12 November 2012

Are you getting to bed on time?

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sleep cycle

Spending the hours before bed watching TV or working on the computer? You could be placing stress on your body and affecting the quality of your sleep!

Our bodies have a natural rhythm known as the circadian cycle. Or the sleep wake cycle. Nearly all living creatures are affected by this.

Its simple really. When the sun lightens up our day your body produces the wake hormone cortisol. Cortisol is at its peak between the hours of 6:00am-9:00am. Then from 12 noon it slowly starts to decrease, dropping to its lowest level at 6pm.

If you are stressed, working on computers, watching big screen TVs and sitting in brightly lit rooms, these things will all contribute to keeping your cortisol levels up in your body. This will affect your melatonin production.

Melatonin is the hormone responsible for sleep and repair. It’s cycle starts at around 6pm and peaks between the hours of 10:00pm – 2:00am in the morning. If you go to bed at 12pm you have already lost two hours of vital repair.

The hours you chose to sleep are just as important as the duration.

A good example of this is Russell. Russell asked for my help as he is having difficulty losing belly fat. Russell works night shift. Even though he sleeps 6 to 7 hours during the day, his body is missing out on that vital repair sleep it needs and is producing excess cortisol. Which can lead to fat gain. In Russell’s case we are working with him on his food choices and making sure that he keeps normal sleep hours on his days off.

For the rest of us who keep normal hours I recommend a sleep time routine. This involves dimming the lights a least an hour before bed, turning off your TV, phones and computers and hopping into bed no later than 10pm.

For help with all of your sleep or other health issues, you can contact me at Strive Holistic Personal Training www.strive-training.com .

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Madam Cholet11:50 am 13 Nov 12

MrLinus said :

Alderney said :

Rahter than missing out on sleep if you getting to bed at 12 pm I’d suggest you just work for the public service; in fact there’s a few getting in their afternoon zzz’s around the office right now.

What time did you have to go to bed in order to spend your day cruising the Internet at work? Whatever it was, I would suggest you go to bed half an hour earlier so you can learn to type and proof read your work. Idiot.

Never ceases to amaze me the number of people contributing to RA who have had their sense of humour surgically removed.

Alderney said :

Rahter than missing out on sleep if you getting to bed at 12 pm I’d suggest you just work for the public service; in fact there’s a few getting in their afternoon zzz’s around the office right now.

What time did you have to go to bed in order to spend your day cruising the Internet at work? Whatever it was, I would suggest you go to bed half an hour earlier so you can learn to type and proof read your work. Idiot.

poetix said :

(First pun of the day…I must have a slightly different rhythm to Mr Octopus, I think.)

He’d be great to take on one of those Pretty-woman style shopping sprees. Imagine all the bags he could carry!

eyeLikeCarrots said :

I don’t know about you all, but by 8:30 in the morning ‘likley’ has turned into ‘almost certainly’ and often ‘fleeting memory’.

…must be all those carrots…. 🙂

eyeLikeCarrots5:19 pm 12 Nov 12

I don’t know about you all, but by 8:30 in the morning ‘likley’ has turned into ‘almost certainly’ and often ‘fleeting memory’.

I didn’t sleep well last night because we were out of vodka. But I didn’t hear any circadias…

(First pun of the day…I must have a slightly different rhythm to Mr Octopus, I think.)

Madam Cholet2:46 pm 12 Nov 12

I must not have got enough sleep last night because that tree in the picture looks like it’s walking.

And if you aren’t meeting the scheduled ‘08.30am function’ according to the picture, does that mean I’m not getting enough sleep?

Rahter than missing out on sleep if you getting to bed at 12 pm I’d suggest you just work for the public service; in fact there’s a few getting in their afternoon zzz’s around the office right now.

I always thought that your body adapted to sleep patterns, so if he was getting 6 -7 hours sleep wouldn’t the body just swap the clock around and adapt to that sleep pattern?

That’s interesting, guilty on a lot of fronts there.

Let me try the tips you suggested and see how I go

But American Pickers is on from 9:30 to 11:30!

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