Do you wake feeling exhausted from a restless sleep? Maybe you find yourself nodding off on the commute to work, or even at your desk? If so, maybe you are suffering from what one sleep expert calls ‘semi-somnia.’

Michael emailed me an interesting article about this, this week. Semi-somnia is about fitful or disturbed sleep as a result of a stressful lifestyle, and apparently many, many of us in the UK are affected by it. What it means is that feeling refreshed and alert becomes rare, and instead, the person affected battles with a persistent low-grade kind of exhaustion.

I can relate to this in a way. Generally I sleep really well, but if I start to experience stress or worry, I find it extremely difficult to “switch off” and fall asleep. The big problem of course is that the more you try to “force” yourself to relax, the harder it actually becomes.

There are a few reasons being given for this new “epidemic” and one has to do with our 24/7 culture with all of its demands and busyness. I remember one author I read once made the point that it was only a generation or two ago that terms like “24/7” or “burnout” and “multi-tasking” were unheard of.

Other reasons given for semi-somnia are a general disregard in our culture for a proper night’s rest, and the fact that many of us will deliberately cut down the amount of our sleeping time so that we can squeeze more into a day.

Aside from feeling low on energy, fatigued and lacking in concentration, lack of sleep can also lower immunity, cause irritability, depression, and even lead to obesity (among a whole range of other troubles!)

So, if any of us are caught in this trap, what can we do about it? One important piece of advice I learnt is to take time to prepare for rest, in the same way that we would for a work-out. So this means winding down physically and mentally and creating a bit of distance from the day. An example is that if anything is causing us to feel stress, we could take some time to pray through this earlier in the evening, or write out a list of things to do the following day. This would hopefully prevent us from mulling over things in bed, or having in-depth talks with our spouses late into the night.

Switching off our mobiles, turning off the television and shutting down our computers, is another tip. Evidently sleep can be really compromised by being constantly plugged into our blackberries and computers; and our favourite programmes, music videos and DVDs can encourage us to stay up for longer.

One other point I really liked was that, if we don’t already, adopt the perspective of sleep as a pleasure and something to be looked forward to. And at the same time, really enjoy the feeling of lots of energy and being bright and alert during the day, which comes with good sleeping.

Well I hope this helps a little for anyone suffering with sleep trouble, and if any of you have found anything that has helped you with getting a good night’s rest, then do feel free to leave a reply.

Reference: ‘Could you have semin-somnia?’ by G Fagan on MSN.Com

~ by Birgit on November 15, 2007.

Posted in Health and Fitness