Why you should care more about your sleep (without keeping yourself up at night worrying about it)
In today’s online society, it seems like we are becoming health-conscious in a way that previous generations never were. Online we’re constantly bombarded with new diets and lifestyles from various sources from news outlets to Instagram models, which can be overwhelming but certainly has its advantages. It lets us discover information about new ways of healthy eating beyond the traditional “food-pyramid”, become more knowledgeable about how certain food industries affect things like the environment, animal rights, or human labour rights, and find new ways and reasons to exercise to achieve whatever your goals are.
Diet and exercise are certainly the most common ways that we see people trying to keep on top of their health, but there are a couple other factors that people are starting to become aware of and spend more effort to take care of. One of those is mental health; you’ve probably heard a lot in the last few years about the movement towards getting mental health taken as seriously as physical health, both in terms of how individuals take care of themselves and how corporations take care of their employees. Another is sleep quality, which I’m going to focus on in this post.
With the rising number of sleep-aid products being introduced into the market, it’s easy to say that more and more people are starting to care about how sleep affects their health, just like diet, exercise, and stress do, and this is for good reason. Sleep is an essential part of our life, and not getting enough of it has some terrible consequences. It affects your brain, causing your memory, creativity, awareness, and response-time to decline. It decreases the effectiveness of the effort you put into your diet and exercise, causing you to gain weight and making it harder to gain muscle. According to the CDC it’s also a contributing factor to some scary chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
There are many different products and resources out there to help you get a better sleep, but a great first step is to figure out how well you’re actually sleeping using sleep trackers, some of which you can even get free on your phone to test out. If you know that you aren’t sleeping well, then you’ll need to figure out why. This can be tricky because there are so many factors that affect your sleep: light, sound, temperature, comfort, etcetera, and each of these factors have so many different triggers: Curtains not dark enough to block out the natural light? Your partner snores, or you snore? Noisy neighbours? No A/C for the summer months? Mattress too soft, or too hard? Pillows not the right size? The factors are virtually endless, making it seem like a hopeless endeavour.
But despite the consequences I pointed out earlier, unless you think you might have sleep apnea or another dangerous condition affecting your sleep, your sleep health isn’t something you should lose sleep over (pun intended). The reason that we make products to help improve sleep is to make it easier. Try black-out curtains and earplugs, and maybe carve out more time to dedicate to sleeping. Invest in a portable A/C unit if it gets too hot in the summer, or try a temperature-regulating pillow. Go to a mattress store and talk to someone about the advantages that come with newer mattresses. If your partner’s snoring is keeping you up at night, sign up to our mailing list to get in on a solution that will actually work. Any small steps you can take always add up to big strides forward when it comes to your health.
So with all of the advice and products out there, just like with diet and exercise, figuring out what really works and what doesn’t, and most importantly what works for you and your lifestyle can be a difficult process. You only have one life and one body, however, so the effort is always worth it. Share your favourite tips for better sleep in the comments, and feel free to send us a message if you’re struggling with your sleep.
