The importance of Sleep all Parents should know
During the difficult time myself and Claire experienced with Margot’s sleeping in the first 6 months I noticed a significant impact this was having on my overall health. As parents we need to be there for our littles ones with love, support and nurture; however, with inadequate sleep these fundamental duties began to feel harder and harder to accomplish. Claire and I were grumpy, snappy and short with each other and not that formidable strong parenting team we needed to be.
Personally, my skin broke out, I was lethargic and lacked motivation to keep fit. My hair thinned, I was becoming run down and ill more often and I would struggle to focus on even the most basic tasks either at work or at home. Claires experience were similar to mine and as a mum I can only envisage the toll this was taken on her. Ultimately our shared experiences, and the dread we both felt as we approached bedtime led to Claire taking the steps to reach out for help and support to take back control.
As part of my training to be a sleep consultant I felt it was important to understand the significance of sleep and its effects on the human body and mind. Something we so often as humans take for granted as we close our eyes at night, wake in the morning and live our lives from one day to the next. It was only until our sleep was so broken that I started to grasp the incredible impact it has on our lives without even knowing it. To add perspective, I have listed some important FACTS below and the impact that lack of sleep has on the body:
Ten days of six hours of sleep a night was all it took to become as impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight.
Adults forty-five years or older who sleep fewer than six hours a night are 200 percent more likely to have a heart attack or stroke during their lifetime, as compared with those sleeping seven to eight hours a night.”
According to a 2004 study, people who sleep less than six hours a day were almost 30 percent more likely to become obese than those who slept seven to nine hours
In the “Whitehall II Study,” British researchers looked at how sleep patterns affected the mortality of more than 10,000 British civil servants over two decades. The results, published in 2007, showed that those who had cut their sleep from seven to five hours or fewer a night nearly doubled their risk of death from all causes. In particular, lack of sleep doubled the risk of death from cardiovascular disease