Cirencester Scene Magazine - Establishing Local Connections Sleep tight, mind the
bedbugs don’t bite! Did you know you can accrue ‘sleep debt’?
Once we get to a certain level of sleep dep- rivation, then the brain moves into a mode where brief sleep will occur. These ‘micro-sleeps’ last from 3 to 30 seconds and occur without the person even being aware of them – how scary is that?
Nicola Griffiths, Hypnotherapist
Sometimes knowing too much about how the brain operates can unnerve me, especially when I’m driving past a rather long lorry which is weaving over the white lines! My brain in- stantly becomes alert and I’m giving it a wide berth presuming there’s a nodding-off driver behind the wheel. I know that the ‘micro-sleep’ can happen even if it puts a driver’s life at risk.
So, what can be done? I don’t mean with the lorry driver, but with ourselves if we have erratic sleep patterns, as that’s where we have more control. Well we have something called a circadian timing method within our brain. This incorporates a ‘clock’ that responds to light/dark cycles and a ‘pacemaker’ that generates biological rhythms and behaviours that fol- low roughly a 24-hour pattern. Funnily enough, if you were
If you’re someone who suffers with insom- nia or has interrupted sleep patterns, such as when people work shifts, then there is more pressure put on the brain to sleep. When we feel the pressure, then sleep is less likely because we’re not relaxed and so we go around in a vicious circle.
trapped in a room without windows, the body would continue to follow roughly the 24-hour pattern. Sometimes it’s advanta- geous to take the pressure off ourselves and trust in our body to auto-correct itself, using those natural rhythms after a few nights of broken sleep.
It’s usual for people to occasionally experience sleep dis- turbances if our stress bucket is overflowing, so we can ac- knowledge with a wry smile that we just need a little bit of time and things will settle down. However, if we’re working shift patterns or there’s ongoing issues which cause the brain to wake up, whether that’s stress related or for some other reason such as pain, then it’s worth knowing that we can build up a bit of a reserve in a ‘sleep bank’.
Recent research has shown that a small amount of extra sleep – going to bed a bit earlier or having a nap in the af- ternoon, can allow us to catch up on the missing sleep in the night. It’s not the best route to go down and we have to be careful of building up a pattern of behaviour that we don’t want to keep, but sometimes needs must!
Sometimes we have to take different action though. If a neg- ative pattern isn’t auto-correcting, then consider your options, can you do something different? Is there a problem you need to actually get sorted? Maybe talking to someone would help offload the stress bucket? Taking positive action rather than waiting another few weeks or months for sleep to fix itself may be a better route?
Nicola Griffiths runs Cirencester Hypnotherapy & Health Centre where they have a range of therapists helping people achieve good sleep patterns.
cirencesterhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
Dedicatedcarefor olderpeople in ahomelyenvironment
Call todaytoarrangeavisit 01285 654864
Watermoor Road,CirencesterGloucestershireGL7 1JR
www.watermoorhouse.org
12 Please tell our advertisers you saw them in the Cirencester Scene Magazine
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
