Em -pow!- er Fitness: Wellness Wednesday

Sleep. Oh how I LOVE my sleep! And although I may think that I'm getting enough...I'm not. Did you know that most healthy adults need between seven and a half to nine hours of sleep per night to function at their very best? I'm lucky these days to get six and a half to seven hours myself. We have many misconceptions about sleep too, including:

Myth 1: Getting just one hour less sleep per night won’t affect your daytime functioning. You may not be noticeably sleepy during the day, but losing even one hour of sleep can affect your ability to think properly and respond quickly. It also compromises your cardiovascular health, energy balance, and ability to fight infections.

Myth 2: Your body adjusts quickly to different sleep schedules. Most people can reset their biological clock, but only by appropriately timed cues—and even then, by one–two hours per day at best. Consequently, it can take more than a week to adjust after traveling across several time zones or switching to the night shift.

Myth 3: Extra sleep at night can cure you of problems with excessive daytime fatigue. The quantity of sleep you get is important, sure, but it's the quality of your sleep that you really have to pay attention to. Some people sleep eight or nine hours a night but don’t feel well rested when they wake up because the quality of their sleep is poor.

Myth 4: You can make up for lost sleep during the week by sleeping more on the weekends. Although this sleeping pattern will help relieve part of a sleep debt, it will not completely make up for the lack of sleep. Furthermore, sleeping later on the weekends can affect your sleep-wake cycle so that it is much harder to go to sleep at the right time on Sunday nights and get up early on Monday mornings.

Adapted from: Your Guide to Healthy Sleep (PDF) The National Institutes of Health

Do you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, relying on your alarms clock's snooze button to get that extra minute? Do you get sleepy in meetings or warm rooms? Do you fall asleep while watching TV or relaxing in the evening? Then you may be sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation can really affect you day-to-day functioning. Lack of sleep affects your judgment, coordination, and reaction times. In fact, sleep deprivation can affect you just as much as being drunk!