Understanding Sleep

It’s important to understand and appreciate why we sleep! We sleep to rest and repair our mind and body. It is vital for your physical and mental health and wellbeing.

The mental health benefits of quality sleep include boosting your mood, stress reduction and helping with anxiety. If you’re having trouble sleeping, understanding how to sleep better can make a big difference!

Long stretches of bad sleep can have the opposite effects and have a negative impact on your physical and mental health or wellbeing.

When we do not get enough sleep, this is sometimes referred to as being sleep deprived, or called “sleep deprivation”, “sleeplessness” or “sleep inefficiency”.

A few sleepless nights are usually common and nothing to worry about, however it can become a concern if lack of sleep starts to affect your daily and quality of life.

Sleep problems are common, and the reasons we struggle to sleep are very likely to change throughout our lives, for example, illness, work or having a baby.

Ironically, when we try so hard to sleep, we actively force our brains to work. This triggers your neurons to fire in a way that activates your awake neural networks that will keep you away from the restful state your brain needs to be in to sleep, especially if you want to sleep faster.

– Felix King, MD, Psychiatrist

…listen to this too:

It is always something I see in clients who are struggling with sleep. At first they have a few bad days of sleep and then because they are unaware that this is actually common and nothing to worry about, they begin to make a big deal about it. This unfortunately snowballs into an actual sleep disorder and issue.

– Felix King, MD, Psychiatrist

It is something to note here that we often are the creators of our own bad circumstances. So if you feel you need to start sleeping better, the good news is that it is in YOUR CONTROL!