Get a Minimum of 7 hours of Sleep

March is Sleep Awareness month!

Keep an eye out throughout the month on how important sleep is to you mentally and physically and what we can all do to sleep better.

Do you Sleep on average 7 hours a night?

If not, you are not alone. 1/3 of adults do not get enough sleep.

Some people may say they can sleep when they are dead because there is too much to do in life.  It is great to have that ambition to live life to the fullest, unfortunately that view will eventually take it’s toll on your body.

Your body needs on average, 7 hours a night of sleep to replenish and rejuvenate itself. The brain stores new information, gets rid of toxic waste, cells repair, restores energy and molecules like hormones and proteins are released. These are just some of the processes that happen when you are sleeping. If you are not sleeping enough, your body isn’t fully recovering.

When sleeping your body goes through 4-6 cycles per night. Each cycle lasting about 90 minutes.  7 hours is the minimum needed to try to get through those cycles. Obviously at least 8 hours of sleep would be better, but hey let’s start somewhere.

So what are the stages of sleep?

Stage 1 Sleep – light sleep, slowing of brain waves, heart rate and eye movement

Stage 2 Sleep – light sleep before deep sleep, body temperature decreases, eye movements stop, heart rate and muscles continuing to relax, brain waves spike briefly then slow down again. You will spend most time in this stage.

Stage 3 Sleep – Deep Sleep – eyes and muscles don’t move, brain waves slow further. This is the restorative stage.  It is replenishing energy, repairing cells, tissues, muscle tissue .  This stage brings the feeling of being refreshed the next day.

Stage 4 Sleep – REM – eyes move quickly from side to side. Brain waves, eye movements, heart rate, breathing increase.  This is the dreaming stage.  The stage where the brain processes information important for learning and memory.

If you have a health watch and tracking your sleep, you will see how you move through each of the above stages and how efficient you are in each. Although these watches should be used just as a guideline, they are a good start to sleep awareness.

I personally stay a lot of the time in Light Sleep stage and need more Deep Sleep and REM. This causes me to feel drowsy in the morning, like I haven’t slept, and afternoon brain fog. Something I need to work on.

In my next post, let’s take a look at poor sleep symptoms and ideas we can work on together for a better nights sleep.