DESTROY THE MYTH OF INSOMNIA
How much sleep? A statistical survey showed that most people sleep 7.5 hours each night. This survey covered a large group of people, some sleeping 9 hours and some 5 hours. The average was 7.5 hours. It does not mean that everyone sleeps 7.5 hours every night. Also, the older we are the less sleep we need. Hence do not be alarmed if you are 60 years old and sleep less than 5 hours each night, as this is normal for you and is certainly not insomnia.
More sleep does not equal better health. Not sleeping does not normally damage your health. We can function reasonably well with very little sleep. Hence if we are not sleeping well for one or two nights, it does not make us an insomniac. Many people think that to be healthy they must sleep at least eight hours or more. But this is not true. The amount of sleep you have is not proportional to your degree of health. In fact studies indicate that long sleepers (more than ten hours a night) have death rates nearly double those who sleep seven to eight hours a night.
One-quarter of sleep time is normally spent in dreams. Some of us believe that a good sleep means no dreams and no awakenings throughout the night. This has been proven incorrect by research conducted in sleep laboratories. We have at least four or five periods of REM sleep each night, during which we dream, although most of us forget our dreams the next morning. Work in sleep laboratories confirms that dreams are an essential part of healthy sleep. REM sleep occupies about 25 per cent of the time spent in sleep and this percentage stays relatively constant throughout life.
Brief awakenings indicate good sleep. Another observation made in the sleep laboratory is that a few brief awakenings occur during a normal good night’s sleep. Most of these awakenings last a few seconds to a minute only, and we fall back into sleep immediately after and never remember them in the morning. As we grow older, the number of awakenings increases. Hence we should be prepared for these awakenings in the middle of the night, since they are perfectly healthy and normal With this in mind, if you wake up in the middle of the night, do not panic, just lie back and relax, be confident, and you will always fall back into sleep.
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