•Clarice TheysSTATISTICS have shown that women are chronically sleep deprived. Only two out of ten women actually get the recommended eight hours’ sleep a night. When did this all start? And why has it become a struggle for us to rest and have our bodies repair themselves?
Personally, I was always your proverbial ‘one-eye-open’ sleeper because being a mother does that to you. Experts estimate that you will lose 400 to 600 hours of sleep during your baby’s first year. And when you happen to end up as a single parent, it doesn’t make it any easier.
You have to be alert when your gate opens in the middle of the night or the alarm of your car goes off. So yes, living in a very unsafe neighborhood with two teenagers made it impossible for me to even reach stage three sleep for years.
Let’s say I’ve stayed in stage two for almost half of my life. This is what is considered a light sleep, your brain activity starts to slow down together with your heart rate and breathing. I seldom reached total relaxation to prepare my body for the deeper stage three snooze.
To add to my sleep deprivation, I recently experienced some level of trauma which led me to taking prescription sleeping tablets just to get to sleep. But it wasn’t until 18 months passed and I still couldn’t sleep on my own that I felt the need to rid myself of the drugs.
I was concerned about the long-term effects on my brain, although I was told that there are no side effects. I know my body and some mornings I couldn’t remember certain things I had done the previous night. I also felt that induced sleep doesn’t contribute to real ‘rest and repair’ like natural sleep would.
I can’t prove it scientifically but I know the body never lies. Apart from the temporary loss of parts of my memory, I’m also prone to inflammation and have found that there is a sure link between chronic low-grade inflammation which is the root of many diseases and health issues.
Being a woman of a certain age, I will not even talk about the effect poor sleep has on my skin!
So my long journey of detoxification started a few weeks ago. I initially reduced the intake of sleeping tablets slowly so my body wouldn’t go into a state of shock. Those first nights were horrible, with very little sleep but I was adamant.
I turned our bedroom into a sanctuary – the aim was for it to be cool, dark and quiet.
I kept it old school with nothing with a screen, a ringtone or a remote close to me. Reading material was light, pleasurable and nothing that spelt business.
Lavender oil – which induces relaxation – became my new ‘drug’ which I sniffed after a hot shower and sprayed onto my pillow.
So far I’ve achieved part of my goal and entered stage three sleep which is the start of deep sleep where my brain waves (delta waves) are slow but I still have short bursts of faster brain activities (beta-waves).
I long to experience stage four sleep, where my brain shows delta-wave (slow wave) so no one can wake me. Not even when the alarm of our car goes off… I now have a husband to take care of that!
Active sleep (stage five) where you start to dream and even go through periods of paralysis so you don’t act out your dreams is not that important to me because I can do that while I’m awake.
But what is very important to me is to buy myself some satin pillowcases to rest my head on… that is for the beauty benefits.
Apparently silk doesn’t wrinkle and you don’t wake up with creases. It also won’t absorb moisture from the skin like cotton and that’s why they are on my list of beauty treats… next!
