7 Day Challenge: SLEEP

Sleep is so important!  The average adult needs anywhere from 6-10 hours of sleep depending on the study you look at. For some you function and feel fine without a lot of sleep.  If I don't get enough sleep I will start to feel like I have the flu.  After oxygen and water your body needs sleep to function at its peak.  Going more than 24 hours without sleep and your body will start to show you exactly how much it requires some sleep.

 I read a study (can you imagine me reading lol) that talked about how your body goes through one cycle of sleep in 90 minutes and that you should try to wake yourself when you are at the end of one of the 90 minute intervals to feel the most rested.  This makes sense to me because sometimes I will wake up at 4 in the morning and feel fully rested (probably waking up at the end of a 90 minute sleep cycle) and then I will lay there til I fall back to sleep and wake up at 7:00 and feel groggy and tired...  So to give you and example try going to bed at 10 and then depending on how much sleep you need, try to wake at the end of one of those cycles so wake at 5:30 or at 7:00 so you don't interrupt that 90 minute cycle.  I do much better when I do this.  I am a 9 hour of sleep kind of gal, but I can still do okay on 7 1/2... but that way I wake during the correct times.

Some more fun things about sleep (okay so this is all day but it is interesting to me and I feel like it correlates with sleep, kind of)  Your body has an internal clock, so each part of the day a different organ is "in charge" where it functions at its hardest or puts in the most work. When I was taking my foot zoning classes we learned about this, and we were taught that if you woke at a certain point during the night every night is was because there was an imbalance with that organ.  Here is an example of the one we had in our books that I found at http://jchlife.com/biological-clock/ with a whole article on the subject that was very interesting.

If you google organ body clock you can find a ton of information on this theory.  

The challenge for this week is to get a minimum of 6 hours of sleep!  Shoot for 7 1/2 if you can.  Things that help me with getting into a good sleep habit:

• Go to bed and wake at the same time every day
• Disconnect from electronics (even the TV) for 2 hours before bed
• I listen to a meditation soundtrack as I fall asleep, here are a few I found on amazon, http://amzn.to/1l46ZAK (this one is free) http://amzn.to/1omrQnT I love this one.
• Cut out the caffeine early in the day so I am not wired
• If I haven't fallen asleep within 30 min of laying down I will take a melatonin but this doesn't happen often.
• Do something relaxing before bed (I like to take a nice hot bath with lavender essential oil)
• Lavender oil spritzed on your pillow 
• A combination of Lavender and orange oil is great for sleep and it smells heavenly.

So shoot for 6-9 hours of sleep each night this week!!!  I have a facebook group for support during the challenges if you interested, it is really nice to have other people participating with you.

Sheena