Exxon Valdez oil spill in which 10.8 million U.S.gallons of oil were spilled, Chernobyl accident which caused 56 direct deaths and 4,000 extra cancer deaths, Three Mile Island tragedy and the Challenger shuttle explosion – BBC Science—attributes sleep disorder as an important causation factor .
Fellow toastmasters and distinguished guests, good evening.
Haven’t many of us felt drowsy and sleepy even after having slept for more than 10 hours? Haven’t many of us have felt we have slept so little and still not able to sleep..? Haven’t many of us dedicated weekends exclusively to catch up lost sleep?
My dear friends, what matters is not the quantity of our sleep but the quality of our sleep. I shall bring to your notice 3 things that we need to do to improve the quality of our sleep and why it will improve the quality of sleep. Thereby you will be able to reduce the sleeping hours and still feel so rejuvenated after the sleep.
The first point is that sleep happens in five cycles. The first two stage makes up the initial phase, three and four make up the deep and the last stage is the Rapid eye movement stage – the stage when see dreams. For a sleep to be called successful we should have maximum deep sleep as this is the stage where the entire body gets energized. You might have even observed some illness vanishing over sleep—deep sleep is responsible for that. But before sleep if take heavy food, most of the energy will used for digestion—there will be nothing to be distributed and the deep sleep will not prolong. And if we don’t drink enough water the body will be dehydrated and the energy supply during the deep sleep will not reach the entire body. Hence to improve deep sleep we must drink a lot of water and avoid taking food that takes long to digest.
The second point is the sleep distribution through the different stages happens through cycles. As you can see in the picture, it happens in cycles. And this cycle though it will vary from individual to individual it tend remain the same for an individual until something drastic happens. What is the take home from this? Sometimes you would have felt so energetic and ready to go after you woke up. That’s because you woke during the REM stage close to the awakened state. So try to get up in the REM cycle probably during the stage after 5 hours; because the rest of the sleep doesn’t offer much value as there is hardly any deep sleep after that. By trial and error we should find the right time to wake up.
The third and last important point is our sleep is regulated by the circadian rhythm—that’s our body temperature variation. Unlike the popular belief our body temperature is not constant. When the body temperature is low we sleep. For this while we are awake we should have sunlight and when asleep it should be dark. Another aspect apart from the body temperature which determines sleep is Melatonin, the hormone which synthesized in the pineal gland and, to a lesser extent, in the retina. Melatonin is responsible for putting you to sleep. While we get sunlight, the production of melatonin is inhibited and in darkness in its production improves. So it’s quite important to get enough sunlight while we are awake and enough darkness while we sleep – because of the body temperature factor and the melatonin factor.
To conclude we must attempt three steps to improve the quality of our sleep.
1.drinking lot of water and having food easily digesteable before sleep.
2.getting up during the REM cycle.
3.getting enough sunlight while awake and sleeping in darkness.
By following these steps we can ensure that the eternal bliss we are blessed with is used for our benefit and never under used and over used.
Over to you toastmaster.
(Figures ans matter adapated from various textbooks on sleep)
(Project 8 of CC)
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