Your Sleep is Your Time to Reset
Sleep is your time to reset.
Have you thought about your sleep lately? With busy summer schedules, work, travel, and more, you might not be prioritizing sleep as much as you want to or know you should. But what happens when you lose sleep? And can you really catch up? Keep reading to learn about what affects your sleep and how your sleep affects you!
What Affects Your Sleep?
First thing’s first: it’s important to understand that sleep deprivation can manifest itself in unexpected ways. From the way we move our bodies throughout the day to what and when we eat are a few common factors that impact our quality of sleep.
If you often find yourself sleep-deprived, consider your eating habits before bed. Are you snacking on sugary foods or carbs as a pick-me-up? When you’re feeling tired or staying up late, your circadian system affects your hunger hormones, Ghrelin and Liptin. This means that when you are disrupting your rhythm you will feel an increase of hunger and at the same time you also feel less full.
But no matter how tasty a bag of chips, a candy bar, or that last glass of wine looks, eating and drinking these things at night will raise your blood sugar levels and make it harder to fall asleep.
In other words, these cravings are an indication that you need sleep––which brings me to my next point. Poor sleep, much like poor health, frequently starts affecting our mouths before impacting other parts of our bodies and health.
That being said, your oral health is dependent on quality sleep. When you sleep, your mouth's self-cleaning mechanism operates in parallel with your circadian rhythms which are our bodies’ physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a 24-hour cycle. And while it’s easy to assume that we spend about 1/3 of this cycle sleeping, only 1 out of 3 Americans are getting enough sleep today.
It’s very common for people to ‘brag’ about their sleeplessness or wear it as a badge of honor, justifying it as proof of their dedication to their work, their busy social and professional lives, and their ability to ‘tough it out’. However, this can have consequences on one’s health. So, by rule of thumb, you need about 7-8 hours of sleep every night for your mouth to keep your dental and oral health in check.
If you’re making a habit of not getting enough sleep, this can cause the pH to drop and change your microbiome which can lead to other health risks like gum disease and inflammation––both commonly seen in sleep-deprived individuals.
Does this resonate with you? Not to worry! There are a few small steps you can start taking to improve your sleep duration and quality. Give the following a try!
Go to bed and wake up as close as you can to the same time every day. This will help set you up for a regular routine.
Make your bedroom a special & decluttered space you look forward to spending time in at night.
Prepare for bed a couple of hours before you actually go to bed. This can include brushing your teeth, turning off your phone, drinking a glass of water, and more.
Make sure not to eat anything close to bedtime to prevent the underlying consequences mentioned above.