Sleep Deprivation - Causes & Cure

Hello everyone! I am Sheetal Bidkar and I am a clinical psychologist and addiction therapist at Suasth One Step Clinic, Kemps Corner.

So, lets start talking about sleep deprivation today. We know that sleep is a very important part of our lives and sleep deprivation can cause serious as well as psychological problems for each of us.

So, let’s understand what are the methods which can improve our quality of sleep and make us healthy. The very first thing is to avoid tea, coffee, any type of stimulant or alcohol after 6 pm. These stimulants will keep you more active, thus, giving you a poor quality sleep at night. Secondly, go on the bed only for sleeping. Any other activities like reading, watching TV, doing something on your laptop will hamper your association of sleep with the bed. The third thing, make changes to your room. If there is not enough darkness or a good temperature, it obviously will affect the chemical which is necessary for sleeping. In order to generate the sleep chemical, we need darkness and a right temperature in the room. Limit your screen time. We often see our mobile screens till we get a deep sleep. So, let’s have a habit that when you are about to sleep, keep your mobile phone aside at least half-an-hour before and see how your sleep improves. Do some exercise. If you do some physical exercises, then automatically the sleep schedule regains normalcy.

Another part is no self-medication. Most of us are aware that if we go to a medical store with any problem, they would suggest something, or even if we search on Google, it will also suggest us some medication to improve our sleep. But I strongly recommend not to have any self-medication for sleep because eventually they have more serious side-effects and even addiction as well. So make sure we are not doing any self-medication in order to improve the sleep. Minimum 7 to 7-and-a-half hour sleep is important to us. Don’t compromise on it like 3 hours at a time and then another 2-hour sleep later. In a single stretch, at least 7 or 7-and-a-half hours of sleep is important for adults. Next part, that when we are talking about sleep, we know that if I am not sleeping in the day time I feel very sleepy, and I am not able to concentrate on anything.

So if you start compromising the time in that the problem becomes worse. So always remember that if you have sleeping problem, control your daytime naps. The more you are sleeping in the day time, the more you are affecting your night sleep. So these are a few tips that may improve your sleep. These methods are called sleep hygiene techniques. I hope everyone of us will try and implement them for better results.

For more information, you can contact me on Lybrate. Thank you!