Do you sleep well every night?

Did you feel tired even after that long 8 hours of sleep?

Have you felt an undeniable urge to sleep for 10 mins more even after waking up to an alarm ringing endlessly on your phone?

Do you see two out of four, in your family having late-night sleep problems? or began to have issues sleeping, with rising of the pandemic, and unable to get back to earlier routine?

We all have experienced it at one time or another in a day. Those fleeting thoughts while brushing your teeth or between the breakfast bites in the morning. Undoubtedly, we try to push these crawling urges and hiking thoughts outside the window and blow your feet, heading towards your day making it more productive.

We have been wired to do so, largely unmindful about the long-term effects, as the health hazards occurring from sleep deprivation aren’t directly visible. Hence these routine calls appear as lousy needs. Is it really important to look closely at our sleep health like we have been doing with our diet and exercise? Why Now? Let us dig deeper, if we can see through it.

Briefly observe, and think about the lifestyle of your parent’s generation. Their schedule in the late 20s or early 30s, surely sleep problems did not seem a vital topic for discussion and an issue of concern, at that time?

A balanced middle-class family of four, sleeping around 10:30 pm and waking up around 6:30 AM would not think of a problem that could arise from sleep, they had last night. Indeed Quality of sleep was hardly acknowledged as an element of concern here.

There are multiple parameters that decide the quality of Good night's sleep we have every day. We shall understand it better, in the blogs ahead. Sleepless nights, tightly occupied days, hours of binge-watching, late-night parties. Conclusively our nights are eaten up by extended work and addictive leisure. Underscoring the sleep routine, the pandemic has been playing successfully in escalating the number of sleep delayed nights among working professionals and the student community, exclusively.

Another driving factor in sleep health is Dreams. Sleep is directly connected to dreams. They can turn your mornings into light-hearted happy beginnings or heavy-headed difficult openings, on any favourable day.

Dreams are critical in balancing human emotions in a day. They are there everywhere in your cerebral cortex, so you can probably not take leave for tonight. A stressful routine leading to anxious behaviour is an invitation for nightmares.

A taxing sleep is not something you are planning a night before your big day. It is time we prepare our minds to shed off a few old habits that can help us regulate our sleep at night.

Sleep hygiene has been rampantly disrupted for the past 10 to 20 years. Regular triggers of late sleepy nights bear the risk of altering our biological clock, for life. That’s the reason why many of us who never had a delayed sleep cycle began to experience one during, pandemics and is getting difficult to shift back.

It is important to understand sleep. Our biological clock. Anything that repeats in the cycle in the human body is called the circadian rhythm. The sleep-wake cycle is one of the Circadian Rhythms. It is most sensitive, two hours before sleep. Have you have been crushing your sleep schedule or shifting the sleep and wake-up times, for more than 20 days? Wait, That’s going to be a problem.

Sleep is an extremely personal activity, indeed your parents in another room or a partner beside and sometimes you-yourself, might be unaware of your sleep quality, precisely sleep hygiene. Sacrificing a short sleep for completing the To-Do list of your day, might feel implausible.

“Track your childhood cause benign complaints on insomnia will not go away with age,” said the research study at Penn State by Fernandez Mendoza, Associate Prof., Psychiatry and Mental health. 43% of children persisted in sleep problems in adulthood. But for many of us, it is recent, that life stressors cause behavioural changes, Swaying Moods, Anxiety, and increased intake of caffeine. Indeed screen time, and late-night dinner stands first in the queue to disrupt our sound sleepy night.

To back up, A Conference in 2019 by The South East Asian Academy of Sleep Medicine (SEAASM), where Doctors from various nations participated and unanimously agreed that technology, increasing screen time and unpredictable work hours are the reasons behind the reduced sleep hours.

Adults need 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night for the best health and well-being. Short sleep duration is defined as less than 7 hours of sleep per 24-hour period. Recently, Business Insider reported ‘People were 41% more likely to have sleep disorders after getting COVID-19, a large study found’.

The breeding competitiveness among the student community and the urge to pick up the best Education and the standard career path led to late-night meeting schedules, crushing up the weekly tasks we had to go through Pandemic which only doubles the adversities.

Your kid suffering to memorise the lesson she studied last night, and your Grannie, making an everyday tireless effort to meet that good night’s sleep, and your father is stressed at making ends meet every time, might be feeling tired and exhausted even after a long sleepy night.

To acknowledge is the first step to better health.

Fortunately, we human beings are flexible enough to build up new habits and fend off the old redundant ones. The mindful question about “Am I sleeping right?” is where we all can begin towards making things better for our wholesome healthy life, along with exercise and diet.

There is a constant query submerged and moving like an eel in our hearts about the fragility of our health and fitness, while we observe the depriving physical stature in the young generation.

It’s important we start somewhere and become aware of the dynamic health conditions in the current situation. Hope we start our journey with the basics to bringing hygiene with sleep. Learning mindfully about sleep and nurture our day with practices that can keep our hearts happy and brain relaxed.

Pulling down the curtains on the most unrecognized and undiagnosed problem of our times across the spectrum of age, Sleep Hygiene. Hope we find ways for our sleep routines, assess our quality, in turn, build healthy sleep habits and wake up with a clear mind, for the sun is bright ahead, and waiting for you.