Or are your feeling like there was a sleep-thief in your house last night?
Sleep is vital for a healthy life and body. Sleep is when your body and brain has the best opportunity to heal and recover from the previous day’s events. If your sleep is reduced or of poor quality, your body will struggle to adapt through life and maintain good health.
Research shows that sleep helps:
- Enhance memory
- Improved creativity
- Improve the immune system
- Reduces the risk of heart attacks, strokes and diabetes
- Reduces food cravings and helps maintain a healthy weight
- Improves mood and helps combat depression
- Reduce the risk of injury and improves sports performance
In our office, we consistently hear that regular chiropractic care helps people sleep better – this is because people are more comfortable in bed and are not waking up as often.
But how can you help yourself? In the UK, the average person is sleeping for 7 hours every night. Research tells us that we need 8 hours of good quality sleep every night. So are you getting enough sleep? If you are hitting those 8 hours but are still feeling fatigued, maybe the key (along with regular chiropractic care) is the quality of your sleep. Have a think about your routine an hour before bed. Do you watch TV? Play on your phone? Both can hinder you getting good quality sleep. The light from your screens tricks your brain into thinking the sun is still shinning, so your brain remains active even as you fall asleep. This impacts the normal sleep cycles that your brain goes through during the night, which is vital for optimal health.
A lack of proper sleep is so dangerous that the Guinness Book of World Records has stopped recognising attempts to break the sleep deprivation world record!
How can chiropractic help with sleep? Chiropractors are specialists in assessing and correcting spinal subluxations. Subluxations are when your spinal joints have less motion, reduced mobility, or function. This reduces how well your nerves and nervous system communicate and relay information to your brain, causing your brain to function poorly. By correcting your subluxations, you will have a better functioning brain and nervous system which could lead to optimal performance and health!
Resources: Book – Why we sleep: Matthew Walker