Train yourself in Sleep & Vitality!
Did you know that 1 in 5 people sleep badly? We are talking about 20 percent of the world’s population. That’s decent! Sleep psychologist & health coach Drs. Annemieke M. Deiman came up with sleeping tips during a ‘Sleep & Vitality’ coaching session for the Day of the KAM professional on 28 June. You can read the tips again in this article.
Consequences of too little sleep
Stress is number one with people when we talk about the causes of poor sleep. Many people work short nights during the working week with the idea that we will make up those hours during the weekend. But, says Annemieke, that’s not how it works. An hour and a half of sleep deprivation reduces daily performance by 32%. Your heart rate goes up after one night of not sleeping, which causes an increase in blood pressure. If you have one short night, you can still catch up on sleep in a few days. But if these short nights are chronic, then it becomes a completely different story.
Tips and tricks
In the long run, poor sleep causes major concentration problems, forgetfulness, obesity and increases the risk of depression or burnout. But how do we ensure that we do sleep well? Annemieke has a number of tips for this:
- Structure. Just like with children, this is a golden rule: get up around fixed times.
- A dark bedroom. A dark room causes the production of melatonin, which in turn makes us feel ready to go to sleep.
- You snooze you lose. Make your bedroom light as soon as the alarm goes off and make sure you get out of bed within five minutes. Enough daylight at the same time for a good night.
- Only use your bed for sleeping. For example, do you do meditation? Then make sure that you do this in another room from now on.
- Power nap! Close your eyes during the day – for 15 to 20 minutes. Relaxing during the day means sleeping well at night.
- Power supply. Eat enough vitamins and don’t drink caffeine after 2 p.m. Alcohol is also not good before going to sleep. Not entirely pleasant for your bed partner either > alcohol really causes snoring.
- Get plenty of exercise during the day, but don’t do it shortly before going to sleep. Then you still have too much adrenaline in your body to sleep well.
- Before going to bed, briefly review the day and immediately write down things that you should not forget. This prevents worrying, so that you sleep well.
Toss and turn
Are you still tossing and turning in your bed for hours? Then get out and get back under the covers when you start to feel sleepy. It’s okay if you wake up every now and then during the night. A deep sleep consists of about an hour and a half. Our sleep can be divided into different sleep rhythms, all of which consist of blocks of one and a half hours. Every hour and a half that you sleep, you can eventually add up. The average adult needs between 7 and 9 hours of sleep. Do you want to know how much sleep you need? Then keep track of your sleeping times during the holidays and don’t set an alarm. After about a week and a half you will know how much sleep you can use. Good night!
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