We spend almost a third of our lives asleep. If sleep wasn’t absolutely vital to our health and well being, our bodies would not have evolved to need long stretches of complete inactivity (aka sleep).Although everyone of us requires different amounts of sleep each night overall, most of us are suffering from sleep insufficiency. Why do we need sleep anyway? Simply put, our brains and bodies cannot function and remain healthy without it.
Brain
While our brain doesn’t weigh much compared to the weight of our entire body, it uses close to a third of all our energy. And it’s during sleep that that energy gets replenished.
Who needs sleep when you have coffee?
Most of us feel great when we have our coffee and we feel we can accomplish anything.
But, does our brain need coffee or sleep?
When we use up the energy stores in the brain, we get tired and the signal for the brain to switch from wakefulness to sleep builds up. Here is a fancy word for you, adenosine.
Adenosine seems to be the chemical that builds up in the brain that makes us tired and signals the brain to switch to sleep mode. In a perfect world, we would then head to bed, so we can recharge our brain’s energy resources. But, what most of us do is reach for a cup of coffee or chocolate or other stimulants.
One of the things that caffeine does is to block the adenosine receptor in our brain and interrupt the switch to sleep. We are not able to get many of the biologically important benefits of sleep by drinking coffee. What we are doing is tricking our brain to stay awake when it needs sleep.
What can go wrong without an adequate amount of sleep?
Without regular restorative sleep, our memory becomes dull, our ability to focus and to remain alert diminishes, and learning becomes challenging. We become irritable and accident prone. Our judgment and ability to sustain attention decreases… just to name a few.
Five steps to a better and longer night sleep
1. Be consistent. Go to bed at the same time each night.
2. Avoid screen time an hour before bedtime.
3. Avoid having stimulants such as coffee, dark chocolate ,energy drinks, caffeinated teas and other beverages after 2:00 pm.
4. If you are going to eat late in the evening then eat something light.
5. If you have trouble sleeping because of low blood sugar, try a light snack at bedtime.