HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

If you are one of the many peo­ple who toss and turn night­ly, then you are no stranger to how a sleep­less night can af­fect the mo­ti­va­tion, at­ti­tude and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of your day. How­ev­er, the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of poor sleep ex­tend far be­yond a cranky mood.

Sleep is crit­i­cal to phys­i­cal health and ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the im­mune sys­tem. It is al­so a key pro­mot­er of emo­tion­al well­ness and men­tal health, help­ing to beat stress, de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety.

The Sleep Debt Cre­at­ed

The pub­lic health con­se­quences from sleep dis­or­ders and sleepi­ness are stag­ger­ing. The sta­tis­tics from Amer­i­can Sleep As­so­ci­a­tion re­veal:

- 50-70 mil­lion US adults have a sleep dis­or­der.

- 48% re­port snor­ing.

- 37.9% re­port­ed un­in­ten­tion­al­ly falling asleep dur­ing the day - at least once in the pre­ced­ing month.

- Drowsy dri­ving is re­spon­si­ble for 1,550 fa­tal­i­ties and 40,000 non­fa­tal in­juries an- nu­al­ly in the Unit­ed States.

- It is es­ti­mat­ed that sleep de­pri­va­tion costs the US over $400 bil­lion a year with Japan los­ing $138 bil­lion, Ger­many $60 bil­lion, the UK $50 bil­lion and Cana­da $21 bil­lion.

World Sleep Day

Since 2008, the World As­so­ci­a­tion of Sleep Med­i­cine has been the dri­ver of aware­ness ad­vo­cat­ing qual­i­ty sleep health. The goal is to high­light the bur­den of sleep prob­lems and their med­ical, ed­u­ca­tion­al and so­cial as­pects, and to pro­mote the pre­ven­tion and man­age­ment of Sleep Dis­or­ders. Thus, World Sleep Day is ob­served an­nu­al­ly on the Fri­day be­fore the March Equinox and the theme this year is 'Reg­u­lar Sleep, Healthy Fu­ture'.

Stud­ies have demon­strat­ed that reg­u­lar bed­times and rise times are as­so­ci­at­ed with de­vel­op­ing a pat­tern of “Reg­u­lar Sleep” in young, mid­dle-aged adults and se­niors. Reg­u­lar sleep­ers have bet­ter mood, psy­chomo­tor per­for­mance and aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.

Ex­perts agree that get­ting con­sis­tent, high-qual­i­ty sleep im­proves vir­tu­al­ly all as­pects of health, which is why it is wor­thy of our at­ten­tion dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

Chal­lenges to Sleep Dur­ing a Pan­dem­ic

Mil­lions of peo­ple suf­fered from in­som­nia be­fore the coro­n­avirus, and un­for­tu­nate­ly, the pan­dem­ic cre­at­ed a host of new chal­lenges even for peo­ple who pre­vi­ous­ly had no sleep­ing prob­lems.

Dis­rup­tion of Dai­ly Life

So­cial dis­tanc­ing, school clo­sures, quar­an­tines, work­ing-from-home: all bring pro­found changes to nor­mal rou­tines for peo­ple of all ages and walks of life.

- It can be dif­fi­cult to ad­just to a new dai­ly sched­ule or lack of a sched­ule.

- Keep­ing track of the time, and even the day, can be hard with­out typ­i­cal time “an­chors” like drop­ping chil­dren off at school, ar­riv­ing at the of­fice, at­tend­ing re­cur­ring so­cial events, or go­ing to the gym.

- Be­ing stuck at home, es­pe­cial­ly if there are low lev­els of nat­ur­al light, may re­duce light-based cues for wake­ful­ness and sleep, known as zeit­ge­bers, which are cru­cial to our Cir­ca­di­an Rhythm.

- If you are not work­ing now or your week­ly hours have been de­creased due to COVID-19, you may be tempt­ed to over­sleep each morn­ing. Sleep­ing more than sev­en to eight hours per night can make wak­ing up on time much more dif­fi­cult, even if you use an alarm. Over­sleep­ers may al­so feel grog­gy, ir­ri­ta­ble and un­fo­cused through­out the day.

Work-from-home and Eco­nom­ic Stress

Keep­ing up with work-from-home oblig­a­tions or man­ag­ing a house full of chil­dren who are ac­cus­tomed to be­ing at school can pose re­al prob­lems, gen­er­at­ing stress and dis­cord that have been shown to be bar­ri­ers to sleep.

Eco­nom­ic con­cerns are af­fect­ing near­ly every­one as well. As eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty min­imis­es and job loss­es mount, it’s nor­mal to wor­ry about in­come, sav­ings and mak­ing ends meet.

Ex­cess Screen Time

Ex­cess screen time, es­pe­cial­ly lat­er in the evening, can have a detri­men­tal im­pact on sleep. Not on­ly can it stim­u­late the brain in ways that make it hard to wind down, but the blue light from screens can sup­press the nat­ur­al pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin, a hor­mone that the body makes to help us sleep.

Obe­si­ty Con­tributes to Sleep Ap­nea

One in five adults suf­fers from at least mild sleep ap­nea, and it af­flicts more men than women, shares the Amer­i­can Sleep As­so­ci­a­tion. The most com­mon type is ob­struc­tive sleep ap­nea in which weight on the up­per chest and neck con­tributes to block­ing the flow of air.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween sleep and heart fail­ure is a two-way street.

A ha­bit­u­al snor­er is at risk of Ob­struc­tive Sleep Ap­nea (OSA) and in­creas­es his/her risk of high blood pres­sure (hy­per­ten­sion) and al­so the risk of re­cur­rent heart at­tack, stroke and ab­nor­mal heart­beats, atri­al fib­ril­la­tion and car­diac ar­rhyth­mias. Sud­den drops in blood oxy­gen lev­els that oc­cur dur­ing sleep in­crease blood pres­sure and put strain on the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem.

Tips for a good night’s, heart healthy sleep regime

Cre­at­ing con­sis­tent, reg­u­lar habits and es­tab­lish­ing a heart healthy sleep regime is cru­cial.

- En­cour­age sleep at the same time each night, and get up at the same time each morn­ing, even on the week­ends.

- Try not to take naps af­ter 3 pm and do not nap longer than 20 min­utes.

- Stay away from caf­feine and al­co­hol late in the day.

- Avoid nico­tine com­plete­ly.

- Get reg­u­lar ex­er­cise, but not with­in two to three hours of bed­time.

- Do not eat a heavy meal late in the day. A light snack be­fore bed­time is okay.

- Make your bed­room com­fort­able, dark, qui­et and not too warm or cold.

- Fol­low a rou­tine to help you re­lax be­fore sleep (for ex­am­ple, read­ing or lis­ten­ing to mu­sic). Turn off the tele­vi­sion and oth­er screens at least an hour be­fore bed­time.

- Do not lie in bed awake. If you can’t fall asleep af­ter 20 min­utes, do some­thing calm­ing un­til you feel sleepy, like read­ing or lis­ten­ing to soft mu­sic.

- Talk with a doc­tor if you con­tin­ue to have trou­ble sleep­ing.