How do you feel when you have a refreshing full night of sleep? Energized, recovered, and ready to face the day? It’s a great feeling. How do you feel when you have a poor night’s sleep? Maybe you went to bed too late, or awoke many times in the night, or something interrupted your sleep too early in the morning? It’s not a good feeling the next day. I remember vividly the frustration and low-grade anger I felt after my overnight, emergency on-call duties (for almost 30 years). I was not a happy person to be around. I knew it was detrimental to my attitude and relationships the next day, but I never realized the cumulative negative health effects short or poor sleep can wreak on our bodies.
Throughout human evolution, when the day ended and the sun went down, we knew it was time to sleep. It has been only a blink of the eye in evolutionary time that humans have learned to overcome nature. If we so choose, we can engage in activity 24 hours a day. Advances over the last 100 years have provided these wonderful opportunities, but our biologic internal workings have not evolved to keep pace. The mismatch between what we DO and what we are DESIGNED to do causes chronic inflammation leading to chronic disease. For most of us, our bodies typically require 7-8 hours of sleep for optimum health and daily recovery.
How do you feel when you have a refreshing full night of sleep? Energized, recovered, and ready to face the day? It’s a great feeling. How do you feel when you have a poor night’s sleep? Maybe you went to bed too late, or awoke many times in the night, or something interrupted your sleep too early in the morning? It’s not a good feeling the next day.
I remember vividly the frustration and low-grade anger I felt after my overnight, emergency on-call duties (for almost 30 years). I was not a happy person to be around. I knew it was detrimental to my attitude and relationships the next day, but I never realized the cumulative negative health effects short or poor sleep can wreak on our bodies.
Throughout human evolution, when the day ended and the sun went down, we knew it was time to sleep. It has been only a blink of the eye in evolutionary time that humans have learned to overcome nature. If we so choose, we can engage in activity 24 hours a day. Advances over the last 100 years have provided these wonderful opportunities, but our biologic internal workings have not evolved to keep pace. The mismatch between what we DO and what we are DESIGNED to do causes chronic inflammation leading to chronic disease. For most of us, our bodies typically require 7-8 hours of sleep for optimum health and daily recovery.
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