A good sleep is essential to good health. Insufficient sleep and poor quality sleep increases the risk of health problems. Sleep is just as important as regular exercise or eating healthy. You spend about a third of your time sleeping during the day. What if you don’t sleep well? How to improve your sleep? What are the benefits of sleep?

Sleep Cycle

How much do you need? Your needs and your sleep patterns change by age but also varies significantly by person. There is no number of sleep that works for everyone. A baby sleeps around 10-16 hours a day, while an elderly person sleeps around 4-5 hours per night. Most adults sleep around 6-9 hours per night. Your sleep quality depends on the sleep cycle you are going through during the night. Stage 1  is Transmission. This is the changeover from wakefulness to light sleep and this stage last around 5 minutes. You can be easily woken up in this stage. Stage 2  is Light sleep. Your heartbeat slows down, body temp drops and eye movement stops. During this stage your brain activity slows down. This stage last around 15-20 minutes. Stage 3 is Deep sleep. The deepest sleep occur, you can have difficulty waking up. Brainwaves become even slower and all the muscles in your body relax. This stage last around 30 min. Stage 4 is REM sleep. In this stage most dreams occurs. Your eyes move from left to right behind closed eyelids. The brain is becoming more active, breathing becomes faster and irregular, and your heart rate and blood pressure increase to near waking levels. You go through all stages every 90 minutes. Remember that sleep quality is more important than your sleep quantity.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Poor sleep has immediate negative effects on your body. Hormones, exercise performance, brain function as your concentration. When a chronic lack of sleep, or getting poor quality of sleep for a longer period of time, increases the risk of disorders including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression and obesity.

4 Tips to improve your sleep quality

A good night’s sleep is not normal for everyone. What to do if you don’t sleep well? We have a couple of tips to improve your sleep quality. 1 . Try to increase bright light during the day. Sunlight or bright light helps the inner clock off your body to stay awake and tell your body when it’s time to sleep.  2. Exercising is good for your body, mind and your sleep quality. Exercise 30 minutes a day but no later than a few hours before going to bed. 3. Relax but don’t lay in bed while you are awake. Try a warm bath, reading, or another relaxing routine. If you can’t sleep, try to do something else, listen to music or read a book. Avoid grabbing your phone to reduce the blue light exposure 4. Routine seems boring, but it is the best for your sleep quality. Set a schedule and go to bed and wake up around the same time each day. This helps you reduce sleep hormones to signal your body is getting tired. Ergonomics support for your company To learn more about office setup and good ergonomics principles, you can reach out to Fit for Work to talk about how an ergonomic programme within your office can increase productivity, increase staff satisfaction, improve staff retention and reduce sick leave.