Headline March 2nd, 2012 / Sleep Time- Dream Time

"Sleep Time - Dream Time"

Loving Dedication students of the world!

24/7 lifestyle that more and more of you are leading, is what causes ever increasing stress levels. Your ability to wash your socks at 4am or chat with overseas friends before dawn via the web might feel like progress but biologically your bodies are still stuck some 100,000 years back when your internal timekeeping systems first evolved.

Human body has around 100 biological clocks, for regulating different functions like digestion, temperature and hormone levels . The big daddy of your biological clocks - a group of cells called the suprachiasmatic nucleus , uses clues like daylight levels, meal times and physical activities to keep track of time. That's how it goes in theory, anyway. But if you factor in regular intake of caffeine, stimulants, some light pollution and everyday stress , things can get pretty messed up. Your body also produces cortisol when you experience stress.

Nature intended this to be a handy "fight or flight" response  - the stimulation of cortisol and its close relation adrenaline helped our ancestors survival instincts. But it is not much use if you are working against timeline. The knock-on effect is that high levels of cortisol caused by stress make it very difficult for melatonin, your sleepiness hormone, to ease you into good night's rest.

Worst still, disturbed sleep itself causes your cortisol levels to spike; just one night of sleep loss if enough to hike your cortisol levels up by hefty 45 percent the following day. And remember getting into sleep debt plays havoc with your health. Your social and communication skills also suffer. You will get grumpy and irritable and end up taking inadvisable risks, even down to little things like crossing the road against traffic lights. Your memory reaction time, attention span will be significantly reduced. Your muscle coordination, spatial orientation, will get frightfully incoherent. And you may begin experiencing minor blackouts without knowing. Nature can be sly and tricky! So watch out! Your lack of sleep can cause your appetite to rise and you may end up putting on weight.

People who get less than 6 hours a  night have a much slower metabolism, needing upto 50% more insulin to turn glucose in their blood to energy. There are several simple steps you can take to deal with common sleep problems. We hope to cover those in near future posts.

But if you often feel tired and you are a regular snorer and you are overweight with a collar size of 17", you might be suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. This cause your breathing to stop momentarily while you are sleeping.

Sometimes 100s of times at night and this can have serious long term effects. But the good news is that it is highly treatable. So as the wisdom goes right from time of pharaohs, that if you increase the quality of sleeptime, you will increase the quality of dream time !!

Cleopatra knew that for sure!!

Good night dear forks!

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