Did you know that as human beings we actually spend on average, one third of our lives in bed? One third! That means that in one single day of 24 hours, we are in bed for 8 hours, the equivalent of an average workday.
In a week, that is a total of 56 hours spent in bed. Over the course of one year, that is 2920 hours, or 121.5 days spent in bed.
Now think of an average 80-?year life span, over the course of an 80-?year lifetime that’s 233,600 hours in bed for a total of 26.4 years! So as we reach the end of our lives, when we look back to reflect, we won’t even remember 26.4 years worth of time, because we were asleep.
However, those hours spent asleep will have had a tremendous amount of impact on our hours and days in which we were awake. The quality of our sleep influences our ability to function, to be productive, and to have energy while at work or playing with your children. What do you feel like when you skip a night of sleep? I can tell you personally, it takes me two days to get caught back up! So if I stay awake for 24 hours, I personally suffer for the next 48.
How about those nights where you don’t intend to stay awake, but you can’t shut off your mind and you end up tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling as the minutes on your clock keep turning. Even though you intended to sleep, but couldn’t, the next day how do you feel? (Allow them to respond). Do you feel less productive the next day? Raise your hand if you are like me and feel like your body is able to go through the motions of the day, but your mind is in a total fog? Am I the only one who has ever experienced that? (Interact with the audience so they remember the feeling of missing sleep and how it affects their life).
I’m glad we agree that the quality of our sleep is vitally important for our ability as human beings to flourish. So if sleep makes us more productive and able to work more efficiently, why is it that when we are busy the first thing to be skipped is sleep? How many of you used to pull “all-?nighters” in school when you had a test the next morning, or maybe you still do this with pending work deadlines? I am the first person to raise my hand and admit that I am guilty of this.
What Happens When We Skip Sleep?
Let’s take a look at what exactly happens to the body when we skip a night of sleep. Because the physical body is craving sleep and is too tired to function as normal, the physical body relies on the release of the hormone adrenaline to stay awake.
Adrenaline is an important hormone, and it is important to our existence. Adrenaline gives us that rush to achieve super human feats like to jump out of an airplane when going skydiving and to save us in life threatening situations; you know the classic example of running away from a bear. Adrenaline serves us in these situations, and is favorable.
However, to be pumped with adrenaline while sitting at your cubicle at work is highly destructive. The natural response to adrenaline is to fight or to flight. If the body releases adrenaline, and instead of fighting or flighting, we remain sedentary, then the body will store cortisol, the hormone associated with weight gain. In addition to storing cortisol, research also tells us that men who have sleep apnea also have a lower production of testosterone, bringing their sex drive down.
So by having a restless night of sleep, we feel terrible, have a headache, our bodies are stressed out, we lack energy, and we are releasing hormones that tell the body to store fat, contributing to the onset of obesity.
Lack of sleep can also be deadly. Of the individuals suffering from insomnia, 90% of this population has another serious health disorder. Meaning that insomnia is a contributing factor to severe chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease. Sleep deprivation while driving is also lethal, in some cases as bad as being intoxicated. The National Traffic Highway Traffic Safety Administration (US) estimates that 100,000 auto crashes per year are due to fatigue and being drowsy while sleeping.
Mindset Shift
Sleeping is very important. As active members in our community, we are busy, we have careers, many of you are parents, we have commitments to clubs and associations for which we belong. When asked “how do you do it all?” Many people will reply, I don’t sleep.
I want each of you to learn to change this mentality. Lack of sleep should not be associated with success. Success should be associated with well-?rested, alert human beings. If not, you will suffer from burnout. It may not happen tomorrow, but you will reach a point in which your body will not physically allow you to continue at that rate. So the next time someone asks you “how do you manage to do it all?” I want your response to be, I’m well rested so that I can work with optimal efficiency. That is planning to be successful for the long haul.
We had a patient named Joy who had been coming in for about 8 weeks or so for postural correction. One day Joy seemed particularly joyful and had a big smile on her face. I asked her how she was doing, and she said that she was the best she had been in years.
Happy to hear that response I asked her to expand, and to tell me more. She had never told me, but before she started her posture correction treatments, she was an insomniac, and was lucky to sleep 4 hours per night. When she came in she always complained of headaches, which were obviously related to the insomnia. She told me that just two weeks after starting treatment she was able to sleep for about 6.5 hours per night, and her headaches went away. She had more energy each day naturally, and she stopped drinking wine at night to relax herself so she could sleep-? admitting that she was reliant on her bottle of wine per night.
Joy was actually happy to go to work now. Joy is a first grade teacher. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a pounding headache, no energy, and 30 first graders to take care of? In my mind, that’s misery. Postural correction gave her the passion for teaching back. With good rest and healthy alignment of her body, her life completely changed for the better.
I am going to offer each of you a complete posture analysis, a value of $160for just $40. The return on investment for this postural evaluation, for Joy was life-?changing. I am confident that if we find postural distortions we will have transformational results with you as well.
SPECIAL OFFER!
YOU CAN DISCOVER IF YOU HAVE A POSTURAL DISTORTION.
NORMAL POSTURE SCREEN PICTURES AND ASSESSMENT IS $160.
SIGN UP NOW FOR ONLY $40
YOU WILL GET THE SCREEN PICTURES AND A DISCUSSION IF YOU HAVE POSTURAL DISTORTIONS AFFECTING YOUR BRAIN.
CALL US AT 6323 6652 FOR AN APPOINTMENT TODAY!
Prof Sundardas D Annamalay
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