The following is a production of the Conscious Evolution Institute in HGH.TV.
Recognizing poor sleeping habits.
We all know how it feels to have a rough morning.
You wake up from your slumber, and it's so much easier just to turn over and hit the
snooze button.
Sometimes it can be a struggle to even open your eyes.
Hopefully, you're one of those people that only feels that way every once in a while,
but we understand that a lot of people have significant amounts of trouble getting out
of bed on a regular basis.
Some people think of it as a form of laziness, but there are a lot of reasons why poor sleeping
habits can be chronic and problematic, without it necessarily being some sort of character
flaw as it is so often characterized.
How did you feel this morning?
Think about how it felt to wake up this morning.
Was it a struggle to throw off your blankets?
What did you do yesterday?
Did you spend half the afternoon helping your friend move into a new apartment?
Maybe you were so exhausted that you needed to get just a little extra rest to recover.
Or maybe the room was particularly cold, and it felt so wonderful underneath the blankets
that it took every ounce of your resolve to leave your wonderfully warm and comfortable
bed.
Maybe it was something going on in your head?
We've all had those nights we spent tossing and turning because of anxious thoughts we
couldn't evacuate from our minds.
There are perfectly normal reasons why we have trouble sleeping sometimes, but there are a
lot of reasons why we sleep poorly that can have a powerful effect on overall health and
well-being.
Sleeping difficulties are a major problem for a lot of men and women across the country.
A lot of people don't really understand why they have trouble sleeping, but they know
that it's having a negative effect upon their life.
Specialists spend their entire careers working with patients in order to help promote healthier
rest patterns.
In terms of so many aspects of our health, healthy sleep is the linchpin that helps us
maintain ourselves in peak condition.
The rest of this article will be concerned with the various root causes which have negative
impact on normal sleeping habits.
Common Sleeping Problems
Not Enough Sleep
This should seem pretty obvious, but if you don't sleep the seven to nine hours that
your body naturally requires, you will start to slip as a result.
Your body goes through a natural cycle of sleep, slipping from REM sleep to multiple stages
of deep sleep.
All of these stages of sleep are important and restorative, and if you don't sleep long
enough, your body will suffer because you don't spend the necessary amount of time
rejuvenating through each phase of sleep.
Just restructuring your life to be able to sleep for a full night can do wonders for
your health.
Normal Sleeping Patterns
There are a ton of careers out there that don't permit you to establish a normal healthy
pattern of sleep.
Doctors and nurses work long hours and are required to flip their entire schedules on
a day's notice.
Firefighters and EMTs have to remain on call for long hours, finding short respites of
sleep interrupted by high adrenaline periods of activity.
In order for sleep to be most restorative, your body must adhere to a healthy pattern.
Women levels rise and fall throughout the day, controlling hunger, fatigue, and energy
levels, and if your schedule is too well over the place, you may find yourself with energy
rusting through your veins just when you lay your head down to rest.
Although there is only so much that you can do in regard to regularizing your sleeping
patterns in many cases, make every effort to establish sleeping habits as close to normal
as possible.
Atypical Circadian Rhythm
If you have allowed your sleeping habits to get off track, you may have actually hijacked
your own circadian rhythm.
The circadian rhythm is naturally optimized for nighttime rest, but if you work second
or third shift, stay out late with friends, or do anything that causes you to regularly
fall asleep at a strange time, your body will actually re-adapt to your new circumstances.
This means that if you get a new 9-5 job, or if you otherwise have to wake up at a normal
and decent hour, your body will grind its gears, slow to recalibrate the sudden alterations
in your sleep schedule.
Bad Sleep Hygiene
There are a lot of things you do throughout the day that wreck your normal sleeping habits
without you even realizing it.
Do you watch television in the bedroom?
Do you drink caffeine within 3 hours of bedtime?
Do you give in and take a nap in the afternoon?
These seemingly innocuous decisions can prevent you from getting the most out of your night's
rest.
Even having a large dinner, or exercising just before bed, can have a severely negative
impact upon your resting patterns.
As you fall asleep, your muscles relax and your digestive system slows to a crawl.
Falling asleep with a lot in your stomach, or right after a long and hard workout, can
lead to a restless night.
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a severe medical condition that affects many men and women across the
United States.
Sleep apnea primarily affects obese individuals, but can actually be a problem for anyone.
Sleep apnea is a condition which is caused by anything that obstructs your airways as
you try to sleep.
Minor Sleep Apnea can be as simple as a chronic snore, but for some people, it actually causes
them to suffocate for brief periods throughout the night before gasping for fresh air.
Sleep apnea reeks havoc upon the body, and is one of the leading causes of testosterone
deficiency in males.
It also disrupts human growth hormone production, which can have a negative impact on energy
levels of both sexes.
Even though sleep apnea is a serious and potentially chronic condition, there are multiple effective
ways to treat and alleviate the disorder.
For obese patients, the best way to resolve sleep apnea is to lose weight.
There are also masks which can actively circulate fresh air into the nostrils of the mouth, allowing
you to get all the oxygen that you need to sleep sound.
For patients with severe sleep apnea not directly caused by obesity, surgery is also an available
option.
Restless Leg Syndrome Restless leg syndrome is a little understood
medical condition that can have a negative effect upon healthy sleep.
The primary symptom of RLS is exactly what it sounds like.
During sleep, a patient feels sensations which cause them to compulsively want to move their
legs or arms during sleep, but the condition is obviously neurological in nature, but researchers
have yet to discover a clear cause.
Around 1 in 10 people in the United States suffer from Restless Leg Syndrome.
Although doctors don't have a firm idea of why RLS happens, there are ways to ease the
symptoms of the condition, such as exercising more often, sleeping more regularly, decreasing
caffeine use, or massaging the legs before bed.
Medical Side Effects There are many medications that can directly
disrupt sleeping habits.
A few types of drugs that can disrupt healthy sleep are allergy medications, blood pressure
medications, and antidepressants.
If you are having trouble sleeping, consider what drugs you are currently on and talk to
your doctor about choosing another treatment option or changing the means that you take
the medication.
Some medications, for example, can disrupt sleep when taken orally, but when delivered
directly to the lungs have no disruptive effect.
Untreated Psychiatric Issues Men and women with elevated levels of anxiety
or depression are at a higher risk of sleeping poorly, which can even exacerbate the primary
condition.
Psychological conditions have a nasty tendency of making the brain go into overdrive at the
worst times, especially when you are alone with yourself.
If you are chronically depressed or sad, getting treatment can help you sleep better, and the
combination of therapeutic treatment and improved sleeping habits can improve both your health
and outlook on life significantly.
Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder and Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder
As researchers learn more about conditions related to circadian rhythm disruption, they
find that there are underlying biological reasons why some individual sleeping patterns
are different than the normal.
A couple of examples of conditions caused by a disruption of the circadian rhythm are
Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder and Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder.
ASDP is a condition in which individuals start to get sleepy very early and have a tendency
to wake up earlier than normal.
ASPD is caused when individuals have trouble falling asleep until later than normal and
wake up later as well.
These conditions are believed to be the result of a biological clock that is simply out of
time with the majority of human beings.
Although these disorders are often chalked up to poor habits, they can actually be biologically
induced conditions.
These conditions are also correlated with an increased risk of superior medical disorders
such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
This has also been strongly correlated with an increased risk of sleep apnea.
Sleep often troubled by multiple issues.
Although all of the issues can have a negative effect upon sleep, the problem is that most
people that sleep poorly have trouble for multiple reasons.
The more sophisticated views on poor sleep become in the medical community, the more
it becomes clear that many issues which have a disruptive effect on sleep are interconnected
and finding the root cause or causes of poor sleep are the most effective ways of contributing
to a normal night's sleep.
What can I do to sleep better?
Sleeping well is undeniably important to living a healthy life.
If you are having trouble sleeping well, read through this list of common causes and see
which issues apply to you.
If your sleeping patterns are clearly the result of an underlying medical condition such as
sleep apnea or medications you are taking, don't be afraid to talk to a doctor.
If you feel that your sleeping problems are the result of your own taking healthy sleep
for granted, the following are some healthy steps to get your sleep patterns back on track.
Make a concerted effort to sleep better.
One of the most important things that you can do is simply prioritize sleep more highly,
making the conscientious choice to sleep better.
Lights out.
The healthiest sleep occurs in the darkest of night.
Eliminate all sources of light from your sleeping area, even cover up your alarm clock.
No caffeine after 4pm.
It stays in your system for a notoriously long time.
By avoiding caffeine in the early and late evening, you can detox and make it easier
to sleep.
Have a light dinner.
A heavy stomach can make sleep very restless.
The digestive system works slowly at night and falling asleep with a full stomach is
far from optimal.
No work or play in the bedroom.
The brain is a complex thing.
If you like to watch television, work on your homework, or play on your phone in bed, this
can prevent your brain from properly associating the bedroom with sleep.
Consider melatonin.
If you are in the process of correcting poor sleeping habits, melatonin can be a useful
tool to recalibrate your system.
Only use recommended doses, however, because taking too much can have a negative effect
on sleep.
For most people, a combination of these steps will be quite successful in improving your
sleeping habits and your ability to wake up ready for anything.
If you still have trouble sleeping even after taking these proactive measures, your doctor
can work with you to uncover any underlying conditions which may be impacting your sleep.
If all else fails, talk to your doctor.
Remember, there is no reason to resign yourself to a lifetime of poor sleep.
You will age faster, be less productive, and ultimately be less happy.
Take the necessary steps to optimize your sleep to the necessities of your life and
your body and mind will thank you for in the long run.
This article is a production of the Conscious Evolution Institute and HGH.TV.
If you found this article informative, we encourage you to visit HGH.TV or contact the
Conscious Evolution Institute today.
Thank you very much.
