Healthy sleep

What is a night of healthy sleep?

You’ve had a pleasant day. Fulfilled by your work, regular meals, you took time to balance yourself: sports, yoga, jogging, a round of golf or a walk. There are endless possibilities.

You have a clear head in the evening, maybe you retire and read a nice book in a quiet atmosphere or you paint, make music – you take time for yourself.

This would be the best way to prepare for a healthy sleep.

The basis for good sleep:

So you would have created a good basis for your body to be pleasantly tired.
This is topped by going to bed at a time that suits you and giving you the opportunity to sleep 8-9 hours a day.
Your bedroom is neither too cold nor too warm. You are well bedded: a mattress and pillow that support you, a bed in which you don’t sweat. Natural materials surround you and give you many years of support in your healthy sleep.

You wake up refreshed and lively in the morning and can start the day full of energy and looking forward to the things to come.

This should be avoided for healthy sleep:

Watching TV in bed, working on the PC, alcohol or heavy meals are not your first choice. Do not use valerian or other substances that “supposedly” make you tired or give you a good night’s sleep.

Regeneration during sleep

Night after night you offer yourself and your body the opportunity to regenerate, to recharge your batteries and to process what you have experienced and lived. Your bodily functions, such as your circulation and breathing, slow down.
Your heartbeat slows down…

Your consciousness is switched from your brain to sleep mode. Learned and experienced things are transferred from short-term memory to your long-term memory. Memories are consolidated and information is processed.
So you are tired in bed, switch off and slip into your sleep.

This is what a healthy sleep looks like.

Is that how you sleep? Would you like to experience such a sleep? It sounds like a picture book and yet it is not a story. This is healthy sleep that we all should and can have every day. Unfortunately, many of us have moved on from a deep, restful sleep.

You’ll never recover that way:

• You often stay up until you can’t anymore and your eyes drop.
• Many people lie in bed in the evening with their mobile phones, look at the computer and possibly watch TV in the same room afterward.
• Sport and healthy food is a rarity, the beer after work is also too often on the table.
• Because the circulation doesn’t get going, we start to freeze and heat the bedroom too warm and we don’t see fresh air again until the morning on the way to the car.
• We long for the weekend to finally “sleep in”.
• But this only works to a limited extent and even if we lie in bed for a long time, it doesn’t feel like a rested night but rather like a night without a party.

Whoever sleeps like this, is depleting his body. You can’t call up your performance 100% and you can’t regenerate.

The good thing is, healthy sleep is always possible again.

Healthy sleep is important for your brain

It is not only the sleeping environment and all that around it that contributes to healthy sleep. So much more happens while you sleep than just lying there and waking up the next day.

When you sleep, your brain starts to fully charge its batteries.

5 sleep phases

During your healthy sleep your body goes through 5 sleep phases. The falling asleep phase, light sleep phase, two deep sleep phases and the REM phase.

As soon as we fall asleep our body starts to go through the different phases. During these sleep phases our brain processes the information of the day. Learnings and memories are transferred to long-term memory.

Our brain is therefore very active and helps us to regenerate and relax mentally.
If you are in the deep sleep phases long enough, your muscle coordination and your immune system will also benefit. Recovery on all levels takes place.

Healthy sleep proceeds in cycles, with each cycle ending with the dream phase, REM sleep.

Deep sleep is particularly important because it is where muscles relax, blood pressure drops and breathing slows down. This is also where an increased level of tissue growth and tissue repair takes place.

Only in these deep sleep phases are hormones released and energy recharged. Sufficient deep sleep is therefore extremely important for everyone.

Sequence of the sleep cycle

The sequence of sleep phases is repeated slightly every 90 minutes with the exception of the fall asleep phase.

Phase 1: Falling asleep phase: Our muscles begin to relax, sounds can still be heard from a distance, our breathing slows down
2nd phase: light sleep: our body relaxes even more: breathing and pulse slow down even more. We slowly slide into the deep sleep phase. In the light sleep phase we also “twitch” sometimes. Do you know that you are walking in a dream and suddenly fall down? In the second phase, it’s more like a superficial sleep.
Phase three: transition to deep sleep: we’re completely relaxed. No physical activity.
Phase 4: Deep sleep: It’s the most important phase of all. Here we can recover physically as well as mentally. For a healthy sleep, it is therefore very important how long we are in the deep sleep phase. Sleepwalking and also talking during sleep takes place in this phase.
Phase 5: REM stands for REM = Rapid Eye Movement. In this sleep phase, our eyes move very quickly behind the eyelids. We dream intensively and our sleep is not as deep anymore. We wake up easily through our dreams. Normally, muscle activity is inhibited during this phase, but it also happens that people live out their dreams in the form of kicking, punching, and sleepwalking.

Sleep disorders or lack of sleep

Sleep disturbances or lack of sleep interrupt the course of sleep phases and thus also our learning success or regeneration. In the long run, we are exhausted: physically and mentally.
Healthy sleep is essential for your intact immune system.

If we don’t sleep “healthy” at night, we feel groggy the next day, we are irritable and powerless. The consequences of unhealthy sleep can be far-reaching. Our immune system can be weakened and our mental health (e.g. development of depression) can suffer. We are also not as efficient.

To sum up:

For a healthy sleep you need the following factors:
– Sleep well in a healthy environment
– enough sleep time,
– going through the sleep phases in order to process what has been experienced
– a healthy lifestyle and way of life during the day, so that you can sleep well at night.

It’s up to you whether you’ll have a healthy sleep.

What can you change to optimize your sleep?

Restful sleep is an important prerequisite for health, well-being, and performance.

A good day begins the night before.

Can you afford to forego a healthy sleep?