a loved one to help you soothe it down. You could also consider meditation to help you keep a fresh and peaceful state of mind (Namaste).
Value your sleep. It is that one period of time when you could escape all your worldly worries and tasks, and just fall into a beautiful slumber. Lack of sleep can be damaging to your health, and will ultimately affect your entire livelihood. Hence, you must keep consistent with your sleep and get a good 7-8 hours of rest each night.
Still have some questions about sleep? Simply leave a comment below and let our expert answer your query.