You’re losing if you aren’t snoozing

Fun fact: Even if your daughter refuses to take naps, her crib makes a nice spot for you or your spouse to catch some zzzz’s. 

Another fun fact for you to start today off on a fun Friday foot.  Did you know that humans are the only mammal to willingly put off sleep?  I know that most of you reading are now trying to think of that one exception.  I’ll save you some time and state that fact is science and you can’t argue with science.

When we see clients at Avenu, they often come in touting poor exercise habits or problems with following their diets.  They don’t tend to think that sleep could be an issue for them as well.  Sleep is highly undervalued as a health tool and I’ll tell you why.

• Sleep is that opportunity to recharge, relax, and rebuild.
• Sleep allows your body to get your metabolism on fleek, a.k.a. on point.
• Sleep works to boost your immune system.

Seems to be quite the productive period of time.  If you use it, that is.  Don’t put off your sleep.  You wouldn’t forget to charge your iPhone would you?  Hell no.  You can’t hit me up on Snapchat (@ben_macmillan) with a dead phone.

You also can’t function well when you don’t sleep or sleep well.  Your hormones aren’t your friend, your immune system runs down, and your metabolism is thrown off. For those of you who are titans of industry who may view sleep as an inconvenient time waster, check out this article saying that a lack of sleep costs companies $63 BILLION a year.  For those of you who don’t know, $63 billion is a LOT of money.  So if your health trails money as what is important to you, you should pay attention to that stat.   Whatever I need to say to get your attention.

Get your zzzz’s people.

• Get off the cell phones, laptops, tablets, and TVs before bed.  They emit blue light that keeps your brain active and further away from dreamland.
• Drop it low down, drop it drop it low down.  The temperature in the house I mean….Shoot for 65-67 degrees.  That is the ideal range to allow for the best possible sleep.  Your brain loves the cooler temps and thus, you’ll sleep better and can even dream more.
• Spend some quality time outside in the warm bright sun.  Some good ol’ sunshine is great to help your natural rhythm and is good for the soul.  Sunlight is the best synchronization tool for the brain and body.  The better the synchronization, the deeper the sleep and the better your health.
• Get a white noise machine!  We use them for babies, why not for adults!?!?!  I was skeptical of this myself, thinking it would keep me up more than it would help me sleep however that hasn’t been the case.  I’ve gotten to the point where it’s weird to not have some white noise going.  There are some decent white noise apps out there.

Keep in mind you don’t need to pop a handful of melatonin or Ambien right off the bat.  There are studies showing sleep meds can double the risk of early death.  Sounds fun right?

Here’s an interesting way to look at it.  Think of the sleep pills giving you “empty sleep”.  I’m sure you are familiar with the term empty calories where you eat food that has no real value to it.  Think of the sleep induced by these meds as empty sleep.  Your body never did the work to get you there, you just went into a nice drug induced coma.

So all in all, value your sleep.  It can keep you young, healthy, strong, and ready to take on the next day like a freaking boss.  That’s science for you.  I’ll sleep to that and you should too.

Now go take a nap.