April is Sleep Month at Connect To Life.
Week 1, Uncovering the Mysteries of Sleep,
Week 2, Deciphering the “Sleep Position Dilemma”,
Week 3, Sleep Props… Mattresses, Pillows. How to Choose AND Use Them,
Week 4, 3 Essentials to Transform the Quality of Your Sleep
Culminating in
Week 5/Sleep Week, Monday April 27 – Friday May 1, Optimizing Your Life Through Restorative Sleep
I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly what happens when we sleep, all the reasons we need sleep or all the consequences of not getting adequate sleep. In fact, most of what we think we know about sleep is still housed in uncertainty. But there are some consistent observations and reasonable hypotheses about why sleep is vital for life and irreplaceable for health.
Even the Easter Bunny Needs a Good Night’s Sleep!
The following benefits of sleep are well established:
Sleep is a time for physical rest and recovery.
TRUE. Everyone has some appreciation that when we overuse our bodies, are injured or sick, periods of sleep help with physical healing. It provides down time, the opportunity to rest abused tissue so that healing can occur.
Sleep allows the brain to do it’s most important work.
For a good chunk of history, it was commonly believed that the brain was LESS active during sleep compared to waking. It seems we were wrong. During sleep, our energy demands shift from physical tasks to brain activity. This is the time the brain performs it’s daily behind-the-scenes work of integrating what it has witnessed and experienced over the past hours and days. The old saying, “I’m going to sleep on it”, wasn’t simply an excuse to procrastinate. We literally do put things into better perspective once we let our brains mull them over without the distraction of conscious thought and agendas.
The brain does it’s housekeeping while we sleep.
Our brains work hard all day, and all night. While we sleep, we divert resources to our brain because the rest of the body’s demands are minimized. This is when the brain is able to clean house. Toxins and debris are liberated and eliminated while storehouses of energy and neurotransmitters are replenished. It’s like that precious minute a boxer spends in the corner between rounds… here’s when the brain can attend to its wounds, rehydrate and visualize a clear game plan for what it may face the next day.
Most chronic or degenerative diseases flourish in the absence of good quality sleep.
Great mental and physical health requires adequate, quality sleep. And the counterpoint to that is what has been observed over and over again. Poor quality or insufficient sleep has been shown to be associated with both short term and long term losses of health. Acute, short term illness and immune dysfunction, as well as long term and degenerative processes are known to be accelerated by inadequate sleep; probably for all the reasons stated above. But the important thing to keep in mind, is that just because you don’t see immediate evidence of loss of health doesn’t mean it’s not occurring.
Most chronic or degenerative conditions are well established and have built a solid foundation of ill health WAY before symptoms are noticed. So don’t fool yourself into complacency thinking you are getting away with something super-human when you habitually run your sleep tank on empty. It will catch up on you.
If you are new to the area, are looking for a wellness based chiropractor to help you with a concern or to to progress toward optimal health and quality of life, or if you’ve been thinking about your sleep, talk to us… sooner rather than later.
April is Sleep Month at Connect To Life.
Dr. Katharine du Quesnay is ready to help you.