WHY IS SLEEP SO IMPORTANT?

You need sleep for optimum wellbeing and for the healthy maintenance of your body and your brain. Sleep is as important as nutrition and exercise and crucial for healing and recuperation, which is why treatment for insomnia is so important.

It may come as a surprise then that almost everyone is effected with an inability to sleep at some point in their life and about 10% of the population suffer from insomnia that continues for six months or more, and remedies for insomnia are so sought after. Today’s busy society is one of the main reasons for this with a whopping two thirds of insomnia reported to be caused by worry, thoughts about the future, personal relationships, stress at work and finances. Counting Seashells treatment for insomnia has been designed to help everyone from chronic insomniacs to people who are starting to struggle with sleep and would like to know how to prevent it turning into a chronic problem.

The science behind sleep: Sleep comes in cycles known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and non-REM (slow wave) sleep which occur in a specific order for specific times. If you are not getting enough sleep, or your sleep cycles are disturbed, then your brain is not getting enough time to rejuvenate and ‘reset’, and you are more likely to suffer from, poor concentration, poor memory, clumsiness/carelessness, low mood, irritability and fatigue. When you sleep better you perform better, are better at socialising and relationships, you have more accuracy when completing tasks, have better judgement, assess risk better, have better memory recall and have less accidents.

The restorative benefits of a good night sleep:
– Improved immune function
– Longer life span
– Healthier heart
– Younger skin
– Slowing of the aging process
– Improved concentration (reduced injuries and accidents)
– Improved sex life weight control
– Increased mental performance
– Trimmer waist and weight control
– Peak physical performance
– Overall greater emotional wellbeing
– Anti-aging – it goes without saying when you sleep, you look better. One of the reasons is that when you are not sleeping you have excess cortisol flowing through your body and this in turn has a toxic effect on your body causing a cascade of negative consequences, one of them being aging faster than you should.

Some consequences associated with lack of sleep:
– Increased risk of diabetes (inhibition in management of glucose levels making cells increasingly glucose resistant)
– Increased blood pressure
– increased chance of obesity and heart disease.
​- Headaches, mood swings
– Daytime fatigue
– Anxiety, memory loss
– Panic attacks and depression
– Weight loss or gain (sleep drives the hormones that control appetite)
– Imbalance in release of stress hormones leading to increased cortisol levels.
– Aching muscles