This Friday, 13 March is world sleep day and we are reminded by Resilient People’s CEO Joni Peddie to ‘catch a wake-up’.
According to Peddie, good quality sleep is the diet pill we’ve all been looking for, the ultimate wrinkle cream and the secret to longevity. Peddie is a professional speaker, executive coach and strategic facilitator, and is passionate about sleep being the key to good health and resilience.
“If you don’t prioritise your sleep, you are putting your health at risk,” she warned. “Sleep repairs and heals your heart and blood vessels. According to British scientist Matthew Walker, if you’re only sleeping six hours a night (instead of the minimum of seven hours), you have a 200 per cent increased risk of having a fatal heart attack or stroke.”
Good sleep helps you burn fat and increase your metabolism at night and regulates your appetite during the day. While you sleep, your body generates heat and speeds up your metabolism. However, too little sleep triggers a cortisol spike. This stress hormone tells your body to conserve energy while you are awake. This means your body stores more fat.
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“The hormone ghrelin stimulates hunger, while leptin signals satiety to our brain, telling us when to stop eating. Sleeping fewer than seven hours causes our body to decrease leptin production and increase ghrelin levels,” explained Peddie.
When we have had too little sleep, we crave foods higher in carbohydrates and sugar, eat larger portions, and are less inclined to hit the gym. Our craving for those foods is the body’s emergency plan to compromise for its fatigue. These foods will give you a burst of energy, but Peddie describes this as ‘superficial energy’, as it is short-lived and results in even lower energy levels after 30-45 minutes.
According to Peddie, your daily appearance and how well you age are determined by how well you sleep. Overnight, our skin rejuvenates itself by shedding dead skin cells and replacing them with new, healthy ones. In addition, you build collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid, the protein fibres that keep your skin looking plump, elastic, and smooth. “During sleep, your skin’s blood flow also increases, which helps remove pollutants, repair damage from UV exposure, restore your complexion and give you a radiant, youthful glow. Sleep is a multi-functional ageing tool,” she added.
Here are a few tips to help you improve your sleep provided by Peddie:
- Exercise in the morning
- Cut back on refined sugar
- Switch off your computer, television and cellphone 60 minutes before you go to bed
- Avoid caffeine 6-8 hours before bedtime.
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