Why Are You Not Sleeping Early? Dr. Sana Jamshed

Sleep is a natural phenomenon and a basic requirement of the human body. Our mind and body requires a quality sleep of 8 hours daily. The quality sleep is not achieved if you have the routine of sleeping late at night and continue to sleep the whole day. As they say “Try to get up, when the sun is up. Try to lay down, when the sun is down”. Our digestive system has a positive relationship with UV rays. When the sun is up, our bodies get vitamin D and there are some ‘Vitamin D dependent microbes’ in our gut, they use the vitamin D and helps in easy digestion.

If you sleep during the day, you will not be able to absorb the required vitamin D, and it can result in digestive problems and bone’s weakness. Secondly, there are two hormones, Cortisol, which is the day hormone and Melatonin, which is the night hormone. You have to sleep when the night hormones are at peak or else you will have hormonal imbalance.

Full night’s sleep is an indispensable thing. The best hours to take a quality sleep starts from 10 pm to 5am. Such sleep is usually called “beauty sleep” because skin gets the largest blood flow during sleep. If you do not get enough sleep, you will have restricted blood flow to skin. A research was done in 2010 by Karolinska Institute about beauty sleep. Its conclusion was “Sleep deprived people appear less healthy, less attractive and more tired, compared with when they are well rested”. Hence beauty sleep is not a myth anymore.

Sleep deprivation affects mental health. It makes the person irritable, impairs brain functions and Impairs immune functions. One study, published in 2009, showed that sleep deprivation alters functional connections between prefrontal cortex and the brain’s reward and emotion processing centers. Hence we become hypersensitive to every stimulus we receive and our emotional responses become aggressive. Some studies also suggested that lack of sleep results in colorectal and aggressive breast cancer. Sleep deprivation also leads to weight gain and obesity.

In order to have a good night sleep, always sleep at the same time, try some herbal tea, keep all electronic gadgets away, turn off the lights and avoid any late night snacks or caffeine drinks.