Sunday, 12 July 2009

• An Easy Habit to Cultivate for Better Quality Life

  
  

  "Sleep your way to lose weight!", "You need beauty sleep!", "You sleep too little, you should sleep more!"

  Honestly, best news I have heard so far in a long time. I have pretty terrible eye bags due to the lack of sleep or even late nights up. My mother used to nag excessively at me that I needed to change my sleeping habits and I should try to sleep at 1 am (the latest!). Being the rebellious kid, I would defensively retort that my body would be able to handle my terrible and irregular sleeping habits.

  Years went by and I am wishing I had changed my sleeping habits back then. Oh well, better late than never right?

  Sleeping early (say before 12 midnight) daily and assuring that you get sufficient hours of sleep (8 hours) regularly has its benefits.

  1. "Look, they really mean it when they call it beauty sleep." I used to laugh when my mother always told me the best time to go to bed is at 10 pm because that is when the body needs to regenerate. She was unable to explain further to me. However, after doing much research for the past few months, I have found out this is what the experts say too. An article on WebMD suggests we should go to bed by 10 pm because our body naturally syncs itself according to day and night cycles. Personally, I have had good results when I stick to this habit of sleeping early. Even if I sleep for 5 hrs but at an early time, I still end up looking and feeling better than sleeping 8 hours while going to bed at 3 am.

  2. When you get sufficient sleep, stress is reduced too because your body's nerves are more relaxed and will function with ease.
  

  3. A good night's rest definitely puts me in a better mood and more enegergized when I wake up. The thought of a strenuous workout just doesn't cut it when I wake up, lazing around in bed, not wanting to even get up, let alone put on my workout gear and go for a run. Therefore, good night's sleep = more energy to exercise!

  4. Ensuring enough rest allows for better regulation of our hormones which helps promote better metabolism too.
  If we aren't well rested, our hormones act kinda weird and confused and end up sending the wrong signals to the brain. One example would be Ghrelin, the appetite stimulating hormone and Leptin, the body's appetite suppresant hormone. If our brain is mentally exhausted, the hormones are messed up, and so they don't send out the right signals, meaning we may think we are hungry when we are actually not, or even just end up eating more than enough because the brain is not receiving the signal "STOP EATING. YOU'RE DONE."

  5. Sleep reduces the chance of health related issues. With a well rested body, our blood vessels are less "stressed" which can reduce cardiac problems and strokes. (Interesting fact, most heart attacks and strokes occur in the morning... Is it to due a bad night's rest? Who know?)

  The benefits of sleeping well are simply overwhelming, from health related issues to weight loss to beauty. I really don't see how most of us would complain about this either. It's probably one of the easiest thing we could implement in our daily life without any excuses and yet lead a better quality life!

  What do you guys think? How much sleep are you getting? What's the latest you stay up on average?

  
  

  • 11:45 AM
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