Beauty sleep and Anti-Aging
“You are old when you find more joy in thinking about the past than about the future.”
Excerpt from Dr. Max Sawaf’s new book
"Anti-Aging Made Simple"
Sleep is as important to your health as water and food. Men need seven and women need eight hours of quality sleep a night.
During sleep, melatonin, a powerful repair hormone is secreted from the pineal gland. Growth hormone is also secreted while we
are asleep. Children who go to bed late, not only become very irritable and cannot concentrate in class but
also may not grow as tall as they could have. During our sleep, the brain gets a much needed rest and clears
itself from a lot of toxic waste. When you can't get a decent night's rest, the problem may be bad sleep habits.
Here's how to repair your routine:
- Go to bed and get up around the same time every day even on weekends. Your internal clock gets used to a specific routine. Otherwise you always feel as if you had a chronic jet lag.
- Exercise for at least 30 minutes each day. But schedule workouts, especially vigorous ones, at least two to three hours before bedtime. Exercise can temporarily boost alertness.
- Avoid caffeine after lunch. A potent stimulant, caffeine can keep some people awake for up to 12 hours. Even if you are not caffeine sensitive and you can go to bed after coffee your sleep will be shallow and easily interrupted. Caffeine also raises your heart rate, blood pressure and stress levels and interferes with the absorption of the calcium you need to prevent osteoporosis or bone fragility.
- Avoid eating a heavy dinner late at night, a common practice in the Middle East. Not only late dinners interfere with sleep but you wake up feeling full and end up skipping breakfast, which slows down your metabolism. Breakfast skippers are 4.5 times more likely to gain weight.
- Build a before-bedtime ritual. Take a warm bath, read or put on snuggly pajamas. Night cap? No thanks. Alcohol may help you slip into sleep, but later on at night it wakes you up and you wake up feeling tired.
- Tune out the distractions. For instance, if noises bug you, earplugs may help.
- Jot down some quick notes about your worries before bedtime. Promise to focus on the problems tomorrow when you have time. • While a power nap of thirty minutes may be refreshing, a longer afternoon nap interferes with night sleep.
If you continue to have sleep prob¬lems, talk to your doctor. Many health problems - from depression to sleep apnea - can interfere with a good night's rest. Depression can cause excessive sleepiness and weight gain or the opposite, insomnia and weight loss. While treating depression may allow you to sleep better, a lot of the Prozac like drugs greatly disturb sleep. Exercise is best for mild to moderate depression and drugs should be reserved for the severe variety.
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