Sleep is fundamental to health and wellbeing and is essential for cognitive performance, learning, recovery, and memory.
How does your body regulate sleep?
Circadian Rhythm- Our brain has an internal clock which communicates with all body systems and every cell.
Light Exposure – Wakes you up.
Dark Exposure – Induces sleep.
Hormones – Different hormones at varying times influence the sleep cycle.
What can disrupt sleep include?
Light and noise
Stress and anxiety
Hormonal imbalance
Eating late at night
Electronic devices late at night
Poor sleep is categorised as the difficulties in mitigating sleep, waking frequently throughout sleep hours with inability to return sleep and waking very early and unable to return to sleep, when this occurs 3 or more times per week for several months, an individual may have a clinical Insomnia disorder.
Poor sleep is associated with the development of chronic health conditions including, anxiety, depression, raised pain perception, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, poor immunity, and Neu degenerative disease.
If you suffer from poor sleep, take action to restore good sleep.
Pharmaceutical medications although may help can cause dependency or may be less effective with prolonged use.
Tips to improve sleep patterns:
Turn off devices early
Exercise
Correcting nutrition deficiency
Research demonstrated that some relaxing herbs may relieve disrupted and restless sleep and lengthen sleep time. E.g., Passionflower, Valerian, Kava, Lavender, just to name a few.
Magnesium in the correct dose and form has been found to be beneficial in improving sleep.
