The role of sleep for health and quality of life

Healthy sleep is the key to men­tal and phys­i­cal health. Sleep depri­va­tion has become a fair­ly com­mon prob­lem these days. Stress, bad thoughts, extra­ne­ous noise — all this neg­a­tive­ly affects the qual­i­ty of sleep. It is no coin­ci­dence that one of the ancient tor­tures is to keep a per­son from sleep­ing. This breaks the will of a per­son, he ceas­es to con­trol him­self and ful­fills any con­di­tions of the exe­cu­tion­ers. And dur­ing sleep, the ner­vous sys­tem is restored, and the per­son is alert and col­lect­ed again.

Good sleep is the key to health

How much sleep to be col­lect­ed, atten­tive and pro­duc­tive? Ide­al­ly, a person’s sleep in adult­hood should last 6–8 hours. Only genius­es like Napoleon or Leonar­do da Vin­ci, accord­ing to the leg­ends, could sleep 1.5–2 hours a day. For them, that was enough. But they are genius­es to be dif­fer­ent from ordi­nary peo­ple. For every­one else, lack of sleep is extreme­ly harm­ful, and does not increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but quite the oppo­site.

For good sleep, not only its quan­ti­ty is impor­tant, but also its qual­i­ty. It is influ­enced by many fac­tors: events dur­ing the day, watch­ing TV, using a com­put­er, the pres­ence of extra­ne­ous noise and the tem­per­a­ture in the room, and how you feel. It’s hard to fall asleep if some­thing is both­er­ing you or the neigh­bors are play­ing music too loud­ly.

You will sleep much bet­ter if you fol­low these help­ful tips:

• Fin­ish work­ing at the com­put­er a few hours before going to bed;
• Take a warm bath with aro­mat­ic oils;
• Adjust the room tem­per­a­ture — it should be with­in 18–21 degrees;
• Try to exclude extra­ne­ous noise;
• Drink relax­ing herbal teas to help your ner­vous sys­tem relax;
• Mon­i­tor the con­di­tion of the bed, it should not cause dis­com­fort.

The bet­ter you sleep, the more alert you will feel when you wake up, and the more pro­duc­tive your day will be.

What you need to know about human sleep

We sleep for about a third of our lives. New­borns sleep the longest — from 17 to 23 hours a day. Fur­ther, a person’s sleep is grad­u­al­ly short­ened: in school-age chil­dren, the num­ber of hours ranges from 8 to 12 hours, for 20–30-year-olds 5 hours may be enough. By the age of 60, sleep time increas­es again to 12–13 hours. How­ev­er, every­one has their own mode of rest.

Human sleep is divid­ed into sev­er­al phas­es:

• Slow. It lasts about 90 min­utes. Dur­ing it, the body is relaxed, and the brain is inac­tive.
• Fast. The dura­tion of the fast phase is 10–20 min­utes. Eye­balls make quick move­ments. At this point, you may be dream­ing.

The slow and fast phas­es in a healthy per­son alter­nate 5 times. Dur­ing this time, you can see 4–6 dreams. It may seem that one plot lasts quite a long time, about 1.5 hours, but in fact the dura­tion of the dream is no more than 1–2 min­utes. A per­son remem­bers the plot if he wakes up dur­ing the fast phase. Dream plots are usu­al­ly not relat­ed to each oth­er. Dreams are a reflec­tion of our expe­ri­ences and sen­sa­tions, which we are not always aware of dur­ing the wak­ing peri­od. If you want to know what your dream means, refer to a spe­cial dream book. Do not be afraid if there is a bad event in your plot, such as ill­ness or death. If you dream about this, you should not inter­pret the dream lit­er­al­ly — your sub­con­scious is sig­nal­ing you about prob­lems or dif­fi­cul­ties in mak­ing deci­sions or about some­thing else. Spe­cial dream books will help to unrav­el the mean­ing of the plot.

For a long time it was believed that peo­ple with an unhealthy psy­che see col­or dreams. But today this claim has been refut­ed. Most like­ly, plots in col­or come to peo­ple whose life is full of bright events, who have some­thing to remem­ber. So, for exam­ple, chil­dren see col­or dreams, because every day for them is a time of dis­cov­ery and new expe­ri­ences. There are many more women who see col­or dreams than men. And, of course, intel­lec­tu­als can see plots in col­or — due to the high devel­op­ment of the brain and the vari­ety of impres­sions.

The importance of sleep time and proper regimen for human health

We have long known that accord­ing to the way of life peo­ple are divid­ed into “larks” (those who pre­fer to go to bed ear­ly and get up ear­ly) and “owls” (lovers to sit longer at night and wake up lat­er). Since the stan­dard work sched­ule of firms and enter­pris­es (from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. or from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.) implies a fair­ly ear­ly awak­en­ing, the “owls” do not get enough sleep. This leads to fatigue and irri­tabil­i­ty. There­fore, a few sim­ple rec­om­men­da­tions on time man­age­ment will help them:

• Try to go to bed no lat­er than 23:00;
• Pre­pare the nec­es­sary things in the evening — it will be eas­i­er to get ready in the morn­ing;
• Take a con­trast show­er or do exer­cis­es — it’s eas­i­er to wake up;
• Con­trol how long it takes you to com­plete dai­ly tasks;
• Try not to put things off until the evening. Even if you are active in the evenings, be aware of the neg­a­tive effects of sleep depri­va­tion.

Is it worth the “owl” against their will to try to become a “lark”? There is no sin­gle answer. If you have a choice, and you can agree to adjust the sched­ule with the man­age­ment, then there is noth­ing wrong with the “owl” mode. But if you work accord­ing to a clear sched­ule, then it is worth adjust­ing the sleep time and dai­ly rou­tine in favor of the “lark”.

Pro­longed lack of sleep leads to such adverse effects as:

• Dete­ri­o­ra­tion of mem­o­ry and con­cen­tra­tion of atten­tion;
• Decreased immu­ni­ty;
• Excess weight;
• Decreased per­for­mance;
• Bad mood, irri­tabil­i­ty;
• Decreased moti­va­tion;
• Dete­ri­o­ra­tion in appear­ance.

If you do not get enough sleep for years, then all of the above will lead to the appear­ance of seri­ous dis­eases, such as dia­betes, depres­sion or stroke. In short, insuf­fi­cient rest inevitably leads to a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the qual­i­ty of life.

Prop­er and high-qual­i­ty human sleep is one of the most impor­tant com­po­nents of life suc­cess. How much sleep to be pro­duc­tive and col­lect­ed depends on your bio­log­i­cal rhythms. It is extreme­ly erro­neous to think that lazy peo­ple and weak peo­ple sleep a lot. You just need to learn how to sleep prop­er­ly.

How to achieve this:

• Do not eat at night. Food can lead to fre­quent awak­en­ings, espe­cial­ly if you have eat­en a lot of sweets;
• Sleep with the account off. Bright light inter­feres with the pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin, a hor­mone that helps you sleep. This way you will feel bet­ter in the morn­ing.
• Don’t play sports. Your ner­vous sys­tem and mus­cles will become overex­cit­ed, and you will not be able to fall asleep for a long time. There­fore, leave the exer­cis­es in the morn­ing, and in the evening do, for exam­ple, yoga.

A sleepy per­son feels not only bet­ter, but also hap­pi­er. The cor­rect mode of the day and the absence of bad habits improves the state of health and rela­tion­ships with oth­ers.