The Science of Sleep

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I'm calling on you to put my simple suggestions into action! Don't wait another night to get enough sleep, and become more "healthy, wealthy, and wise!"

I’ll start off my speech tonight with an easy question for you! Would you raise your hand if you are NOT happy with your current amount of sleep? Again, if you are not happy with how much sleep you are getting, please raise your hand high!

Yes. We all know that sleep is essential!

But why do we sleep? Humans have to sleep enough in order to live happily and healthily.

How does sleep work? Actually, this question is extremely difficult to answer. In fact, it is still a scientific mystery. What we do know is that when we sleep, the amount of growth hormone emitted by our brain increases.

So we can see that sleep helps with things like growth, healing wounds, and keeping our skin healthy. Also, sleep increases our immunity — that’s our resistance to germs and diseases — and importantly, it helps to relieve our stress.

We could all use a little more stress relief, couldn’t we!

So, from a biological point of view, we have to sleep deeply every day!

But unfortunately, modern people tend to suffer from sleep disorders, due to our stressful and hectic lives. I myself also have trouble sleeping sometimes. For example, sometimes I can’t fall asleep, even though I want to.

Well, what can we do to get a deep, sound sleep?

First we must take care to regulate our body clocks. The term “body clock” means “the system in your body that controls types of behavior which happen at regular times, such as sleeping or eating”. For example, we should fix our body clocks by getting up at the same time every morning.

Actually, in terms of getting a good night’s sleep, did you know that getting up early is more important than going to bed early? But don’t just take MY word for it: Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, has given us the world’s most famous saying about sleep: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

By the way, he was a famous US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, and printer. Do you think he could do all of those amazing things without a good night’s sleep? Of course not!!

But, simply getting up at an early time isn’t all we must do. We must reset our body clocks by opening up our curtains and windows, and enjoying basking in the sunlight each morning. Eating a big, healthy breakfast helps too! In my case, I try to get up at the same early time every morning, on weekdays, and weekends, and enjoy my morning coffee!

Second, we should take a nap a the right time. Biologically, we feel sleepy most days around 2PM. Please don’t fight this sleepy feeling. Instead, let’s accept it! If we take a nap, we can refresh ourselves physically and mentally. Let’s take a short, 30 min. nap, being careful to do it sometime between 2PM and 4PM.

Why the careful timing? Well, sleep after 4PM interferes with your nighttime sleep. But if we nap for more than 30 min., we’ll actually suffer from increased tiredness.

Third, we should re-think our nightly routines – in other words, we’ve got to be careful about what we do during the period before we sleep. For example, we should turn the lights down a bit in our room for 30 min. to 2 hours before we go to bed. According to the US Department of Health & Human Services webpage, this will increase the secretion of melatonin, a chemical which helps us to fall asleep more easily, and improves the quality of our sleep.

Also, we should turn off our TVs, personal computers, and mobile phones, because the light from their screens stimulates our brains, and wake us up.

Furthermore, it is also effective for our sleep to do some light exercise. When we go to bed, our body temperature, which will be high because of our light excise, will decrease sharply. Rapid decrease of body temperature is also effective to introduce sleepiness. In my case, I turn down the lights a bit after taking a bath, and I try not to check my mobile phone after that.

So, what will happen if we don’t follow these simple suggestions that I’ve mentioned? Well, we won’t get enough quality sleeping hours. Our concentration and attentiveness will decrease! This lack of concentration and attentiveness will make our judgment poor. This will decrease our productivity at work or at school, and could even causes accidents, in the worst case.

But what will happen if take some simple actions, like I’ve suggested, to try and improve our sleep? We’ll sleep more easily! We can enjoy longer sleeping hours by cutting down on the time that we struggle to go to sleep. Sufficient sleep will improve our lives in many ways. For example, we can relieve our stress, recover quickly, and have beautiful, healthy skin.

I’m calling on you to put my simple suggestions into action! Don’t wait another night to get enough sleep, and become more “healthy, wealthy, and wise!”

Thank you! If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them.

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Mayflower英語教室

週末は英語漬け!

http://msoe.jp/

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