How Taking 60 Minutes from Your Sleep Can Break Your Day Before It Even Starts
Whether you’re working or still at school, having a hectic schedule in Singapore means that it’s really important that you get the right amount of sleep once you get home from school or work.
It also goes without saying that not getting enough sleep can leave you feeling drained, and that even taking an hour away from your valuable sleeping time leaves a profound effect.
But how exactly does this happen?
How Less Sleep Affects You
Healthy adults need between seven and eight hours of sleep, and teenagers and children roughly eight.
Your body takes this time to rest and repair itself on a cellular level, but when you short yourself out on your sleep, you will see both short-term and long-term effects on your body, from a general lack of alertness and an impaired memory to high blood pressure and heart disease.
Sleep deprivation can also affect your appearance and lead to premature wrinkling and dark circles under your eyes, since the long-term presence of cortisol in the body breaks down collagen in skin.
But with all these effects, why do we still sleep less today?
Why We Sleep Less
Hectic schedules aside, there are a lot of reasons why we sleep fewer hours now, such as maximizing our work or free time. However, there is also a third reason, and that is the lights we keep switched on, from the light bulbs to the LED screens of our TVs and devices.
This constant exposure to bright light inhibits the sleep hormone melatonin, and this lack of the chemical keeps us awake for longer.
However, you don’t need to be asleep and then wake up to feel the effects of a lack of sleep on your body.
The effects of sleep deprivation will show whether or not you are awake, and the result is a reduced state of alertness and memory loss that many studies have shown to be similar in brain function as legal drunkenness.
Taking Back Your Sleep Hours
The easiest way to make sure you get the optimal amount of sleep possible is by measuring how much sleep you really need.
All you need is to try to sleep at varying times around when you usually sleep. For instance, you can sleep fifteen minutes earlier and wake up fifteen minutes later. Do this for a few times until you find a day that you wake up feeling the most refreshed.
Gauging your optimal amount of sleep will take a few days of trial and error, but when you find out the best amount of time you need, you will be able to stick to it and get consistent sleep as a result.