Early to bed and early to rise makes a man (also woman) Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. As a child, I remember hearing this innumerable times. This adage very effectively captured not only about having a disciplined sleeping routine but implicitly the importance of sleep itself for our well being. However nowadays, to pursue the much glorified 24*7 lifestyle, the first thing that gets de-prioritized is our precious sleep. After all who wants to sleep for 7-8 hours when you must fulfill all the deadlines of work or exams, partying commitments, and staying in touch with friends and peers. Hence before you know it, by the age of 30-35 you have lost a major reserve from your sleep account.
Apart from this driving feeling of FOMO (“fear of missing out”) here are a few other key causes that result in getting insufficient sleep – 1. Stress, 2. Irregular sleep schedule, 3. Unhealthy lifestyle habits, 4. Chronic pain or chronic illness, 5. Overuse of electronic devices, 6. Side-effects of certain medications, 7. Neurological disorders, 8. Hormonal imbalance, 9. Sleep disorders
Typically, when the body and mind are under continuous stress, which unfortunately is the truth with most of us today, getting good sleep becomes a luxury for several people. This problem has seeped so deep in our society that to address it an entirely new marketplace has now emerged for enabling ‘sound sleep’. It ranges from sleep mattresses to food supplements to soothing oils, and even sleep studios, each of which is supposed to help in enabling better sleep.
It’s high time for most of us to re-memorize that a sound sleep gives our body a chance to recalibrate, rejuvenate and reenergise us for the next day, and hence essential to ensuring a very basic quality of living. The time that you sleep at, and the duration of “good quality” sleep achieved makes all the difference. The period of sleep that is most vital for you is between 10 PM and 2 AM in the night, and between 10 AM and 2 PM during the daytime. The 4-hour duration in the daytime slot is good news for those who are working in the night shift, meaning thereby that all is not lost for them.
Also do remember that a balanced diet has a very important role to play for ensuring a “good quality” of sleep. Be aware that on the one hand there are lots of foods that help us in achieving sound sleep while unfortunately on the other hand there is an even higher availability of foods that significantly degrade the quality of our sleep. The healthiness of our lifestyle and our quality of sleep are interdependent – our lifestyle (including of course, our diet) primarily determines the quality of our sleep, and our quality of sleep critically determines whether we will end up with lifestyle health issues or not.
Happiness, misery, nourishment, emaciation, strength, weakness, virility, sterility, knowledge, ignorance, life and death – all these occur depending on the proper or improper sleep. Charak Samhitha, Sutrasthan-21/36.