THE IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP

Firstly, welcome to YouLiveLifeWell. I wanted to kickstart things here with a really important area that many of us miss out on SLEEP.
If we want to wake up with clear skin, fully rested nd with enough energy or get us through the day, then that age old cliche of 8 hours’ sleep being just what we need still holds true! Even though it never quite felt right that getting to bed at two in the morning, and waking up at ten was supposed to be a healthy enough way to recuperate, the time we need to rest is actually pretty accurate.
Recent research from Dr. Matt Walker, Head of the Sleep & Neuroimaging Lab at the University of California, shows that in order to support a healthy lifestyle the best time to get your head down is 10:30pm, so that you have had a full nights sleep by 6:30am the next morning. Your body needs several sleep cycles for complete recuperation, and the darker it is outside the deeper those cycles will be.

The dream infused REM sleep you experience just in the lighter morning hours before you wake up is the least helpful phase. In the midnight hours you’ll be getting much more of the non-REM deep sleep that your body craves.

Healthy living experts have also discovered that women need more sleep than men! Women end up with more physical and mental consequences when they miss out on a good nights sleep. Missing out on those eight hours leads to more anger, depression and hostility than for men who were equally deprived. University researchers state that the reason women need more sleep than men is because during the day we use our brains more than men during the day!
When our bodies are in their deepest sleep cycles the brain disconnects from sensory input and begins to go into complete recovery. Being dead to the world – at least for a few hours – allows the parts of the brain that usually work with language, thoughts and memory rest. So, because women spend more of the day multi-tasking and flexibly solving problems with more parts of the brain than most men, they need more of this down-time at night.
If that’s not a good enough excuse to ask him to make breakfast in the morning, I don’t know what is!
Sorry guys!
Michelle Cohen