When you put your head on a pillow at night, what should be a feeling of relaxing somehow becomes much more difficult.
You should be able to get to sleep smoothly, and have at least seven hours of rotating sleep cycles that promote rejuvenation, relaxation and help combat fatigue. That fitness monitor you wear at night should show your sleep to be “Good” or “Excellent” and you will feel it each day because of the way that you are able to sustain a consistent level of energy whether it be working or at home with your family.
Instead, when the lights go out, the night is just beginning. You toss and turn, unable to “turn off” your brain from things that have happened during the day. You stress about the rest of the week instead of being able to rest up and prepare for it. You wake up throughout the night; maybe you are too cold or too warm, but each time you wake up, you find yourself having to reset and work yourself back to sleep all over again. The sleep alarm is the worst thing to possibly hear from in the morning and hitting snooze repeatedly is required every morning before you even get to the weekend, when all you want to do is rest and recover for the week ahead but find family tasks piling up that you’ve been ignoring.
There may be no more important part of each day than having proper sleep. Think about it: If you do not have a great night of sleep, one of the automatic ways to keep awake through the day is a dependency on coffee and soda, which not only means you become overly caffeinated, but especially if you drink a lot of soda, that is empty calories killing your diet. Plus, even coffee has been shown to have properties that would disrupt your appetite when drinking beyond reasonable consumption.
Some of the common causes of sleep issues, along with insomnia, are simple:
- Restless legs syndrome, known as a bodily urge to constantly move your legs throughout the evening and into the night
- Jet lag, especially for those who have a job that requires constant traveling
- Narcolepsy, which causes daytime drowsiness and makes your sleep irregular
- Night terror or sleepwalking, which sounded funny as a kid but is not funny as an adult
- Sleep apnea, the issue of having intermittent airflow blockage during sleep
That is where one of our next upcoming events, Mastering Sleep, comes in. If you have insomnia, or wake up too early before your alarm is supposed to ring, it can be more than just meaning you have a long day ahead. A study by researchers in Australia showed being awake for 18 hours produced an impairment equal to a blood alcohol concentration of .05, which is nearly legally drunk levels. That is stunning, and scary, to anybody who has sleep issues.
There is so much more to sleep beyond laying down at night. Did you know that each of the following can point to potential sleeping issues;
- Females have more problems with sleep than men.
- Do you have PMS, mood swings, anxiety, depression or have been diagnosed with ADD?
- Did you have braces as a child?
- Do you grind your teeth or suffer from TMJ or other jaw pain?
- Do you sleep on your side, or on your back? What side do you sleep on?
If you are intrigued by what you can do to sleep better, come to our event on Oct. 5. It runs for two hours, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., right at our Living Well Dallas headquarters in Dallas. You can sign up today and join Betty Murray and Dr. Becky Coats DDS, MAGD, LVIF, FIDIA, FAACP for an insightful, educational event.
Betty is the CEO and founder of Living Well Dallas, and is a practicing Nutritionist with a focus in biochemistry and bio-individuality. She is also a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, receiving her IFM certification in 2014 from the Institute of Functional Medicine.
After 18 years of practicing dentistry and thousands of hours of continuing education, a recurring factor present for many of Becky’s patients was their experience with a breakdown of dentistry and chronic pain. Dr. Coats’ studies have given her the resources to understand how muscles, TMJ position, posture, airway, and the way teeth bite all go together like a gear system.
Call our main office today at 972-930-0260 or visit livingwelldallas.com to learn even more about this event or any of our services. Whether we set you on the road to a greater peace of mind and security with a pathway to a better, more stable life, or we help keep yourself at your best emotionally, we can help you figure out how to get started Living Well again. Give us a call to book an appointment at Living Well Dallas today.
