Your’e well aware of the benefits of sleep. When your eyelids cant stay open, your body starts sagging on the couch, your ready for bed.
However, you may not be aware that a lack of sufficient the sleep time, and the right quality of sleep can kill you. Sadly there is a condition called Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) where sufferers die within 18 months because they just cannot sleep. Fortunately FFI is rare but you may not appreciate that whilst you are sleeping, your body is busy.
Here are 3 important sleep time facts that you may not know.
Brain Drain
Your brain’s chemical reactions create toxins. Whilst you sleep cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), a clear liquid surrounding the brain and spinal cord is released and clears out toxins.
Memory Merge
Your memories from today are merged with those of yesteryear, building up your experiences and learning
Workplace Effectiveness
Lack of leads to difficulties concentrating, slower reactions, and poor decision-making.
So, If your want to avoid the BMW syndrome (smile), you need to get the right amount of sleep and the right quality of sleep.
Sleep Time
You will find various suggestions as to what the correct amount of sleep is. You will also find mentions of people like Margaret Thatcher (UK Prime Minister), that they got away with as little as 4 hours sleep.
However, two American researchers Shawn Youngstedt and Daniel Kripke reported on the 1988 20 year, 1 million people study by the American Cancer Society. It showed that around 7 hours (6.5-7.5hrs) was the ideal sleeping time.
They also concluded that more sleep was worse than less sleep in terms of mortality.
Sleep Calculator
Start by calculating your average sleeping time.
One way of checking this is to use a sleep app on your mobile phone. The one I used required placing around my pillow. It produced a graph (see below).
There are more sophisticated ones like www.sleepcycle.com
You may also like to read.
How to Avoid Sleeping on the Job
How to Fix 9 Common Sleep Problems
