Natural Sleeping Aids

Sleep requirement for optimal performance

Written by clive on 12:53 AM

Just how much sleep is required to be in balance – to experience a total sense of well-being and be fully prepared for optimal performance? Researchers are now finding evidence that our natural need for sleep might be as much as ten hours per night. People in cultures that are free of the demands of a modern industrialized society typically sleep this much. But who among the harried and the busy would be willing to consider such a luxurious schedule? Devoting even eight hours to sleep seems like an unobtainable goal. Yet the consequences for less-than-ideal sleep can be troublesome if not serious.

Ten hours of sleep is operationally defined as our need because that’s what is often required for optimal performance. Timothy Roehrs and Thomas Roth at the Sleep Disorders Research Center of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, have demonstrated that alertness significantly increases when eight-hour sleepers, claiming to be well rested, get an extra two hours sleep. Energy, vigilance, the ability to effectively process information, critical thinking skills and creativity are all enhanced.

While most of us can operate satisfactorily on eight hours of sleep, we are simply not at our best. Furthermore, there exists no safety margin for occasions when we get less than that amount, which unfortunately occurs all too frequently. As soon as we lose as little as an hour’s sleep, we are more prone to inattentiveness, mistakes, illness and accidents.

According to Stanley Coren, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, in the four days after we lose one hour of sleep following the spring shift to daylight saving time, there is a 7 percent increase in accidental deaths compared to the week before and the week after – a pattern that is reversed in the autumn when we gain one hour of sleep on a given night.

MIRACLE SLEEP CURE, JAMES B. MAAS