Thursday The reason you’ve been sleeping all wrong.

The reason you’ve been sleeping all wrong.

Photo by Christopher Jolly on Unsplash

We all need to sleep. That’s a given. Sleep is a total non-negotiable, underpinning everything from immunity to cognitive function and social skills. Nearly everything in our bodies is affected by how much sleep we get. It has been medically proven that sleeping fewer than 5 hours a night can double the risk of cardiovascular disease. 

Sleep deprivation – or the anxiety surrounding it – is all too real, says elite sport sleep coach Nick Littlehales. And bad news: Sleep debt we accumulate is unrecoverable.

 Life has a way of throwing us situations and circumstances that bump a healthy sleeping pattern further from the top of the priority list. That makes it seriously unfair to oversimplify and say, “Just get more sleep!” Instead, let’s look at a couple common problems that can upset a restful night. 

A snoring habit. That impressive imitation of a freight train is the result of sagging tissue blocking or narrowing the airway. There’s a happy thought. If you sleep on your back, for example, your tongue could fall backwards and create that broken motorbike sound. Folks who snore tend to have a poorer quality of sleep compared to those who don’t. So it’s worth taking it seriously and talking to your doctor about solutions.

Stress about sleep. Littlehales, who founded Sport Sleep Coach, says that too much focus on poor sleep quality is often counter-productive. In fact, he says, “Worrying about sleep is the key sleep disruptor.”